Assessment and Survey Center

Have you ever hired anyone who didn't work out?

Have you ever promoted an employee into a position for which he or she wasn't qualified?

Have you selected executives who were a poor fit for your organization?

Have you ever lost a good employee because they needed more challenge from their work?

Read our Flipping the Coin for Talent Article

Assessment and Development Solutions

“Dr. Maynard Brusman utilizes a wide variety of assessments in his work with senior executives and upper level managers, and is adept at helping his clients both develop higher levels of emotional intelligence and achieve breakthrough business results. Dr. Brusman is also highly skilled in the areas of personnel selection and assessment, and multi-rater 360-degree feedback.”
 
     Jeffrey E. Auerbach, Ph.D., President, College of Executive Coaching

In order to get a granular “snapshot” of your leadership effectiveness, you might find it helpful to take one of our FREE Self-Assessment Quizzes. These mini-surveys are not validated, but come from my experience working with organizational leaders and numerous leadership development courses.

If you want to engage in a formal assessment, you will need to use valid tools that are aligned with your corporate culture. We provide validated instrumented assessments and surveys that help people and organizations improve performance and productivity in the following areas:

• Pre-Hire Selection
• Executive Selection
• Leadership Development
• Sales Selection
• Sales Development
• Competency Modeling
• Succession Management
• Emotional Intelligence
• Career Development
• Organizational Culture
• 360-Degree Feedback Performance Appraisals

 Read our Winning the War for Leadership Talent Article

Working Resources will partner with you in evaluating employees for selection, promotion, succession and development. An effective assessment process must be able to surface a realistic picture of a candidate's strengths and developmental needs. What is important in today's workforce are the right competencies and personality factors.  

Perhaps most important, the process should provide you with an indication regarding "fit." Will the candidate fit with your culture, your employees, and your organizational values? We provide detailed Selection and Development Reports based on competency-based assessment data and structured performance-based interviews.

Psychological Testing for Employment Screening for Selecting Candidates Who Are a Great Fit with the Company Culture!

Read our How to Assess, Select, Coach, and Retain Emotionally Intelligent People Article

For successful businesses, emotionally intelligent employees are more important than technical competence. Having the right employee in the appropriate position is essential for competitive businesses. Finding suitable candidates can be difficult. Non-discriminatory job-related employment tests provide information about the skills and attitudes of job applicants before you make a potentially costly hiring mistake.

Your hiring decisions can have a powerful impact on your bottom line. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 30% of business failures are due to poor hiring decisions. When you hire emotionally intelligent people you will:

• Increase Productivity
• Improve Morale
• Decrease interpersonal Conflict
• Reduce Turnover
• Retain committed employees

Employee Assessment and Selection…Employment Decisions Made Easy

We are experts at Human Resources employment testing solutions validated to predict job performance. Our validated tests help to match employee competencies with job requirements.  We can help you evaluate a candidate’s basic skills, aptitude, personality, and career interests.

We can help you…

• Look at job outcomes as well as job descriptions
• Perform a job analysis for each position
• Incorporate a good fit competency model
• Develop performance-based interviewing questions
• Hire to your company mission and culture

The benefits of employment testing are numerous. Research has shown that employment testing is one of the most valid methods of assessing candidates for work-related competencies and the most accurate predictor of job performance. Professional employment tests are designed to provide an objective, valid, and reliable assessment of job candidates. Selection Reports can be used to enhance your structured behavioral interviewing process. Developmental Reports can provide the coaching feedback necessary to support a new hires success.

Benefits of Employment Testing:

Turnover is costly! The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the loss of a highly compensated employee could cost up to 1 ½ times that individual’s salary. Turnover also slows productivity, adversely affects moral, and has a negative impact on customer service. Hire and keep exceptional employees with a strategic assessment-based approach that maximizes your HR, Training, and development dollars and improves your bottom line.

• Employment tests outperform traditional interviews.

• Research indicates that employment testing is a highly dependable predictor of actual job performance.

• Employment testing can reduce employee turnover and training costs and minimize the cost and misery of a bad hire. The cost to replace one employee is between 70 to 200% of his/her salary in recruitment costs, training expenses, and lost productivity.

• The legal guidelines that apply to personal interviews also apply to employment tests. Our employment tests are valid, reliable, and compliant with EEOC and ADA regulations. They comply with the professional and regulatory standards published by the American Psychological Association and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

• Our tests include a deception scale that helps identify candidates who may not be answering the questions in a forthright manner.

