Award winners Anne-Marie Paiement (
center) and Alise Dabdoub (
right) pose with their SIOP Best International Paper Award certificates, accompanied by Aleksanda Luksyte (
left), chair of the international affairs committee and associate professor at the University of Western Australia Business School.
Hogan’s Alise Dabdoub, PhD, and Anne-Marie Paiement, PhD, were recognized last night at the 39th annual Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) conference, in Chicago. Their paper, “Equivalence of Workplace Personality Assessments Across 39 Languages and Dialects,” received the SIOP Best International Paper Award for setting the standards for best practice in international assessment processes.
Selected as the winner from an applicant pool of more than 1,000 submissions, the paper highlights the accuracy and validity of Hogan’s assessments across cultures by addressing the challenges of cross-cultural assessment in a globalized world.
A key takeaway from this study is the importance of establishing a strong foundation of standardized translation processes. It recognizes that, in practice, language and cultural nuances may sometimes make it difficult to create accurate translations.
Hogan’s solution involves leveraging the cultural and linguistic expertise of translators whose nuanced work is sense-checked through “reverse translation” and pilot testing before approval. This allows the personality constructs to be measured consistently across cultures, holding universal relevance.
Alise Dabdoub, PhD, director of product innovation and coauthor of the paper, commented: “What this means in practical terms is that if we were hiring someone for a role and the job candidates were from all different countries and took the assessments in all different languages, it would be fair to compare their scores to decide who to select for the job. The assessments are universally relevant across cultural and linguistic differences.”
Workplace competition is universal. The workplaces themselves aren’t the cause of why we compete at work, though. People are the common factor in all work environments everywhere. Something fundamental exists in human nature that motivates us to compete.
Competition in the workplace can produce outcomes that are positive, negative, or a complex mixture. The desire to get ahead of others can carry us to unparalleled heights of innovation, productivity, and success. Yet it can destroy the reputations of individuals, teams, and organizations. And it can do both simultaneously.
Robert Hogan, PhD, founder and president of Hogan Assessments, says that people have always competed for power, defined as status and the control of resources. Today, much of that competition takes place not in nomadic groups seeking subsistence but in the professional context of businesses and organizations. “The fundamental dynamic of organizational life is the individual search for power,” Dr. Hogan said. Understanding why we compete at work can help us direct our innate drive to succeed.
Read on to discover why we compete, the types of workplace competition, and what makes a competitive personality.
Why People Compete
To understand workplace competition, we need to look far backward in human history. Evolutionary theory can help explain why people compete. “The bottom line in evolutionary theory is something called fitness. Fitness is the number of progeny you leave behind,” Dr. Hogan said. Number of offspring is directly correlated to status and resources—that is, power. Our need for power, then, is associated with our very survival. Competition is created by people seeking to gain part of a limited supply of status and resources.
Competition is just one of three fundamental human motivations. According to socioanalytic theory, which is a perspective on psychology that stems from evolutionary theory, humans are group-living beings with behavior guided by three universal motives.1 Humans are motivated by (1) getting ahead, (2) getting along, and (3) finding meaning. These universal motives also go by the names of competition, cooperation, and worldview.
The definition of getting ahead is competition for power. Humans want the highest status and the control of the most resources. In most societies, power looks different now than it did hundreds of generations ago. Drive for status has shifted from achieving physical dominance over others to advancing in social class and interpersonal influence. Drive for control of resources has shifted from obtaining the largest portion of food for our offspring to identifying ways to manage our immediate environmental comforts. While the nature of our work and the outcomes of our competition have changed over time, they are still shaped by the same universal motives.2
Types of Workplace Competition
Workplace competition can be quite complicated. Socioanalytic theory tells us that competition occurs on individual, team, and organizational levels. Individuals compete within groups for power, and groups compete with other groups for survival. (Historically, group survival meant life or death due to warfare. In a business context today, survival typically refers to continued operations, as opposed to bankruptcy or closure.) Individual differences determine the type and degree of power we compete for and the strategies we use to seek it. Those who recognize why people compete at work can become more effective at managing their own performance and influencing others. Organizational success and survival depend on employees who harness their competitive drive for the benefit of the organization.
Internal Competition
Internal competition means competition between members of the same group. Getting ahead within a group can be productive or obstructive, depending on many factors that affect the outcome of the competition.
To put this into context, suppose a pharmaceutical company’s director of business development wants to encourage a regional team of business development representatives (BDRs) to drive for results. The leader might encourage the BDRs to compete to earn rewards for securing new opportunities for the company. Ultimately, team competitions like this can encourage initiative, incentivize creative thinking, and increase productivity.
Poor management of the team’s competitive culture could compromise productivity, however. If interpersonal problems develop among team members, the team’s competition could actually hinder their performance in comparison to other regional teams—including those employed by other pharmaceutical companies.
External Competition
External competition means competition between two or more different groups. Like internal competition, external competition can have a variety of outcomes. Our hypothetical pharmaceutical company’s regional business development team might compete for distinction with their colleagues on other regional teams. Competition between two teams at the same company could produce innovation in the form of higher quality products and services as the teams pursue excellence. It might also cause excessive tolerance of risk in the push to win, placing too much focus on short-term gains.
External competition can also take the form of organizations competing for markets, revenue, or brand reputation. A leader’s search for power often directs the success or failure of the entire group. Competition on the organizational level recalls Dr. Hogan’s thesis about the individual search for power driving organizational life. “Competition between groups is fierce,” he observed. “The most important problem in human affairs is who can put together an effective group and maintain their group’s viability over time.”
Not everyone wants the same form of power, however. And not everyone attempts to get ahead in the same way. The extent to which we seek power lies in the personality characteristic of ambition.
The Characteristics of a Competitive Personality
Ambition is a personality characteristic measured with the Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI). The HPI assesses the bright side of personality, or the everyday strengths that influence how we present ourselves at our best. Ambition refers to our energy and drive. It measures the degree to which someone seems socially self-confident, leaderlike, competitive, and energetic.
Similar to competition itself, the HPI Ambition scale is intrinsically neither good nor bad. Someone with a low score on the Ambition scale might prefer to belong on a team or lead from behind—effective in many circumstances. Someone with a high score on the Ambition scale might become overfocused on their own advancement or achieving results—ineffective in many circumstances.
Many people, even psychologists, prefer to minimize the fact of ambition. In cultures that value humility or group consensus, admitting you want to get ahead of others might seem tactless, arrogant, or embarrassing. At Hogan, we recognize that getting ahead is an integral part of human nature and can even help predict workplace performance. In roles where getting ahead is a key skill, someone with a competitive personality will tend to do a better job.3
Competition and Values
Why we compete at work is also related to our values. One way to think about the relationship between our ambitions and our values is what we are competing for.
