The simple answer is no. The job does not make the person nor vice versa. People don’t change. If we each look back at the results of profile testing over the course of our careers, we’d find that to be true – we haven’t changed.
What is true is that the workplace is “theater”. While people don’t change, they do adapt. The typical recruiting or advancement questions are focused on how well a person will fill a particular role on the corporate stage – in what “Act” and in what “Scene”.
You might snicker but consider the array of business school seminars directed at “Professional Image” makeovers that aim to groom a person for “going on stage”. They don’t call them “Charm Schools” without reason.
Validated pre-employment and promotional fit testing is a slippery slope. There is an increasing reliance on both. If only the selection process was that simple – sit a person in front of a touch screen to poke away and let the artificial intelligence embedded in the software do your work.
There is one “scene” that has to be accounted for – how will a person respond when a “shitstorm” hits the “Corporate Kabuki Theater”. I don’t think there is a screening test for that. The bottom-line question is will a person own the organizational vision, pick up the flag and carry it forward in the face of adversity and seemingly overwhelming odds, or will they head for the exits.
Competency is the first pass/fail gate. Then onto “Fit” – is this a person who can and will embrace the vision. Actions are a person’s “voice”. Find the situations where the person being analyzed found themselves in a “predicament” and their actions will “tell” you who they are and what to expect. Fight or flight – throw other people under the bus – have another meeting – hide in the safety of negativity or did they take the risk of being for something and pursue it till it’s over.
The job doesn’t make the person, but how the person takes on the job when the going gets tough tells you who that person is.
