The stakes are high when hiring executives. Whether you're a Fortune 500 or a smaller organization, it's essential to make sure you're bringing in the right person for the job—which means you need data to back up your decision. Fortunately, when you work with an executive search agency, they have access to behavioral assessments that can provide valuable insight into potential candidates and ensure they'll be a good fit for your organization.
Let's take a closer look at how behavioral assessments can help with hiring effective leadership and look at two types we use at Hire Velocity: Harrison Assessment and Cleaver DISC Assessment.
What is Behavioral Testing?
Behavioral testing is the general term for the types of assessments we use to analyze how candidates might behave in specific work situations. These tests also examine a candidate's proficiencies as an individual. Behavioral assessments can be comprehensive, analyzing a wide range of behaviors and skills, or they can be generic and showcase the overall personality style of a candidate.
How Can Behavioral Assessments Help With Executive Hiring?
Matching candidates with executive roles requires a deep understanding of both the role and the candidate. Behavioral assessments can help provide insight into a candidate's personality, behavior, and long-term potential—all factors that play into executive roles. This information can be invaluable when making executive-level hiring decisions, as it provides valuable insights into the candidate's likely performance and job fit.
Types of Behavioral Assessments Used By An Executive Search Agency
Top-ranked executive search firms, like Hire Velocity, use several behavioral assessments as part of their executive hiring strategy, with two being the Harrison Assessment and Cleaver DISC Assessment. The results of these tests give them a big-picture view of a candidate's strengths and weaknesses, allowing them to make more informed executive recruitment decisions.
Harrison Assessment
Harrison's Talent Acquisition Assessment is designed to help organizations uncover the underlying traits and characteristics of individuals that make them especially suited for particular roles. The assessment looks at multiple facets of behavior, including emotions, values, problem-solving skills, and communication style. There are over 6,500 existing variations within the Harrison Jobs Success Library, providing the capability of assessing executive roles in a wide range of industries.
Assisting with Executive Level Hiring
The Harrison Assessment can help executive search firms dive deeply into the behaviors that make leaders successful. By analyzing a candidate across multiple behavioral factors, executive recruiters can identify which candidates might be the best fit for senior-level positions. This assessment can be applied to both new prospects, and internal executive hires and can accurately determine whether a leader's strong behavioral traits are strengths or weaknesses.
What do the results mean?
The results of the Harrison Assessment can provide an in-depth look at how well a candidate would fit with your organization's culture and their ability to excel in the role they're being considered for. This may be related to critical thinking, reasoning, and success behaviors associated with a specific executive position in your company culture.
The Cleaver DISC Assessment
The Cleaver DISC Assessment is considered one of the most effective and respected behavior profiling tools used by executive search firms. The Cleaver DISC Profile is designed to analyze an individual's behaviors and how they relate to how they work.
Understanding the Cleaver DISC Assessment
The DISC Assessment is a recruitment and hiring tool that assesses someone's overall behavior by looking at four key characteristics: dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. This assessment can give you an inside look into how each candidate would handle different situations that may come up in their executive role—whether it's negotiations with customers or leading meetings with team members—giving you the assurance that they'll be able to handle whatever gets thrown their way.
How the Cleaver DISC Assessment Helps With Executive Recruitment
The Cleaver DISC profile provides executive recruiters with a comprehensive look into how executive candidates would perform in the workplace. It can also help executive search firms identify the most promising C-suite prospects and determine the best executive recruitment approach—whether they're the right fit or might need additional executive coaching.
In Summary
Executive leaders are responsible for driving organizations forward, and recruiting the wrong C-level hire can send a company in the wrong direction. That's why behavioral assessments like Harrison Assessment and Cleaver DISC Assessment are critical for executive search agencies like Hire Velocity. These assessments allow us to quickly identify whether someone has what it takes to succeed in a leadership role and thrive within your organization's culture and values.
Contact us today to learn more about Hire Velocity's executive search services.