Someone who values commerce might compete to earn a higher salary or larger bonus. A person who values aesthetics might compete to produce the highest quality or most appealing product. Another person who values security might compete to create the most structured, predictable environment. Someone who values recognition might compete to receive public accolades.
Values apply to organizations as well as individuals. An organization with a competitive culture places value on getting ahead. It can compete to achieve different outcomes depending on its overarching values, such as quality, community, or efficiency. The alignment between an individual’s values and their organization’s culture indicates whether their ambitions can be met at work. Someone who values taking risks and testing limits wouldn’t make a good commercial pilot because of the culture of safety necessary in airline transportation. Instead, they might make a successful entrepreneur.
Personality Predicts Performance
Both human nature and unique personality characteristics affect our approach to workplace competition. “It’s biologically ordained,” said Dr. Hogan. “You get hungry. You get sleepy. You want power.”
Scientifically valid personality assessment provides insight into how we are likely to behave. It can reveal how likely we are to compete, what we will likely compete for, and even tactics we are likely to use.
Dr. Hogan says that people are the most dangerous and consequential forces on earth. “Isn’t it worth knowing something about them?” he asks. His rhetorical question challenges us to acknowledge and appreciate getting ahead as a key motive in human affairs and a reason why we compete at work.
References
Hogan, R. (2007). Personality and the Fate of Organizations. Hogan Press.
Hogan, R., & Sherman, R. A. (2020.) Personality Theory and the Nature of Human Nature. Personality and Individual Differences, 152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2019.109561
Hogan, J., & Holland, B. (2003). Using Theory to Evaluate Personality and Job-Performance Relations: A Socioanalytic Perspective. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(1), 100–112. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.1.100f
AI tools based on large language models, such as ChatGPT, are incredibly powerful and have a wide range of useful applications. They can produce rough drafts, summarize key information, and create efficiencies in the workplace. However, I offer here a word of caution about getting assessment advice from ChatGPT or other AI tools.
I recently encountered the following client case. An individual was identified as a rising star in his organization. He completed the Hogan personality assessments as part of the organization’s high potential selection process. But his assessment results were quite different from how he was described by peers. This was unusual because Hogan assessment results are designed to be consistent with peer descriptions. Our consultant asked the individual if he had received any guidance for taking the assessment, and he revealed that he had “asked ChatGPT how to respond to the assessments, in general.” According to the consultant, ChatGPT advised the candidate to “avoid extreme responses” such as “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree.” Unfortunately, this was bad advice—and the individual was not selected for the high potential program.
ChatGPT’s Advice for Responding to Personality Assessments
After hearing this story, I went to ChatGPT (4.0) and gave it the following prompt: “I am taking a personality assessment and want to get a good score for a job. It uses a ‘strongly disagree’ to ‘strongly agree’ rating scale. How should I respond to the items to get a good score?”
ChatGPT gave some general advice, including “The best advice is to be honest and authentic in your responses.” Then, it followed with six specific pieces of advice: (1) Understand the role and company culture, (2) consider the traits often valued across many jobs, (3) reflect on your experience, (4) avoid extreme answers unless you’re certain, (5) be consistent, and (6) practice self-reflection. Note that I’ve emphasized the fourth piece of advice here because it is similar to the client story above. (More on that shortly.)
Regarding the overall advice, I would encourage anyone to understand the role and company culture before taking an assessment—just as I would for an interview—but the rest of the advice is questionable. For example, although it seems sensible to consider traits that are valued across many jobs, most job candidates are applying for one particular job when they are asked to complete personality assessments. In many cases, a specific personality profile is optimal for that job. Trying to look like you can fit any job might mean you don’t fit the one you want.
Furthermore, the assessment advice from ChatGPT warns that many assessments check for inconsistency in responding. Although that is true, taking care to be consistent in responding to an assessment likely means overthinking it. Most people are consistent in their responses without even thinking about it. Overthinking is more likely to yield inconsistent results than simply responding naturally.
Why You Shouldn’t Avoid ‘Extreme’ Answers on Personality Assessments
I want to return to ChatGPT’s fourth piece of advice, which fully reads:
“4. Avoid Extreme Answers Unless You’re Certain: While it might be tempting to answer with “strongly agree” or “strongly disagree” to make your answers stand out, it’s often more nuanced. Unless you feel very strongly and have specific examples to back up such responses, consider whether a slightly more moderate answer might be more accurate and reflective of your true self.”
Overall, this is bad advice. First, it encourages the test taker to overthink each answer, which is a recipe for inaccuracy. Personality assessments usually advise individuals to respond in a way that feels natural to get the most accurate results. Second, personality assessments are often normed, meaning that an individual’s results reflect not only how they responded to the assessments, but how those responses compare to others’ responses. Take, for example, the Hogan Personality Inventory’s Adjustment scale, which contains 37 items, which are the statements or questions to which the test taker responds. If an individual never used the “strongly disagree”or “strongly agree” options, their minimum possible raw score would be 74, and their maximum possible raw score would be 111. Using Hogan’s global norm, these would be 0 and 62 in percentile scores, respectively. In other words, people who might avoid so-called extreme responses, as ChatGPT advises, limit their Adjustment scores to the 62nd percentile or lower.
Now, for many individuals, that may well be accurate. In fact, for some individuals it is certainly the case that they do not strongly agree or strongly disagree with many statements. That’s OK. The assessments and the norms are designed to provide accurate feedback to these individuals. Yet when an individual intentionally distorts their responses in an attempt to “beat” the assessment, it rarely works out in their favor—as the aforementioned client example shows.
This Adjustment example is just one example of how these kinds of test-taking strategies can impact assessments. How the “avoid the extremes” strategy plays out is different for each scale depending on the number of items and the norms. Nevertheless, this example should show that the advice from ChatGPT to avoid extreme responses is not optimal.
Conclusion
ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence tools based on large language models can be amazingly helpful. If you need help outlining an essay, building a resume, or summarizing some information, these tools can provide some assistance. When it comes to factual information or good advice, you are better off using a simple web search or asking an expert. At a minimum, people need to evaluate the advice they receive from an AI tool before accepting it, just as they would evaluate a draft of an email provided by ChatGPT before sending it. And in the case of personality assessments, getting assessment advice from ChatGPT seems to do more harm than good.
This blog was written by Ryne A. Sherman, PhD, Hogan’s chief science officer.
When organizations select a leader, they are making a multiyear investment in development. As leaders prepare to move to higher managerial levels, they need to develop skills to equip them for success in their changing role. The skills of leadership aren’t technical skills such as Scrum, SEO, or SQL. Rather, they are socioemotional skills such as setting vision, building relationships, driving change, and making decisions. These skills evolve with leadership advancement. Experienced talent professionals recognize the importance of leadership development strategies at every managerial level.
