Job profiles with validated personality profiles

Organisations have their own company-specific “genes”. To find the right employees who fit both the company and the specific functions, it is important to know these “genes”.

Describing the individual requirements in company-specific requirements profiles saves time and money in personnel selection. The search for suitable employees becomes more efficient and more accurate. Describing the requirements means more than setting down qualifications and competencies. It is about the person as a human being with all their personality traits, motivators and risks.

Corporate strategy and corporate goals as well as an organisation’s relevant environments give rise to specific organisational requirements. For successful recruitment, these requirements must be defined in job profiles. The job profiles also take the strategic and future plans into account and make concrete the difference between target and actual, that is, between present and future.

A professional job profile must therefore describe eight success factors. These include the specific professional and leadership tasks of the function, the stakeholders to be served and the decision-making authority. Added to these are performance drivers and performance barriers as well as special characteristics of the work.

Also described are the way the work is carried out, the organisational framework conditions and the expected contribution, that is, the expected performance. Together, this information forms the function description of a position.

Organisational requirements and the company DNA have a decisive influence on the requirements profile for people. The crucial question is: what has to be done, decided and managed within the respective function in order to achieve the desired performance?

Once the organisational requirements are established, the requirements profile for suitable candidates can be developed. It has four components.

The first component is the personality profile. It answers the question of what the personality must look like, on the basis of valid personality traits, in order to meet the organisational requirements and the associated performance expectations with a high degree of probability.

The second component is the competence profile. It describes which basic and specialist competencies are needed to perform the tasks associated with the function optimally. Competence comprises knowledge, willingness and ability and is reflected in observable behaviour.

The third component is experience and qualifications. It records which particular experience or qualifications are critical to performance.

The fourth component is the knockout criteria. These are known and clear criteria that disqualify a candidate.

The organisational requirements, together with the requirements profile for candidates, form the job profile. It is the basis for successful recruitment and for targeted employee development.

Comparing the requirements profile with the candidate profile provides reliable information about how suitable candidates are for the position to be filled. Three levels are set against each other: the job description as a function description, the requirements profile for the person in the function, and the candidate profile, which shows what a candidate has to offer.

The fit is checked separately for each of the four components: for personality, for competence, for the particular requirements regarding experience and qualifications, and for the knockout criteria.

A special feature of the requirements profile is the valid personality profile. Alongside professional qualifications, the personality profile of employees is above all essential.

In many selection processes, professional qualifications are the sole focus. However, a candidate’s personality profile is also a criterion for success within a function. Personality structure has a decisive influence on the success of employees, both within their function and in the organisation in general. Candidates often fail because of their behaviour and less often because of a lack of professional qualifications.

The personality profile in the requirements profile is based on the five-factor model of personality. The five factors are openness to experience, emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. In addition, potential, risk factors and motivational structure are considered. The same variables are later measured in the candidate profile, so that both profiles are comparable.

The personality profile is created taking the organisation-specific requirements into account and then validated. The greater the match between the candidate profile and the validated personality profile, the higher the chances of successful performance in the function to be filled.

To determine the valid personality profile for the position to be filled, the organisational requirements already worked out in the function description are used.

Reliable results on the specific requirements of a position are provided by the Job Evaluation Tool, JET for short. For this purpose, experts who are well able to assess the function are invited. They assess four aspects: the characteristics of the work, the way the work is carried out, the competencies required for the work and the performance barriers. Future changes must also be taken into account.

On the basis of the survey results, the raw scores for the personality profile are determined. Validation then follows. Two different methods can be used for this: validity generalisation and criterion-related validation.

In validity generalisation, personality profiles are compared with high performers from companies that place similar requirements on a comparable function. This requires robust data, which is available in a worldwide research archive.

In criterion-related validation, the personality profile of high performers in the organisation itself is determined first. On the basis of these values, the specific personality profile for a position is then validated.

This produces valid personality profiles. They allow well-founded statements about the personality traits required for high performance.

The requirements profile is matched against applicants whose personality profile does or does not fit a function and a company. To establish this reliably, candidates in the transformis recruitment process are invited to an online assessment.

Participants answer questions online about their preferences, attitudes and ways of working. From this, a personality profile with three aspects is derived.

The first aspect is potential. It describes what others see when the person is at their best. The second aspect is motivators. They show which values and interests guide the person’s actions. The third aspect is risks. They describe what others see when the person comes under stress.

The candidate profile obtained in this way is set against the validated personality profile of the position. The comparison shows the degree of fit between organisational requirements and candidate profile.

It also shows which opportunities and which risks are associated with a candidate. The selection decision is thus based on more than the CV and the impression from the interview: it takes into account how a person comes across at their best, what drives them and how they behave under pressure.

The route to company-specific, valid requirement profiles runs through three steps: the function description, the personal requirement profiles and the assessment of candidates.

The first step is the function description. As preparatory work, the functions to be described are identified. A company-specific catalogue of questions is then agreed for all functions. The questions are answered for every function together with the line managers and the HR department. The result is the function description. A half-day working meeting is planned per function.

The second step leads to the personal requirement profiles. First, people who can assess the position well are identified. They are invited and briefed and take part in a standardised online survey lasting about 45 minutes. From this, the personality profile, motivators and knockout criteria relevant to the function are derived. A validation study concludes the step. The result is valid requirement profiles.

The third step is the assessment of candidates. As preparatory work, an evaluation tool is built that matches the personal requirements in terms of personality, motivators and knockout criteria against the candidates' profiles. CVs are matched against the requirements for professional competencies.

Promising candidates receive a link to three online tests that describe their personality. About 60 minutes should be allowed for the tests. They produce three reports on personality, knockout criteria and motivators.

Finally, the candidate profile is matched against the personal requirement profile of the position. The result is a recommendation on whether a candidate is suitable or not.

If an organisation has valid personality profiles for key functions, the likelihood of identifying the right candidates can be increased substantially.

The approach extends the range of observation and assessment beyond professional competence alone. This makes it possible to match the fit between the organisational requirements and the personality traits of candidates.

Besides a higher success rate in filling positions and in people development, the costs caused by wrong decisions in personnel selection can also be demonstrably reduced.

On the basis of the insights gained, targeted people development can also be built up. It ensures that employees receive the right development measures, taking their personal development opportunities into account.

This increases the chances of giving the company a people development that can significantly raise the performance of managers and employees. The job profile thus serves twice: first as the yardstick for selection and then as the reference point for developing the people who fill the function.