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The impact of making a ‘bad hire’ can have a resounding effect on businesses performance and profitability. At a time of year when businesses are implementing and forward planning their talent decisions, understanding what makes a ‘bad hire’ and how you can avoid this route is essential.

Research shows that ‘up to 20 percent of new hires’ leave within the ‘first 45 days of their new role.’ (HR News) A ‘bad hire’ could be the result of a mismatch between job role and skill set, values that do not align between company environment / expectation vs personal values, or team fit.

There are also business factors that can lead to organisations making a negative hiring decision. Poor onboarding processes, lack of face-to-face interviews, and pressure to make quick hiring decisions due to time and budget demand. A bad hire is costly, estimated at three times higher than the salary paid, plus the impact a bad hire can have on team morale and performance.

How Can Organizations Avoid this Costly Mistake?

Use psychometrics

34% of HR professionals cited psychometrics as an effective way to improve recruitment processes, by gaining insight into personality, aptitude, and behaviours required for their roles. Role assessment by Pearson provides a range of renowned assessment tools including the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal that can provide a granular view of each candidates' job fit and how they rank against other applicants who are being considered for the same position.​

Skills-based hiring

Avoid outdated proxies and look at recruiting based on skill-set - the competencies and skills essential to your role as opposed to credentials. This gives you a wider talent pool to choose from and helps you avoid overlooking valuable candidates.  

Look at all your options 

With skill-gaps having a significant impact on future business development, upskilling internal members of staff will help to protect your business. Identifying areas of concern and developing staff into new roles could help improve employee retention and avoid the possibility of making a ‘bad hire’ by mismatching skills and role requirements. 

A bad hire is a costly mistake to make for any organisation, but by planning for your recruitment needs and investing in tools such as psychometrics and hiring solutions you can gain the insight needed to avoid this mistake and strengthen your business for the year ahead.

What is the Pragmatist Learning Style and how can it help shape L&D plans?

Why and how to use a personality test to recruit?

Almost 50% of workplace skills will change within five years, putting learning and development high on the growth and furture of work agenda. But how people learn depends on multiple variables. From cognitive receptiveness to information, emotive state of mind, personal preference, motivation and also an aptitude for engaging with new information or learning materials. 

Today’s employees want something more from work – they want an opportunity to evolve and grow – and this is where understanding an individuals learning style can really help employees. Focussing on their individual goals, looking ahead to new roles – and in the long-term for organisations driving talent retention.

We often assess learning styles by using learning cycle model’s like David Kolb’s learning cycle or to better understand individual proficiency for learning. Understanding one’s learning styles is more complicated than an immediate decision on whether someone is an aesthetic learner or a visual learner. Especially, when you consider that a learner may go through the learning cycle, often reverting between multiple learning styles before settling on a specific learning preference. But the insight gained can assist in shaping learning and development plans for employees for the future. Below we take a look at one of the four key learning styles – the pragmatist learning style. 

What is the Pragmatist Learning Style?

The Honey and Mumford Learning Style Questionnaire has four types of learning style: Activists, Reflectors, Theorists, and Pragmatics. Like all learning styles in the LSQ, the Pragmatist Learning Style is unique in many ways. 

The pragmatist learning style is very forward-thinking in the sense that they actively encourage new trends, trying things out and from a philosophical standpoint, the pragmatist is often at the forefront of new ideas and concepts. This helps lead to new ways of thinking, ideas and processes within an organisation, but also generally from a social-economical standpoint. 

How do Pragmatist Learners Learn?

The pragmatist learner learns best when in collaborative problem-solving situations. This may for example be internal discussions or conversations surrounding a business problem where the pragmatist learner can see multiple perspectives and take away useful insights to consider. 

In most business cases, the pragmatist learner learns best from workshops, team huddles and conferences. They find documentation such as case studies and literature on the subject matter useful post-meeting to deliberate a concept or perspective. They use this time to fuel their learning by contemplating the concept and how this can be applied in the business environment.

Pragmatist learners make good problem-solvers

Additionally, the pragmatist's learning style benefits from solving problems. Naturally, being keen to take on board new ideas, perspectives etc. the pragmatist learning style often enjoys tackling business problems as this provides them with the perfect opportunity to employ new learnings in real-world working environments. This innate desire to test out things makes them a great advert for testing and learning. 

Challenges for Pragmatist Learners 

Pragmatists tend to be practical and realistic, over theoretically led. Hence, when shaping learning and development plans it is important to remember that a pragmatist learners learning can stagnate if the learning is all theory and there is no model or process they can test or learn from. They are not the learners to conceptualise without some grounding in previous learning/model/idea etc. But by identifying a clear benefit from the learning opportunity pragmastic learners can decipher what information is valuable and apply this to personalise and business opportuntiies. 

Interestingly, guidance is a key area. For example, a pragmatist learner may benefit from practice or guidance from instructions/experienced personnel who can show them the way. For many Gen Z learners mentors are reportingly having a positiv impact. According to research, '93% of mentees believe their mentoring relationship was useful’ (MentorcliQ). Identifying learning styles can help L&D teams drill down into what works for the individual and could help in establishing strong relationships with other learners. 