Leadership development does not equate solely to executive development. At Hogan, we don’t define leadership by job title but as the ability to build and maintain a high-performing team. Thus, people at every managerial level—from entry-level supervisor to C-suite executive—can benefit from leadership development. As the demands of leadership shift across managerial levels, development objectives should change too.
Sometimes leaders need to develop new skills. Sometimes they need to reduce their use of certain skills. At other times, they need to apply existing skills in new ways. Consider integrity, for example. While integrity is a core skill at all managerial levels, how a leader demonstrates integrity when managing a three-person team looks different from when they are leading an entire business function.
How a leader’s actions appear to others matters. Fostering the development of socioemotional skills in leaders is a long-term process that focuses on reputation. Reputation is related to behavior. With sustained behavioral change, reputation change can occur—a meaningful outcome of leadership development.
Keep reading to learn how similarities and distinctions in the leadership skills required across managerial levels should inform leadership development strategies.
What Are the Managerial Levels?
Broadly, managers are employees with authority over organizational resources. They perform a variety of these tasks: organizing, planning, prioritizing, assigning, and directing work across the organization. Managers at any level succeed or fail based on the accomplishments of the people they lead. If they build and maintain high-performing teams, they’re leaders by Hogan’s definition.
Hogan identifies three managerial levels: (1) entry-level supervisors, (2) middle managers, and (3) executives. Entry-level supervisors manage teams and employees and report to middle managers. Middle managers manage other managers, teams, and employees and report to executives. Executives manage business units and report to stakeholder teams.
The objective differences among the three managerial levels are the positions they manage and the positions to whom they report. However, the functional differences among managerial levels can be considerable. The impact of a leader’s actions increases in breadth and scope as they gain organizational responsibility. For instance, a digital marketing manager, a marketing director, and a chief marketing officer all differ in more than just their job descriptions. The socioemotional skills they need to be successful in their day-to-day tasks of leadership differ too.
Distinctions Between Entry-Level Supervisors, Middle Managers, and Executives
To explore the similarities and distinctions in necessary competencies across managerial levels, Hogan conducted a job analysis. Hundreds of subject-matter experts rated key skills for entry-level supervisors, middle managers, and executives. Then, Hogan data scientists used the results to average, rank, and compare how important each skill is for each job level. The results show that some skills are shared among all managerial levels, some skills overlap, and some are unique.
Shared Skills
Managerial levels share many job skills. Integrity, accountability, decision-making, and teamwork are all examples of shared competencies ranked highly by our subject-matter experts.
When skills are shared across job levels, they tend to differ in scope. Take teamwork, for example. Teamwork for entry-level supervisors involves actively participating in day-to-day tasks. Teamwork for an executive is more remote, requiring the executive to rely on the team’s expertise to accomplish tasks.
The scope of decision-making changes in a similar way. Quinn, as an entry-level supervisor, will likely make frequent, rapid decisions to help individual contributors accomplish tasks. Their decision-making will involve tactics for executing strategy set by others. When Quinn becomes a middle manager, they will make decisions with more strategic impact, given their increased accountability. Reaching the executive level, Quinn will likely make wide-impact, high-stakes decisions about organizational strategy, which will be executed by others. Overall, decision-making evolves gradually from how to implement executives’ vision to how to inspire others.
Overlapping Skills
Data suggest that middle management is a transitional managerial level. The required skills middle managers share with entry-level supervisors are focused on outcomes. The competencies they share with executives are focused on relationships.
Both entry-level supervisors and middle managers need to work hard and overcome obstacles. These speak to the importance of accomplishing tasks. Those who manage frontline employees or individual contributors, whether singly or in groups, likely require more skills related to the job function. For instance, a manager of a team of bank tellers probably relies on their knowledge of customer service to overcome obstacles more often than the regional banking director.
Both middle managers and executives need skills related to widening their network and sphere of influence. Building relationships, building teams, and inspiring others all concern how a leader behaves with other people. Getting along with others at work matters deeply at every managerial level, of course. At higher organizational ranks, however, cooperation becomes even more integral to performance success.
Unique Skills
Subject-matter experts ranked some skills as key only at certain managerial levels. Generally, competencies progress from operational to strategic across managerial levels.
Entry-level supervisors need the skills of dependability, problem-solving, stress management, and time efficiency. Collectively, these skills focus on accomplishing immediate tasks and fulfilling short-term responsibilities. At the executive level, leaders need the skills of driving change and listening to others. These skills emphasize long-term organizational success rather than individual or team success.
Of course, the unique competencies for a given leadership role will also vary based on the organization and its industry.
Leadership Development Strategies Across Managerial Levels
Oftentimes, leadership development strategies are focused mainly or exclusively on executives. Implementing leadership development at an earlier managerial level helps leaders navigate the widening scope of relationships and influence along the path from supervisor to executive. Identifying high potentials for leadership development opportunities at initial positions of management could lower recruitment costs, improve retention, and increase leader effectiveness. Early leadership development allows leaders to build, refine, transform, or expand essential skills in preparation for advancement. Encouraging leadership growth within the organization means facilitating seamless transitions from one level to the next, fostering a culture of continuous learning, and investing in leadership development for long-term success.
Understanding how leadership competencies evolve from one managerial level to the next can help organizations to optimize their leadership development strategies. Nevertheless, it’s important to note that the same approach won’t work for every leader at a given level. Tenure, education, experience, and even exposure to bias are all factors that can shape a leader’s unique development needs. Even for two leaders at the same managerial level, a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work.
This is why data-driven personality assessment is key to executing these goals successfully. Leadership development strategies backed by valid, reliable personality assessment produce measurable outcomes. At every level, Hogan’s assessments provide leaders with awareness of their strengths and limitations as others are likely to perceive them. With 72 quadrillion possible score combinations, Hogan’s assessments enable talent professionals to individualize the leadership development experience for every leader’s unique needs. Personality assessment can also be instrumental to helping leaders build and maintain high-performing teams by facilitating talent acquisition, as well as both team and individual development. Ultimately, personality predicts performance, and understanding how enables organizations to excel.
Your leadership development strategies can—and should—have measurable outcomes.
Deidre Hall, MA, MS, is a talent analytics consultant on the data science team at Hogan Assessments. She conducts research studies to validate customized assessment-based solutions using Hogan tools to help client organizations improve their selection and development processes.
Cody Warren, MA, is a senior consultant on the direct team at Hogan Assessments. He collaborates with clients to address their unique assessment needs and to implement selection, development, and research initiatives.
Our personality can affect our sleep, and our sleep can affect our personality. Given that we spend about one-third of our time asleep, the psychology of sleep may have a greater influence on our well-being than we tend to believe.