A Competitive Advantage

Industrial/Organizational psychologists understand both the strengths and limitations of employment tests, and are uniquely qualified to help companies hire employees who outperform the competition.  Dr. Brusman is a member of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychologists.  In business, as in sports, the team with the top players wins!

Assessment and Development Case Studies

View Our Case Studies

We are pleased to feature a large assortment of validated assessment instruments from the world’s leading companies. After consultation with your company, we will select the appropriate instruments that best address your unique situation.

You will find examples of selected assessment instruments available to our clients below:

Individual Feedback Tools

Selection and Assessment

• ASSESS - Selecting and Developing Leaders: Executives, Managers, Professionals

ASSESS is a web-based expert system of assessment for managerial, professional and supervisory candidates designed to assist hiring managers make selection or promotion decisions. It provides a comprehensive view of the candidate’s intellectual abilities, work approach, emotional make-up, interpersonal style, and leadership style and abilities.

ASSESS provides an in-depth assessment of abilities and work personality built around your competency model(s).

For developing employees, ASSESS will help your workforce gain greater awareness of individual strengths and development needs, target their gaps, and guide them in constructing development plans to improve job effectiveness.

       Executive Assessment

At the executive level, an individual’s ability to set direction, create momentum and influence morale has such a significant impact on the success and growth of your organization that the investment in individual assessment is clearly a sound choice.

ASSESS Select – Selecting and Developing Entry-Level Associates

The Select Associate Screening System is a family of related tests designed to measure important work-related personality characteristics in applications for associate level jobs. While each test measures characteristics important to a specific job type, all have at their core the prediction of productivity, cooperative work behaviors and integrity.

Selecting and Developing Sales: Professionals, Retail, and Entry-Level Managers

Professional Sales – we can help you select top performing salespeople and develop your current sales force to its fullest potential.

ASSESS Sales Max is a web-based testing system designed to evaluate whether your professional sales candidates have the underlying personality to be effective in a consultative sales job. It can also assist in developing your current salespeople by identifying developmental gaps and guiding them through an action plan.

Multi-Rater 360-Degree Feedback

• Assess 360

With the addition of the Assess 360 competency based multi-rater feedback module, ASSESS provides a comprehensive picture of personality and abilities, as well as feedback on actual behavior.

• Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI)

The Emotional Competence Inventory (ECI) is a multi-rater tool designed to assess emotional intelligence. The ECI is based on the seminal work of Dr. Daniel Goleman and Dr. Richard Boyatzis and builds on Hay Group's 35 years of competency research (research begun and initially carried out by McBer and Company) and field-proven assessment technology. The result is an assessment and development tool of unmatched precision and authenticity.

• Emotional Quotient-360 (BarOn EQ-360)

Harnessing a person’s emotional intelligence can have significant results. While the BarOn EQ-i® identifies the level of a client’s emotional and social functioning based on his or her responses, the EQ-360™ assessment explores the situation further by having those who work closely with the client provide information as well. When observer ratings are compared with the results of a standard EQ-i® self-report, a more complete 360-degree profile emerges.
The EQ-360™ is ideal for use in corporate environments where developing effective communication between individuals, teams, and the entire organization is crucial to success. The EQ-360™ identifies key employee strengths and impediments to high performance that could be improved. The assessment process can also be used as a follow-up to formal coaching and to measure progress.

• A Multi-Rater Leadership Assessment - Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI)

 LPI Online is an interactive tool for administering the Leadership Practices Inventory (LPI) — the premier 360-degree leadership assessment instrument created by The Leadership Challenge authors, James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner.

The Leadership Practices Inventory has helped develop the leadership skills of nearly 1 million people worldwide. Now, LPI Online offers simplified, time-saving administration and immediate, stream-lined results and 24x7 web-based access for LPI administrators and participants alike.

