Those who have been with the same company for a long time have probably seen a parade of people come and go during their tenure. Some get hired, find their niche, and become top producers. Others stay a few months and then disappear.

The ones that don’t stay long should be a concern to their employers because it takes time and money to find, hire, and train their replacements. Yet companies routinely bring people on board without attempting to assess whether or not they’ll be a valuable addition to the staff.

It would be nice to know before an offer is made whether or not the candidate is a good fit for the job and the company. It would be nice to know which current employees are most likely to make good managers. And for employees who have just never found their niche, it would be nice to know what they should be when they grow up.

The Caliper Profile

There are companies that offer personality assessment tools for just these reasons. One is Caliper, an international management consulting firm based in Princeton, N.J. The company was founded in 1961 and has assessed more than 2.5 million employees for 28,000 companies around the world.

Founder Herb Greenberg, Ph.D., said his motivation for starting the company and developing the assessment, the Caliper Profile, was a series of studies he’d been involved in during an earlier academic career that indicated that, by and large, very few people actually liked their jobs. “If you put all the studies together, something like 30% of the people hated their jobs,” Greenberg said, “For another 50%, it was just a paycheck. That left only about 20% who genuinely loved the job they were doing.”

He and his colleagues also did work that resulted in a book titled “Succeed on Your Own Terms.” Based on that research, the authors concluded that “the only people who make it to the top of their game are people who love their work,” he said. “That means the rest of us have staggered through 40 years of mediocrity and maybe gotten a gold watch and a sigh of relief from our managers—thank God he or she is gone.”

Coupled with this discovery was another equally disturbing trend. Greenberg said that during his academic career an insurance company asked for a literature review to determine what, if anything, could be done to predict sales success. “They were losing about 60% of their agents in the first year and about 90% in three years,” he said. “It was a revolving door. Anything that could even save 10% would be good.”

Finding nothing in the literature, Greenberg and his colleagues designed their own study, which helped lay the foundation for the Caliper Profile, which is now used to assess individuals for any position within any industry. “We quickly found that we could measure sales success, but it was very difficult to determine if someone could sell and if they could sell for your company,” he said. “The choice between big ticket and small ticket, tangible and intangible, wholesale or retail, made a big difference.”

Without this type of barometer, very costly mistakes were being made in hiring sales people. Greenberg said that 55% of people in the sales force “totally lack the dynamics” for the job today. Another 20 to 25% have the right dynamics but are selling the wrong product.

“This leaves about 20% who have the right dynamics and are in the right jobs,” he said. “And they’re invariably the same people who sell 80% of what is sold.”

Taking the time to get it right

What the tool does not do is assess skillsets particular for a job. For instance, there is no way to determine whether or not someone has the training to be a good petroleum engineer.

What it does do is assess personality, drive, motivation, leadership ability — the intangible skills and assets that separate good employees from mediocre employees. “The client company will know whether this person has the knowledge base required,” Greenberg said. “What they don’t know, however, is can this person manage petroleum engineers? Can this person be involved in marketing if you need him or her to be?”

In one client company, Caliper tested 35 IT professionals to see which were qualified for management positions. “Of the 35 high-potential technology professionals, only four had management ability,” he said. “That didn’t surprise us, but it surprised the company.”

The test is fairly straightforward. A candidate is given a log-in and asked to page through several screens gauging his or her response to a set of statements. “I would rather work alone than in a group or team” might be a typical statement. For each set of statements candidates select the one they most agree with and the one they least agree with.

There is also a section on pattern recognition which measures general cognitive ability.

Once the survey is complete (it typically takes a little over an hour), the results are collated, and the candidate makes an appointment to go over the results. Prior to the reading of results, Caliper representatives also work closely with potential employers to understand the needs and requirements of the position. The company will also follow up to be sure things are working out once the candidate is hired.

Additionally, Caliper conducts 360 evaluations to assess a team and how team members are interacting. None of this is cost-prohibitive, Greenberg said. “Everything doesn’t need to cost a fortune,” he said. “But it costs them a fortune to hire the wrong person.”