Recently on The Science of Personality, Zlatan Krizan, PhD, an award-winning researcher and professor of psychology at Iowa State University, spoke about the psychology of sleep and its relation to personality. How exactly does sleep deprivation affect our physical, mental, and emotional well-being, both personally and professionally?
After experiencing insomnia, Zlatan began to study the neuroscience of sleep. That inspired him to research the intersection of sleep and psychology.
The Psychological Importance of Sleep
Active and rest cycles have always been a universal part of vertebrate consciousness. “Something that perennial must be important. The question is what happens when we don’t do it or we don’t do it well enough,” Zlatan said.
Adults generally need an average of seven to nine hours of sleep per night. Within a sleep episode, we experience repeating 90-minute cycles of rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep. Sleep quality is complex—and so are sleep problems. Interrupted sleep means not getting continuous sleep. Sleep deprivation or restriction means not getting enough sleep. Total sleep deprivation means not getting any sleep.
“Not everybody’s equally sensitive to the impact of sleep disruption. People are not just different in how much and how they sleep, but they’re also different in how well they can withstand consequences of sleep loss,” he explained. Low resistance to sleeplessness can cause social and cognitive disturbances.
Effects of Sleep Disruption
Zlatan listed four aspects of our lives that are particularly sensitive to sleep quality: (1) alertness, (2) mood, (3) executive function, and (4) physical function. Alertness and attentiveness to our surroundings can suffer under sleep disruption. Motor behavior and reaction time slow down, and we may miss environmental stimuli entirely. A dangerous example would be a sleep-deprived airline pilot failing to respond to or even notice birds on the horizon.
Mood alterations are also a consequence of sleep disruption. Loss of energy or enthusiasm, increased irritability or risk tolerance, and even anger and depression can be provoked by sleep disruption. “Sleepy people, to be exact, get cranky,” Zlatan quipped. He also mentioned that sleep disruption affects executive processes, such as comprehension and memory.
Finally, sleep disruption can affect physical health. The cardiovascular system, immune system, digestive system, and many other critical functions rely on sleep to operate at an optimal level. Long-term shift workers, such as healthcare providers, may become chronically sleep deprived. This places them at greater risk of negative health outcomes, including diabetes, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular difficulties, and more.
Personality and Sleep
Sleep is dynamic—arguably more so than personality itself. When we consider how personality impacts sleep, we must think about both sleep quality and sleep pressure. Sleep pressure refers to the perceived need to sleep. For example, the night before an important presentation would come with more sleep pressure than an ordinary night. Ironically, excessive sleep pressure can damage sleep quality.
“The logical connection between personality and how people sleep is their emotional functioning,” Zlatan said. “Emotions can impact and undermine sleep.” When people experience stress and negative emotions before bed, they take longer to fall asleep and sleep for a shorter time. But that’s just the tip of the proverbial iceberg when it comes to personality and sleep. Research suggests that specific dimensions of the five-factor model—emotional stability, extraversion, and conscientiousness—affect sleep.
Emotional Stability
Individuals who have higher intensity or higher frequency of negative emotions may have sleep that is more disrupted. Emotional stability, also called neuroticism, concerns feelings that are volatile, anxious, or depressive. People with low emotional stability who experience negative emotions before bed tend to fall asleep later and wake up more during the night, Zlatan pointed out. They may also feel dissatisfied with their sleep, adding to their sleep pressure.
Zlatan shared his own experience with insomnia. While unable to fall asleep, he worried about sleeping enough to be sharp the next day. The additional anxiety about sleep added to his difficulty in sleeping.
Extraversion
People who are high in extraversion report having better sleep. This trend seems to contradict the stereotype of someone with ambition and drive who prides themselves on sleeping very little. It may be that extraverted people tend to exhibit optimism and simply recall sleeping well. Even if this is the case, the positive affect could help lower sleep pressure, which may actually improve sleep. In fact, Zlatan’s next research project focuses on extraversion and sleep quality association.
Zlatan called sleeping less to improve performance a trade-off. Accomplishing additional tasks instead of sleeping can be good, but eventually performance will suffer. Electing to forgo sleep over a long period of time is rarely the best option from a well-being perspective.
Conscientiousness
Having high conscientiousness, which refers to the tendency to be organized and hardworking, indirectly affects sleep. Conscientious individuals tend to be better at building structure, habit, and routine into their lifestyles, which can provide benefits to sleep. “Conscientious people have much more stable sleep time and wake time,” Zlatan said.
As well as having more consistent sleep, people high in conscientiousness tend to avoid things that harm sleep, such as late-night screen time or alcohol use. “Those indirect pathways in some ways are the most fascinating to explore,” he added.
How to Improve Sleep
Genetics, personality, and other factors largely outside of individual control all affect sleep quality. However, some techniques will help us increase the likelihood of a good night’s sleep. These originate in understanding the circadian rhythm, a 24-hour-long cycle of waking and sleeping.
Consistency in sleep hours, sleep duration, and even mealtimes can support the circadian rhythm and help to prepare the body for sleep many hours before night. Even during sleep deprivation, the circadian rhythm of the body will trigger the wake maintenance zone, which is a brief period in the evening when we feel alert and normal. After we experience this “second wind,” we “crash,” or feel even more tired. Strategic use of wakeful periods can help maximize productivity throughout the day.
Shift workers can protect their circadian rhythms by maintaining consistent habits at intervals of six, 12, or 24 hours whenever possible. Travelers can anticipate and lessen jet lag by deliberately adjusting their circadian rhythms in advance of a time zone change. Insomniacs can lower sleep pressure by tracking their circadian rhythms and compensating for fatigue in healthy ways.
In addition to these higher-level strategies, Zlatan listed some tips that can help people have a better sleep.
Breathing – Heart rate and breathing rate are connected; breathing exercises that elongate the exhalation will also slow down the heartbeat and lower stress.
Positivity – Practicing gratitude interventions can help to generate positive emotions before sleeping.
Planning – A mind dump in the form of a to-do list for tomorrow can address some of the short-term anxieties that can interrupt our attempts to fall asleep.
Oh, and avoiding screens before bed almost goes without saying. “The first thing is to do is to not engage with the algorithms whose sole purpose is to have you not go to sleep,” Zlatan said.
Listen to this conversation in full on episode 95 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!
“Humble leaders create engagement,” said Robert Hogan, PhD, founder and president of Hogan Assessments.
Humility is a complex characteristic to translate into behavior. Sometimes the word humility is even used as a generalization for meekness or deference. Instead of humility, most people are likely to think of charisma as an essential trait in engaging leaders. Although charismatic people may often sit in leadership roles, humble people are more effective at the task of leading.1
Humble leaders create engagement by building trust with others through their actions. By drawing a clear line linking humility and engagement, Dr. Hogan underscored the importance of leader behavior and employee trust. It takes a humble person to build and maintain a high-performing team—someone who listens to feedback, shares credit, takes responsibility, and focuses on advancing organizational goals, rather than personal goals.