Read our Multi-Rater 360-Degree Feedback Article

Read our Survival of the Fittest: Feedback is not for Sissies Article

Personality Assessment
Currently the most popular approach among psychologists for studying personality traits is the five-factor model or “Big Five” dimensions of personality. According to statistical factor analysis, there is much evidence that there are five basic personality traits. Researchers are not in total agreement regarding all of the aspects of the five factors. However, there is general agreement that the following descriptions define the factors:

1. Emotional stability (also called Neuroticism): The degree to which an individual is calm, self confident, and cool versus insecure, anxious, depressed and emotional
2. Extraversion: The extent to which an individual is out going, assertive and positively interactive with others, instead of reserved and quiet
3. Openness: Defines individuals who are creative, curious and cultured, versus practical with narrow interests (some call this a Culture dimension)
4. Agreeableness: Concerns the degree to which individuals are cooperative, warm and agreeable versus argumentative, cold, and antagonistic
5. Conscientiousness: The extent to which individuals are hard working and organized, dependable and persevering versus lazy, disorganized and unreliable

Read our Leadership Personality: Do You Have the Big Five Traits? Article

Read our Personality Type in Leaders: What Works Article

• NEO-PI-R

The NEO PI-R is a concise measure of the five major domains of personality. It facilitates a comprehensive and detailed assessment of normal adult personality. The NEO PI-R, the standard questionnaire measure of the Five Factor Model (FFM), provides a systematic assessment of emotional, interpersonal, experiential, attitudinal, and motivational styles.

• Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)

A five-factor inventory of the personality characteristics needed for successful careers, relationships, and life. Personality assessment is rapidly becoming a “best practice” for the selection and development of talented employees. The HPI has a 25-year history of success in predicting employee performance.

• The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Step II Form Q (MBTI)

The most widely used personality inventory in the world, the MBTI® instrument provides an accurate picture of a person’s personality type. The MBTI® instrument determines preferences on four dichotomies:

• Extraversion–Introversion:  describes where people prefer to focus their attention and get their energy—from the outer world of people and activity or their inner world of ideas and experiences
• Sensing–Intuition:  describes how people prefer to take in information—focused on what is real and actual or on patterns and meanings in data
• Thinking–Feeling:  describes how people prefer to make decisions—based on logical analysis or guided by concern for their impact on others
• Judging–Perceiving:  describes how people prefer to deal with the outer world—in a planned orderly way, or in a flexible spontaneous way

• DISC

The letters “DISC” stand for four basic behavior preferences:

1. Dominance: Response to problems and challenges
2. Influencing: Ability to influence others to personal point of view
3. Steadiness: Response to the pace of the environment
4. Compliance: Response to rules and procedures set by others

The general meaning is that people will demonstrate by their behaviors a natural tendency to be high or low on each of the four dimensions. A person high on the D factor is usually task oriented, competitive and a risk taker. A high I rating indicates a “people-person,” who enjoys interacting and developing relationships. A high S means a person is reliable, organized and conscientious, albeit non-demonstrative. A high C refers to a person who is compliant and who is concerned with rules and paper work. The implications for job placement are obvious.

Leadership Development

• The Spectrum CPI-260 Coaching Report

The new CPI 260™ instrument takes the exceptional history, validity and reliability, and quality of the CPI™ instrument and transforms it into a leadership development tool for use in today's organizational settings. With updated language, scale names, and presentation of results, the CPI 260™ instrument was designed with the training and development audience in mind. This new B-level instrument contains 260 items carefully selected to identify an individual's strengths and areas for development, providing organizational development consultants, training and development professionals, human resource managers, and executive coaches with an effective measurement tool for their management or leadership development program.

• Bar-On EQi Leadership Development Report

Bar-On Leadership Reports help you identify and groom the best leaders. They can be used in leadership assessment, leadership placement training of leadership skills, and understanding potential
de-railers.

Interpersonal Communication

• The Fundamental Interpersonal Relations Orientation (FIRO-B)

In 15 minutes, the FIRO-B® instrument assesses your client’s interpersonal needs and the impact of that individual’s behavior in the workplace. Three needs are measured in two dimensions: “expressed” behavior (how much we initiate behavior) and “wanted” behavior (how much we prefer others to initiate behavior). The FIRO-B® reports enable your client to manage his behavior, recognize stagnation and conflict and to find possible solutions, and increase productivity through awareness of interpersonal dynamics at work.

• Thomas Kilman Conflict Management Indicator (TKI)

Depersonalize conflict and resolve issues! By helping you become more aware of the choices you and others are making in conflict situations, it provides a rich way for you to consciously steer conflict situations into creative problem solving.

