Talent assessment: what is it, and useful tools

Talent assessment is one of the critical pieces for the success of your company or educational project since creating a high-performance culture requires leadership that enhances the performance levels of employees by analyzing their skills and promoting their role in the organization.

Many companies do not take advantage of their workers’ talent, which is a significant obstacle in an increasingly competitive world. For this reason, we want to discuss employee talent assessment in detail.

What is talent assessment?

Talent assessment is a defined, practical and measurable system of applying each professional’s performance or quality of work in a given position within an organization or business structure.

It is, therefore, a systematic assessment of an employee that should stimulate or judge the person’s value, qualities, and excellence in line with the company’s objectives.

In this way, a company can attract the best profiles and develop and retain them.

Objectives of talent assessment

Based on the premise that a company’s best resource is its professionals, detecting, retaining, and promoting their talents is essential.

Evaluating talent is fundamental, as we have already mentioned, and will allow you to:

• Improve performance.
• Increase productivity and save time.
• Encourage people to define work goals.
• Offer opportunities for growth and personal development.
• Facilitate employee involvement in the company culture.
• Define the contribution of employees.

In this way, we seek to harmonize employees’ personal objectives with the organization’s strategic objectives.

Statistical methods of evaluating each person’s unique characteristics are necessary to achieve this. We develop this information in the following section.

Statistical methods and talent assessment tools

Each person reacts differently to the same stimulus, establishing completely different behaviors.

These responses are measurable through Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) statistical evaluation methods.

Statistical methods can be grouped into a first classification depending on the objectives. They can be:

Strategic

These evaluate the resources and strategies necessary for the employee to meet the established goals.

Managerial

They express the behavior and performance of the processes or activities quantitatively.

Thanks to statistical methods, HR management has become a concrete mission based on accurate data through data collection, measurement tools, and analysis.

Examples of statistical talent assessment tools and methods

We want to illustrate what we have just discussed concerning talent assessment with some examples you will discover below.

SMART Method

The SMART method is a process for defining objectives in symbiosis with the talent of teams that can be adapted to the HR needs of an organization.

These objectives must meet five characteristics. They must be:

1. Specific.
2. Measurable.
3. Attainable.
4. Relevant.
5. Achievable.

These features form the word SMART, which stands for smart, an acronym constructed from the abbreviation for the indicators we have just seen – specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and timely.

Benefits of the SMART method

This working method for talent assessment helps to ensure talent retention:

• A leadership adapted to the reality of the profiles.
• Fluid and respectful communication.
• An increase in employee involvement through motivation.
• A reinforcement of efficiency.
• Optimal follow-up.

A high-performing team that develops collective intelligence is a team that understands expectations and can count on a roadmap for successful career progression.

360° Evaluation

The 360° evaluation, also called integral evaluation, unlike the SMART method, does not serve to meet objectives but to increase the job performance and productivity of the employee by measuring their potential.

It evaluates the personal and professional competencies of team members or departments through a network of evaluators who are:

• The person’s direct manager or immediate leader.
• The company’s customers and suppliers.
• Subordinates.
• Colleagues or close colleagues.

To complete the different points of view, the employee will also perform a self-evaluation as a measure of comparison and self-analysis.

Benefits of the 360° evaluation

One of the significant benefits of this methodology is the reduction of any bias or prejudice (encouraging diversity and inclusiveness), but we would like to point out four more:

• Encourage teamwork.
• Identify strengths.
• Improve the perception of evaluation processes based on equity, fairness, and transparency.
• Provide constructive and, of course, anonymous feedback.

This method must ensure that the contributions are developed in environments that guarantee confidentiality.

Competency-based talent development

Talent development by competencies focuses on enhancing the professional skills (hard and soft skills) that can contribute to furthering a company’s objectives and its cultural fit.

This methodology is based on four major blocks of competencies:

Essential

These are essential for the performance of a specific job position.

Special

These skills best define the worker and are related to their interpersonal skills.

Generic

Refers to specific competencies that can be developed in different jobs and reinforce the employee’s versatility.

Specific

These are unique skills associated with a specific position -such as detailed technical knowledge- or interpersonal skills -such as leadership- if we are talking about team managers, for example.

Criteria applicable to employee talent assessment

Talent assessment as a talent identification process should consider different analysis criteria such as:

1. Aptitude.
2. Attitude (and personality traits).
3. Knowledge.

To develop them, interpersonal skills must be taken into account, among which are, among others:

• Initiative.
• Results orientation.
• Capacity for planning and organization.
• Teamwork and personality test..
• Problem-solving.

The evolutionary process of a company must focus on the training and qualification (including personality assessment) of its teams, combining knowledge with know-how. So much so that a talent management policy cannot be achieved without a constructive process that allows both the company and the employee to advance and mature in synchrony.

In this sense, providing safe, respectful, and fair evaluation spaces to perform screening processes, with professional monitoring systems will become your allies.

You can consult our proctoring products and select the one that best suits your needs or, if you prefer, request a free demo.