Read on to learn more about the connection between humility and coachability, why trust is a pillar of engagement, and how leaders can develop humility.
What Is Humility?
Humility is an aspect of personality that concerns whether a person is likely to accept feedback and learn from mistakes.
Coachability
How we tend to respond to growth and learning experiences affects how others interpret our behavior. People who seem self-accepting, kind, and modest about their work are viewed as humble. In contrast, people who seem overly self-confident, stubborn, and unwilling to acknowledge their faults are viewed as arrogant. Put another way, humility relates to feedback receptivity, and arrogance relates to feedback resistance.
Dr. Hogan describes the feedback component of humility as coachability. “Humility is all about being coachable. It’s about being able to admit you made a mistake and learn from experience,” he said. The highest-performing athletes are not only talented. They are also willing to listen to feedback and refine their performance. Unsurprisingly, the highest-performing leaders show the same qualities: talent and coachability.
Self-Confidence
Humility is different from weakness or low self-confidence. Humble people tend to acknowledge their limitations, spotlight others’ contributions, and listen to and learn from others. Their egalitarian values make them likely to consider alternate viewpoints, which can result in better decision-making. Their awareness of their limits makes them likely to delegate successfully.
“Humility is not about lacking self-confidence,” said Dr. Hogan. “Self-confident and humble is the proper combination for effective leadership.”
Humble leaders often demonstrate unassuming confidence, show assertiveness, and set forth a clear vision for the organization. More than 15 years of research about effective business leaders show that they combine “extreme personal humility with intense professional will.”2 Such leaders are driven to improve performance, both theirs and their teams’. They exert their energy on behalf of the group, not for their individual gain. This behavior earns trust.
“People who seem humble are also trustworthy,” Dr. Hogan said. Trust, however, seems to be a scarce commodity in the workplace. In the US, only 21 percent of employees strongly agree that they trust the leadership of their organization.3 Anecdotally, 65 to 75 percent of leaders fail, suggesting that comparatively few leaders demonstrate humility.1 “Humble leaders listen to feedback, admit their mistakes, and delegate properly—and that creates engagement. Trust is the principal factor in engagement,” he continued.
Globally, only 23 percent of employees are engaged at work.4 “When engagement’s up, all the good things happen; when engagement’s down, all the bad things happen,” Dr. Hogan quipped. He called engagement a critical factor in team productivity, as well as an accurate predictor of significant business outcomes. Engagement is certainly tied to revenue; the low engagement or active disengagement of 77 percent of global workers costs the global economy an estimated 8.8 trillion US dollars.4
Organizations that value charisma above capability often overlook their most effective leaders. Some of the most wildly successful CEOs of all time were “modest and humble, as opposed to self-dramatizing and self-promoting.”1 Leading with humility yields intrapersonal, interpersonal, and organizational profits, as reflected in the stock prices of companies led by humble people.2
How Leaders Can Develop Humility
Humble leaders seek feedback and continual improvement. “Humility allows leaders to stop making repeatable mistakes,” said Dr. Hogan.
Leadership development goals that focus on building humility include acknowledging mistakes and asking for and listening to feedback. Actively recognizing others’ achievements, understanding one’s own limitations, and monitoring self-promoting behaviors are also extremely important. A qualified Hogan coach can be an invaluable asset to a leader who is working to earn trust from others.
“The first step for a leader to develop humility is to acknowledge that you’re not very humble. You need to understand that without it, you’re going to fail,” Dr. Hogan said. Someone who utterly refuses to learn from experience will likely develop a reputation for poor judgment and have difficulty retaining followers.
The actions of humble leaders are focused outward. Humble leaders seek to improve team performance, not just individual performance. They channel their ambition back into the organization, rather than toward themselves. They build a culture of psychological safety based on trust, openness, and recognition. And by modeling behavior, they foster a culture of development and encourage learning and growth.
Who is likely to invest in the stock market? Who is likely to invest most successfully? Investor personality can provide insight about what kind of investments a person is likely to make.
World-renowned psychologist Adrian Furnham, PhD, professor at BI Norwegian Business School, recently joined our podcast, The Science of Personality, to speak about his latest research on investor personality.1
“Does personality influence partaking in the stock market? Yes,” Adrian said. “Is it mediated through a number of other factors? That will help us unpack when and why and how personality has an impact on stock market participation.”
Read on to learn more about how investor personality affects investment decisions, the personality characteristics of successful and unsuccessful investors, and who makes an ideal financial advisor.
How Investor Personality Affects Investment Decisions
Adrian has a longstanding research interest in people’s attitudes about money and use of money. Personality characteristics can affect financial literacy, which is the knowledge and skill associated with managing money.
While propensity for risk is an important psychological variable, financial literacy has many other factors. Recently, Adrian asked this research question: what are the demographic and personality variables that predict if people make stock market investments?
The Demographics of Stock Market Investors
Data from approximately 1,500 adults indicate four demographic variables that describe people who invest in the stock market: (1) sex, (2) age, (3) education, and (4) wealth. “A very large percentage of those who took part in the stock market were men,” Adrian said.
“It’s a big bias towards this particular group of educated, middle-aged, slightly wealthy, predominantly male people,” Adrian observed. From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, the prevalence of men among those who play the stock market could be explained by the exciting and addictive nature of investment. Whether they regard investing exclusively as recreation or a form of fun to grow their wealth, they probably choose to invest because they enjoy it.
The Personality of Stock Market Investors
Adrian’s research also yielded personality correlates of playing the stock market. Using Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) terms, he described the profile of an investor personality:
High Adjustment – confident and likely to tolerate failure
High Ambition – motivated to compete against others
Low Interpersonal Sensitivity – direct and tough
High Prudence – likely to make organized, careful plans
High Inquisitive – curious and interested in research
“When you put these variables together, you could come up with a reasonable prediction of the people who will take part in the stock market and, in fact, the people who are more likely to succeed,” Adrian explained.
Characteristics of Successful Investors
The more financial literacy, capability, and knowledge someone has, the better they tend to perform in the stock market. Yet random chance and luck are part of investment. Unpredictable events can and do occur. Thus, a successful investor personality will also have a high tolerance for ambiguity.
Another characteristic beneficial to investors is a moderate sense of caution. Someone who is highly cautious might decide that stock market investment carries too much risk. Someone who is not cautious might seek a different form of investment, such as one with quicker rewards.
In the same way, a moderate amount of conscientiousness can predict how someone might invest in the stock market. Somewhat more conscientious people may opt for index funds, while somewhat less conscientious people might prefer to select their own stocks or trade more frequently.