Testing Your Team’s Learning Styles 

In business, it can be beneficial to test your talents' proficiency for learning and the styles from which they most benefit. It’s important to have a varied pool of varied learning styles within each team and throughout each business function. This way, different types of learning, action and development can take place, catering for an improved learning and working environment. In doing so, individual team members can help improve each other and foster more collaboration on projects and tasks. Additionally, each learning style poses various forms of cognitive thinking that can benefit the business. From abstract reasoning to critical thinking, the more variety in the learning styles within the organisation, the more opportunity for various thinking types to emerge and benefit the solving of business probledxms both short and long term. 

The Honey and Mumford Learning Questionnaire

TalentLens has vast experience in administering the Honey and Mumford Learning Questionnaire to businesses and local governments throughout the UK.

We have worked with Global 100 companies and small businesses to improve their screening of candidates and team member learning styles.

With the development of remote and hybrid working, the behavioural skills of candidates have become very important. Companies are looking for employees with adaptability, those able to demonstrate autonomy and agility - soft skills that are not always easy to assess. This is why recruiters are choosing to use a number of tests, including test of personality. We explore what are the advantages of this type of test for the company and the candidate? How to use it in the recruitment process? 

What is a Personality Test?

A personality test is a test whose objective, through a series of questions, is to analyse the personality of an individual. Frequently used as a recruitment test, it more precisely evaluates the dominant traits of a person's character, their behavioural profile in the professional environment, and, sometimes, their motivations and values.

Pearson TalentLens Personality Tests

• SOSIE 2nd Generation™: reference tool, it gives indications on the person's personality, values, ​​or sources of motivation.

All our tests are reliable and comply with ethical rules. Each of them meets specific psychometric criteria, guarantees of their reliability: fidelity, validity, discriminating power. These professional tests can be used by psychologists, and human resources professionals; and some require training to be administered. They come in different formats: statements to classify, quiz, questionnaire.

The Benefits of Using a Personality Test for Recruitment

In the context of recruitment, the personality test has many advantages, both for the company and for the candidate.

Objective Interview

Personality tests allow you to go beyond the written application and discover personality traits that do not appear on the CV, before or after an interview. Through these types of tools, the evaluation of the personality of a candidate is refined. For example, you could check if an aspect of the personality would not be appropriate for the role, or on an area which you have doubts. 

Another advantage of having a personality test is to eliminate cognitive biases, which makes recruitment more objective. It avoids recruiting based on simple intuition, which can be misleading. Finally, thanks to standardised tests, candidates are evaluated fairly.

Ensure Candidate is in Line with Profile & Values

If the personality test provides information that helps to objectify the job interview, it also helps to identify the personality profiles that best match the position.

• The ideal profile for the position: The tests help to identify the candidate's personality based on criteria that are difficult to observe in the interview. For example, in jobs in the social sector, empathy is often a prerequisite, which a personality test is able to identify immediately. Similarly, to recruit a salesperson, the test can help you find the right profile for your company: an outgoing personality type, a dynamic personality, with an aptitude for communication, while being able to listen enough to analyse customer needs.

• Synergistic values: The fact that a candidate theoretically has the necessary skills to fill a position is not enough to recruit him. Indeed, it is necessary to determine his profile and his personality at work, in order to verify that he corresponds to the company culture and that he will be able to integrate well.

Data-Driven Talent Decisions

By identifying the profile that best corresponds to the open role, this type of test reduces the risk of recruitment errors, and the cost they imply for the company. If you are looking for a specific personality type, tests before the interview will save time during the candidate screening stage. You can then complete follow the tests with a discussion on the results, particularly focusing on certain dominant traits of the candidate's personality.

Improve candidate experience

Taking a personality test also has certain advantages for the individual applying. Indeed, the report allows him to get to know himself better, even to discover character traits that he did not suspect. Sometimes the result is stunning for a candidate, as it can accurately reflect their personality and confirms what the person already knows. Knowing themselves well allows the candidate to work on how to present themselves and, if they join the company, to pay attention to their “weaknesses”.

How to Integrate it Into Your Recruitment Process?

Recruiters can use the personality test in two ways:

• Before the interview: the personality test facilitates the pre-selection of applications since it provides additional information to refine the initial analysis of CVs. This step is particularly recommended for volume recruitments because it saves time. If the test results correspond to the profile sought, the recruiter can rely on the report, during the interview, to deepen the dimensions of the candidate's personality.
• After the interview: the recruiter uses this type of test to refine his judgment and complete his first impression, to better understand the personality of the candidate and therefore confirm or invalidate the personality elements put forward previously. When the personality test is carried out after the first interview, it is often followed by a second interview during which the recruiter presents the results and uses them to encourage the candidate to develop certain personality traits.

Inform the Candidate

Organizations using assessments for recruitment should follow best practice guidelines set out by responsible bodies such as the British Psychological Society. Candidates should be informed of the nature of the test, how their results will be used and who will have access, and how long their results will be retained for. Any tests should also be delivered by an appropriate professional with the relevant training for the test being offered.

Provide Feedback

Test results should be kept confidential within the company but passed on to the candidate. In practice, they are generally communicated during a feedback interview and are accompanied by a report containing a personality assessment. A tool for dialogue between the candidate and the recruiter, the personality test also represents an aid to assessment and recruitment. Thus, if the company decides to retain a candidate despite certain weak points regarding the position sought, it can inform future onboarding and coaching plans.

Unlock the Power of Psychometrics with Pearson TalentLens

With the right strategy and tools, you'll empower your talent acquisition teams to make the right hiring decisions. Want to see how Pearson TalentLens can work within your hiring process? Learn more about our talent assessment library.