When hiring, you don’t just decide the people who’ll work for your company. You also put in their hands your company’s future. That’s why it’s so important to find employees who will not only do their jobs but is fit for and will succeed in the job. This process of matching a talent’s cognitive abilities, interests, and personality traits for the job is called “job matching”. And job matching may just be the key to your hiring success. But how can you assess job fit or job match to find the right employee?

 

How to Assess Job Fit or Job Match To Find the Right Employee

If you’ve read our blog post entitled “Job Match: The Key to Hiring Success”, we’ve explained the reason why you should assess job fit or job match using a parable as an example. The moral lesson for this parable is simple: make use of the strengths rather than focusing so much on a talent’s weaknesses. An employee can do so much better in a job that fits their cognitive abilities, interests, and personality traits than in a job that doesn’t.

So, you now know the importance of job fit or job match. But how can you assess it to find the right employee for your organization? Here are some ways to do so!

 

Using Assessments

Assessments have been steadily gaining traction throughout the years. It’s evident in the number of assessments available in the market today. It’s no surprise, that there are also job match and job fit assessments. The good thing about assessments is that it standardizes your process while ensuring that you will get accurate results. Job match or job fit can be hard to measure. After all, it’s not an exact science, and assessing it might be subjective, leading to a biased hiring decision.

Job fit or job match assessments commonly measure performance indicators along with behavioral traits and interests. For example, People Dynamics’ affiliate, the Profiles Asia Pacific, offers the Profile XT® (PXT), an assessment that measures how well an individual fits specific jobs in your organization, uses 20 performance indicators, thinking and reasoning, behavioral traits, and a person’s interests.

Assessments can be taken in a pen-and-paper format or online. Just make sure that those you use are valid and reliable so that you can be certain that they will give you the results you need to see.

 

Ask the right questions

To assess job fit, one of the most common methods is obviously through interviews. Asking the right questions will help you identify if the employee is right for your organization and for the job. Ask about their education and training, experience, interests, values, beliefs, and outlook. Inquire also about their motivations and the environments that they feel they would work the best. Remember that to fully assess job fit, you don’t only consider the job but also your organizational culture to get the total picture of how well they are suited for the position. This blog from Recruitee also tells you 5 job fit questions you can use during your interviews.

 

Conduct reference and background checks

Candidates usually add a section in their resumes for references. Make use of them! It’s one of the important tips for employee pre-screening. While the Republic Act 10173 or the Data Privacy Act of 2012 affected how HR usually conducts background and reference checks, it’s still one of the most reliable ways–with the right questions–to get valuable insights on how a potential employee fits in a certain job or environment.

But, what are the “right” questions? To be honest, that will depend on the candidate and your organization. But, generally, according to a blog from Harver entitled “7 Ways to Assess Organizational Fit”, you should:

  • Try to avoid close-ended questions.
  • Focus on questions that will give you insights on performance, accomplishments, and challenges.
  • Listen carefully so that you could probe further when necessary.
  • Think of reference checks as a way to confirm or refute your assessment of a talent’s job fit.

 

There are a lot of problems an organization may encounter. Hiring the right employees can help you prevent these problems from happening. Assessing job fit or job matching can help you do that. It can also help you improve your company’s performance, engagement, retention, and in turn, increases your profits.