Values and Investor Personality
Values affect whether we are likely to invest. Personality predicts attitudes toward money, and attitudes toward money are moderator variables for investments in the stock market. “If I see money as security, I’m less likely to take part in the stock market,” Adrian said. “If I see money as a way to power, I’m more so.”
Values also affect what stocks we are likely to invest in. Many people choose to invest in companies whose mission they simply want to support. Predictions about which products and companies are going to succeed will seem more persuasive to someone who already agrees with the brand’s values. “You’ve got not only whether this company is going to make money in the short term or the long term but also to what extent it fulfills your personal definition of ethics,” Adrian pointed out.
Characteristics of Unsuccessful Investors
Some variables in investor personality might make someone likely to participate in the stock market but also likely to be unsuccessful. One such characteristic is naïve optimism, or gullibility. Someone who believes they have special insight or luck might invest, continue to invest, or be persuaded to invest poorly.
Another attribute that can cause an investor to fail at the stock market is having a view that is too short-term. The stock market tends to reward delayed gratification. “It’s a long game. There can be ups and downs. You look for trends over time,” Adrian pointed out, joking that he considers himself too impulsive and impatient to be successful at taking part in the stock market.
Regarding the HPI Adjustment scale, attitudes toward success and failure also influence whether someone is likely to persist in investing. Adjustment measures resilience, the degree to which a person seems confident, self-accepting, and stable under pressure. Someone with a lower Adjustment score may become frustrated with failure and seek a less challenging endeavor. Someone with a higher Adjustment score is more likely to maintain effort during setbacks and remain self-confident. They tend to forget mistakes and remember victories.
Personality Characteristics of Financial Advisors
To those considering investing in the stock market for the first time, Adrian suggested focusing on certain personality characteristics when choosing a financial advisor. He offered key considerations in terms of HPI scales: Adjustment can indicate how people tolerate stress. Interpersonal Sensitivity can indicate how well they work with others and perform on a team. Prudence can indicate how methodically they approach making financial plans. Inquisitive can indicate whether they are curious and make informed decisions.
“You want people who react well to success and failure,” he said. “They’re prepared to put in the hard work and the analysis. They are inquisitive and open to all sorts of new opportunities and changes in this world. They have the ability to deal with others who they use for their decision-making.”
Listen to this conversation in full on episode 94 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!
Reference
Furnham, A., Cuppello, S., & Fenton-O’Creevy, M. (2024). Correlates of Stock Market Investment. Journal of Neuroscience, Psychology, and Economics. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/npe0000189
The entrepreneurial economy may feel like a new frontier, but it may have a dark side.
Peter Harms, PhD, professor of management at the University of Alabama’s Culverhouse College of Business, was a recent guest on the Science of Personality podcast. He spoke about two trends: (1) the shift toward an entrepreneurial economy and (2) the increase in mental health disorders. Peter discussed some of his recent research about how the entrepreneurial economy may have a dark side for mental health, particularly for younger generations.1
“Are there generational changes that might intersect with dark personality to predict how future generations are going to interact with the workforce?” Peter asked.
Keep reading to learn about the characteristics of the entrepreneurial economy, how it might bring out dark personality, and potential effects on talent and organizations.
The Growth of the Entrepreneurial Economy
As technology causes the economy to shift and evolve, business scholars have observed that the world of work is becoming more entrepreneurial. The characteristics that help entrepreneurs succeed are also increasing in nontraditional work settings, such as the digital environment.
Peter brought his longstanding interest in dark-side traits to the entrepreneurial economy to explore the organizational effects of mental health disorders in our new global workplaces. But first, he acknowledged that so-called “gig” workers are a huge group of people with many different motivations and reasons for holding gig jobs.
A Catalyst for the Entrepreneurial Economy
The COVID-19 pandemic catalyzed the emergence of the entrepreneurial economy. Some people actively sought remote work, while others seemed to be forced into it. The rising prevalence of workplace alternatives since 2020 has made both workers and organizations reconsider where and how work should take place.
That evolution had negative effects on mental health, however. The pandemic has been associated with stress and trauma for many: loneliness, isolation, grief, and thoughts of suicide.
A Definition of the Entrepreneurial Economy
According to Peter, the entrepreneurial economy breaks conventional expectations of what makes a workplace in four ways:
Remote or hybrid work
Freelance employment
Digital settings
Cryptocurrency
The entrepreneurial economy includes content creation, social media influencer work, crowdfunding, cryptocurrency, gig work, and many other forms of self-employment or independent employment. Working with tech assistance from the office, home, coffee shop, lobby, vehicle, or a combination of locations also characterizes this category of work.
“People who are using the digital space like a new work environment . . . it’s like being an entrepreneur in the digital space,” Peter said.
Dark Personality and the Entrepreneurial Economy
Mental health issues and personality disorders seem to be on the rise. Self-reports of mental health disorders have recently increased, particularly among younger people. Younger people appear to be more willing to seek therapy or other mental health support, compared to older people.
In Hogan terms, dark-side behaviors originate from strengths that can become overused when a person is not self-regulating. These behaviors can negatively impact work performance. In an entrepreneurial economy, where work tends to be self-directed or discretionary, dark-side behaviors can manifest. Shifts in technology have increased workers’ autonomy, which means that the dark side may have even more influence on the behaviors we see at work.
Peter observed that increased power and autonomy don’t change someone’s personality, but discretion can help to reveal the dark side of it.2 “With less constraints, less filters on you, who you are tends to emerge,” he added.
What Is Dark Personality?
Dark personality traits aren’t limited to the Dark Triad‘s narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) is a nonclinical measure of the dark side of personality, which consists of 11 characteristics that tend to emerge when people are under stress or pressure. These behaviors are called derailers because they can impede workplace success.
Peter emphasized the importance of nuance in exploring how dark-side behaviors can affect workers in the entrepreneurial economy. Someone who enjoys taking risks (i.e., someone who scores high on the HDS Mischievous scale) might want to become involved in crypto or blockchain. Someone who is privately passive-resistant (i.e., scoring high on HDS Leisurely) might be attracted to roles with little supervision or pressure for productivity.
“The technology is opening the door, and it’s the dark personality that’ll help us understand how people react,” Peter said.
Generational Differences in Dark Personality
Some dark traits seem to be more prevalent among younger generations. Young people are medicated for mental health disorders at a much higher rate than in the past. However, it’s unclear whether the symptoms themselves are more prevalent or whether young people are more likely to seek out treatment.
Peter mentioned some possible contributing factors to derailing behavior in younger people. One is increased awareness and acceptance of mental health disorders. Social media often presents mental illness as being commonplace.