Emotional Intelligence

• BarOn Emotional Quotient-Inventory (BarOn EQ-i®)

EQ-i® measures emotionally and socially intelligent behavior as reported by respondents. A growing body of research suggests that emotional intelligence is a key determinant of success in life.
BarOn EQ-i® consists of 133 items and includes four validity indices and a sophisticated correction factor rendering scores for the following components:

• Intrapersonal (Self-Regard, Emotional Self-Awareness, Assertiveness, Independence, and Self-Actualization)
• Interpersonal (Empathy, Social Responsibility, and Interpersonal Relationship)
• Stress Management (Stress Tolerance and Impulse Control)
• Adaptability (Reality Testing, Flexibility, and Problem Solving)
• General Mood Scale (Optimism and Happiness)

• The EQ Map

EQ Map® is an extensively researched, norm-tested, and statistically reliable instrument used to measure emotional intelligence. It is self-administered, confidential, and easy-to-use and understand. The EQ Map® comes complete with a questionnaire, scoring grid, interpretation guide, and action planning worksheets.

The EQ Map® integrates over 90 distinct bodies of research on emotional intelligence. Divided into five parts with 20 scales, the EQ Map® focuses on EQ Awareness, EQ Competencies, EQ Values/Beliefs, and Life Outcomes. Like a snapshot in time, the integrated assessment captures the essence of your often complex and multi-dimensional life and pinpoints your strengths and vulnerabilities. The factors in the EQ Map® are directly related to your ability to stay healthy under pressure, develop trusting relationships, and creatively sense and pursue opportunities for your future.

Career Development

• Career Design Guide

A step-by-step career assessment and planning tool, The Career Design Guide is a practical, all-in-one tool that takes individuals through the entire career planning process -- from assessment to action planning.

• 16 PF Career Development Profile

This online assessment tool offers you a well-documented interpretation of 16 personality factors. Provides feedback on where you score in seven different fields of career interest, and numerous occupations.

• MAPP Assessment

MAPP provides a unique online assessment that seeks to guide, motivate and empower people to achieve their greatest educational and career potential.

Organizational Feedback Tools

• Dennison Organizational Culture Survey

The Denison Organizational Culture Survey provides a way to link organizational culture to tangible bottom-line performance measures. This survey enables leaders, key stakeholders and employees to understand the impact their culture has on their organization's performance and learn how to redirect their culture to improve organizational effectiveness. The following four culture traits can have a significant impact on organizational performance: involvement, adaptability, consistency, and mission.

• Campbell Organizational Survey

The Campbell Organizational Survey (COS) is a standardized organizational/employee attitude survey designed to collect information from the employees within an organization about their feelings of satisfaction or frustration with various aspects of work, such as feedback, top leadership, diversity, and organizational planning. This survey can be administered to an entire organization, to specific work units, or as part of special training and development programs.

• Benchmark of Organizational Emotional Intelligence (BOEI)

Harnessing a person’s emotional intelligence can have significant results. While the BarOn EQ-i® identifies the level of a client’s emotional and social functioning based on his or her responses, the EQ-360™ assessment explores the situation further by having those who work closely with the client provide information as well. When observer ratings are compared with the results of a standard EQ-i® self-report, a more complete 360-degree profile emerges.

The EQ-360™ is ideal for use in corporate environments where developing effective communication between individuals, teams, and the entire organization is crucial to success. The EQ-360™ identifies key employee strengths and impediments to high performance that could be improved. The assessment process can also be used as a follow-up to formal coaching and to measure progress.

Key Areas Measured:
Job Happiness
Compensation
Work/Life Stress Management
Organizational Cohesiveness
Supervisory Leadership
Diversity and Anger Management
Organizational Responsiveness
Positive Impression
Negative Impression

• Climate Improvement (Inventory of Leadership Styles and Organizational Climate Survey)

One of the most significant strengths of an effective leader is his ability to create a positive work climate.  In an outstanding organizational climate people are energized to do their best work, free of unnecessary distractions.  Effective leaders use a repertoire of styles to create positive work climates in the areas they manage.

Hay Group's Organizational Climate Survey and Inventory of Leadership Styles were pioneered in the 1960's as diagnostic tools to assess leaders' effectiveness in creating positive climates.  Studies conducted over 35 years have proven again and again that organizational climate predicts bottom-line performance as measured against such indicators as sales growth, productivity and customer satisfaction. To complete the picture Daniel Goleman has reported that Emotional Intelligence competencies form the basis for an effective leadership style ("Leadership that Gets Results", Harvard Business Review, 2001.).Truly effective leaders are emotionally intelligent.

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