Another is that younger people demonstrate a greater likelihood of taking risks, including creative or innovative risks that characterize entrepreneurship. While older people tend to develop a more conservative attitude toward risk, younger people can be willing to stake their livelihoods on an idea or suddenly pivot into a new career.
Finally, younger people have higher scores on the HDS on average. As people age, their derailers tend to become somewhat more moderate; their derailers become tempered by experience. On average, most working adults tend to have one or two elevated scores across the 11 scales.
How the Entrepreneurial Economy Impacts Organizations
The pandemic made many organizations realize the need for flexibility and adaptability. The convergence of the growing entrepreneurial economy and the rise in mental health issues have also challenged organizations to rethink what the workplace looks like.
“The fact that these two things are crashing together—the changes brought about by technology and the pandemic with the trauma associated with it—it’s making organizations rethink the way that they are going to conduct business,” Peter said.
Changes in employee attitudes have also affected organizations. “It’s given us time to think about what work is, what work should be, and how we want to work,” Peter said. As early-career employees explore their values and assert their expectations for well-being, organizations are showing more concern with investment in psychological resources. Peter’s university, for example, announced it would provide a mental health therapist as a dedicated resource for business school faculty, staff, and students. This emphasis on individual needs and preferences as a consideration in recruitment and retention is likely to continue.
The Wild West
Peter used the metaphor of the Wild West to describe the emerging entrepreneurial economy.1 He suggested that dark personality traits will continue to attract young people to nontraditional workplaces. “This new dynamic, this adaptable, open, unregulated, high-autonomy, high-discretion workplace, is going to attract people with dark traits,” he said.
People with certain dark traits might believe they are better suited to roles such as social media influencer or settings that allow them to work anywhere and anytime. However, their dark-side behaviors could still affect their performance at work. “Whether they’re going to be more successful in an unregulated environment? They might be, or they might not,” Peter said.
Listen to this conversation in full on episode 93 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!
References
Harms, P. D., White, J. V., & Fezzey, T. (2024, January). Dark Clouds on the Horizon: Dark Personality Traits and the Frontiers of the Entrepreneurial Economy. Journal of Business Research, 171. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2023.114364
Kaiser, R. B., & Hogan, R. (2007). The Dark Side of Discretion: Leader Personality and Organizational Decline. In Hooijberg, R., Hunt, J. G., Antonakis, J., Boal, K. B., & Lane, N. (Eds.) Being There Even When You Are Not (pp. 173-193). Emerald Group Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1479-3571(07)04009-6
A pilot shortage is currently affecting the aviation industry—and more open jobs are on the horizon. Within just two years, the pilot shortage could range from 35,000 to 50,000 open jobs.1 Within two decades, approximately 650,000 new pilots will be needed to fill global vacancies.2 Using pilot personality data in talent acquisition and talent development is an essential and impactful first step in overcoming the pilot shortage.
Causes of the Pilot Shortage
Pilot job openings and pilot job requirements are two of the primary causes of the looming pilot shortage. More than 60 percent of today’s US commercial pilots will face mandatory retirement within the next 20 years, creating significant pilot job openings.2 Others are leaving the aviation industry altogether because of disruptions related to economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While domestic air travel matches pre-pandemic demand and global air travel is expected to catch up soon,2 air cargo demand has fallen sharply and may continue to drop.3
Furthermore, requirements to become a pilot are stringent. Commercial pilots for regional or national airlines typically need to hold a bachelor’s degree, earn four successive pilot licenses, meet physical and flight-hour requirements, and demonstrate prior experience.4 The time, cost, experience, and technical skill required to enter this field are considerable barriers to new pilots.
Regional airlines seem to be most heavily impacted at present. Eighty-three percent of regional airlines are experiencing talent recruitment challenges.1 This may be because national carriers tend to attract more pilot talent; regional airlines have reduced flights in response to the COVID-19 pandemic; and some pilots are exiting the industry early.
Not only can it be difficult to find pilot talent, but it can be exceptionally difficult to find quality pilot talent. Using personality assessments can help address the pilot shortage by identifying potential pilots who are likely to be successful, as well as current pilots who perform well or need development.
Pilot Personality Characteristics
With the world’s largest database of research into the relationship between personality and job performance, Hogan can predict performance for nearly any job—including that of a pilot. In such a high-stakes job, personality can mark the difference between safety and tragedy.
In brief, necessary pilot job tasks include identifying and categorizing information, making decisions, monitoring processes, ensuring compliance with standards, and operating aircraft vehicles and equipment.5 Pilot ability and competence in these work activities derives from personality tendencies enhanced by training.
Personality assessment data benefit organizations by lowering recruiting costs, preventing accidents, and improving retention, engagement, and productivity. More specifically, pilot personality data help aviation organizations identify, select, and develop safety-conscious pilots.
Assessing personality can ensure that both airlines and flight schools select and train the best pilots. Personality data could also help reduce or replace some unnecessarily restrictive pilot criteria, such as flight program entry requirements, bachelor’s degrees, or number of flight hours before licensure.6 Increased screening for flight students, for example, would ensure that limited training resources were allocated to pilots most likely to succeed and continue in the industry.
The Pilot Performance Profile
Hogan began developing the Pilot Performance Profile, a tool to predict pilot performance, in 2015. Using personality and performance data from a sample of more than 1,000 pilots from 13 airlines across the US, Europe, Middle East, and Asia, Hogan designed the profile to report on the core competencies of effective pilots. To ensure that the profile could aid in hiring, developing, and training pilots globally, Hogan aligned the profile with the International Civil Aviation Organization competency model.
The Pilot Performance Profile can help improve aviation safety, ensure effective pilot performance, and address the pilot shortage. Useful for both talent acquisition and talent development, the report features five recommendation levels based on an individual’s percentile scores across its seven competencies.
Hogan Pilot Performance Profile Competencies
The competencies in the Pilot Performance Profile are based on the Hogan Personality Inventory, which describes seven everyday personality characteristics, and the Hogan Development Survey, which describes 11 potential performance challenges, or derailers. Together, the results of these inventories provide insight into how a pilot is likely to perform at their best and the shortcomings that may arise during times of stress, pressure, or complacency.
These are the seven competencies of an successful pilot:
Following Procedure – applies knowledge of regulations and operating instructions to perform tasks in a reliable manner and avoid unnecessary risks
Communication – communicates clearly and listens actively to ensure mutual understanding with others
Leadership – provides direction, delivers and receives feedback, and drives crew performance to facilitate safety and manage conflict
Teamwork – facilitates an engaging and constructive team environment focused on accountability and mutual respect
Problem-Solving and Decision-Making – leverages available resources to evaluate problems, identify solutions, and execute a plan of action without compromising safety
Vigilance – maintains awareness of the aircraft, its environment, and people to recognize and address potential threats
Work Perseverance – demonstrates self-control and a thorough approach to overcome obstacles and complete operational tasks
How Hogan Helps: Case Studies
The two following case studies demonstrate how Hogan helped two airline companies. The first case study shows how personality assessment data can contribute to a safety culture, and the second shows how it can improve talent acquisition.
Improving the Climate of Safety
An airline company asked Hogan to help evaluate the safety climate for its pilots. The airline wanted to improve safety-related behavior in the workplace. We surveyed employees to evaluate pilots’ safety awareness and areas for improvement.
In the survey, pilots rated their company’s trust and morale high. This indicates that the airline does not tend to put others at risk or cut corners that compromise safety. However, the pilots also rated their company’s safety attitudes and culture of safety as low. This indicates the airline could improve safety by ensuring transparent communication, being strategic about hiring, and valuing safety over production.
Selecting High-Performing Pilots
An airline company asked Hogan to evaluate its selection process for pilot candidates. The airline faced a growing demand for service and sought to increase the number of flights on its schedule. We measured job performance among incumbent pilots using supervisor performance ratings. Then, we collected assessment data to provide the airline with a more targeted approach to select high-performing pilots.
The return on investment of the Pilot Performance Profile is significant. Pilots whose personality scores aligned with the profile were 3.8 times more likely to be rated as high performers compared to those with scores that did not align with the profile.
Our research shows that by using the Pilot Performance Profile, airlines can expect to see a 22 percent improvement in overall selection accuracy, selecting 11 percent more good hires and avoiding 11 percent more bad hires.
As concerning as the pilot shortage is, we know that pilot personality data can help. Personality assessment at any stage of the pilot job can save precious time and resources to get skilled, safety-conscious people into the pilot’s seat.
Want to learn more about the Pilot Performance Profile?
Many global executives understand how crucial it is to have a skills-based hiring strategy grounded in data to thrive in this digital world. However, most organizations don’t have the right data required to make well-informed skills-based talent decisions.
Erin Lazarus, MS, senior director of business development at Hogan Assessments, recently appeared as a guest on The Science of Personality to speak about skills-based hiring. “If you’re not leaning into a skills-based hiring method, you’re missing the opportunity to maximize your talent. You’re missing the opportunity to hire the best people,” she said.
Continue reading to learn why skills-based hiring is so important and what steps organizations can take to implement a more robust talent strategy.
The Importance of Skills-Based Hiring
“Simply put, skills-based hiring is a selection process that matches an applicant’s skills to the skills required for the role,” Erin said.
Among the many effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the workforce, a positive outcome is that applicant pools are looking different these days. Hiring managers are moving away from educational qualifications and prior employment experience to evaluate candidates during the talent acquisition process. They are more interested in being able to match a person’s potential to what a role requires.
The most effective and equitable way to address the highly varied backgrounds among candidates is to focus on skills. “In the world of talent, we had to start thinking more flexibly and more broadly about skills this person has displayed on the job previously, agnostic of the context in which they worked,” Erin explained.
Prioritizing Potential in Talent Acquisition
Many workers benefit from skills-based hiring. Early-career workers may not have work experience but do have transferable skills from education. Likewise, people changing industries, people with criminal convictions, and people who have employment history gaps all benefit from emphasizing their skills. (A full-time parent almost certainly has exceptional project management skills, for instance.) Workers with roles shifting because of AI technology are another group whose skills will likely need new application.
A hiring strategy focused on job-relevant skills is more equitable than one focused exclusively on education and experience. Thinking differently about a candidate’s talents and capabilities acknowledges that people have different ways to contribute to success. “There’s an equalizing component of skills that helps us get beyond this bias that has sat in selection for so long. There’s so much more potential to be had there,” Erin added.
How to Improve Your Skills-Based Hiring Strategy
Erin shared three things that organizations can do to improve their skills-based hiring strategy: (1) choose a comprehensive taxonomy, (2) select the right skills for the role, and (3) evaluate skills with good tools.
A Comprehensive Taxonomy
What kind of skills infrastructure will your organization leverage? “When we think about skills-based taxonomies, there are many out there in the talent space,” Erin observed. Some provide huge datasets of thousands of skills, which can be nuanced . . . yet unwieldy.
The best taxonomy is one that helps categorize talent cross-functionally and catalogs skills that underlie multiple jobs. It should also flex or adapt easily as skills needed for roles continue to evolve.
Select a taxonomy that has captured a comprehensive domain of all the skills that might be relevant for your organization’s needs. Ensure the taxonomy is backed with research and built using scientific processes such as factor analysis and criterion validation. The taxonomy should also match the intended purpose, whether that’s talent acquisition or talent development. Ask the right questions to verify that you have the right skills and the right reporting at individual and aggregate levels to help you achieve your goal.
Reliable Job Profiling
Using an effective job analysis or profiling method will help your organization select the right skills for the right role.
The level of rigor you use to create job profiles should match your selection goals. A high-stakes hiring decision will likely demand a different degree of job analysis than a high-volume role. “Maybe you’re working with a partner who has validation research for certain profiles already, and you can leverage those,” Erin pointed out.
Validated Measurement Tools
Aside from verifying that the skills in a profile are job relevant, it’s also important to ensure candidates can actually exercise those skills. Validated psychometric assessments allow your organization to evaluate people by their skills.
Degree of rigor comes into play here too. For a high-volume role, one psychometric measure is likely to provide sufficient detail, while hiring a CEO might call for multiple measures. “This is classic IO psychology best practice,” Erin said. “Strong basics are critical.”
Technology can enhance any skills-based hiring strategy. Tech assistance might be as simple as online assessment or as complex as AI modeling. “The most common ways we’re starting to see technology related to skills-based hiring is to help create a talent marketplace,” Erin said. People can assess or self-identify their skills, and organizations can share job opportunities with required skills. A platform like this enables people to search for opportunities as well as identify development goals.
Using Skills-Based Data for Talent Development
The link between skills and talent development is a big opportunity for technology—and for talent. Skills-based data can help current employees identify the critical skills for the next job they want to pursue. Erin identified these areas where skills data can shine internally:
Awareness – understanding the alignment between your skills and the skills required for a particular job
Differentiation – crafting a development plan based on your specific career or personal goals
Growth – demonstrating measurable progress on actionable behaviors
Skills-based data can guide talent along different career paths internally. Two individual contributors in business development with different skill sets could have different long-term career objectives. One with strengths in data analytics and measurement could become a business analyst. One with strengths in building strategic relationships could become a senior consultant. “These skills frameworks help create more visibility into what those pathways might be,” Erin said. “It helps us get outside of this idea that the only place to go is up.”
Listen to this conversation in full on episode 92 of The Science of Personality. Never miss an episode by following us anywhere you get podcasts. Cheers, everybody!
