CooolCase is a traditional family business in Dresden, Germany, that manufactures steel cases for complex devices and partners with other companies for the development and production of mechanical solutions. The business’s core competency is in metal processing. CooolCase is internationally known for its high quality, efficiency, and innovative mindset.

RELEVANT Management Consulting and CooolCase have a longstanding business relationship. With the current pandemic, demand for medical devices and equipment has skyrocketed. CooolCase was approached by a medical engineering company to produce complex steel and aluminum parts for patient monitors. More than four times what CooolCase would usually produce for the client was requested to increase the worldwide capacity of intensive care beds. Patient monitors track patient vitals and are indispensable to intensive care units.

As a result, CooolCase now needs to hire new staff quickly in order to be able to produce those steel cases efficiently to support the client in helping patients who have COVID-19. Time is of the essence, and so is maintaining a high-quality standard.

“We are committed to support the fight against the coronavirus while continuing to deliver optimal results,” said CooolCase CFO Marvin Michel. “Our mantra is ‘Always work properly; you will achieve the extraordinary.’ This is why we utilize Hogan Assessments for the selection of our staff.”

Hogan Assessments and RELEVANT have supported CooolCase’s fast and uncomplicated recruitment with the Hogan General Employability Report. This report allows CooolCase to identify suitable workers for handling the increased order volume within the shortest possible time period.

“The success of every company depends on its employees,” said Dr. René Kusch, founder of RELEVANT. “Therefore, it is crucial to hire the right caliber of talent. Well-founded assessment tools help organizations to identify personality traits that predict the employability of candidates for a variety of jobs. This, in turn, helps companies create targeted onboarding processes, be more productive, have less turnover and more engaged, committed employees, which also leads to more sustainable financial success.”

CooolCase and RELEVANT hope that the patient monitors will contribute to rapid healing processes and improved quality of life for patients.

Although most headlines concerning the economic effects of COVID-19 focus on unemployment, many companies are hiring en masse to provide essential services during the pandemic. Food and beverage manufacturers need production workers to maintain supply. Delivery companies need warehouse workers and drivers to transport goods. Grocery-store chains need stock clerks to keep shelves full. Pick-up service companies need personal shoppers to help customers who are social distancing or immunocompromised.

Even in a crisis, hiring the right employees is essential. Each interaction between a customer and an employee impacts the future of the business. A customer who receives poor service during the crisis might not return for business once the crisis subsides. This raises the question: How can a company hire the right employees and hire them quickly? 

The science of personality tells us that there are three characteristics that make people well qualified for most jobs. At Hogan, we developed a way to measure these three characteristics of General Employability. People who have these characteristics are considered highly employable:

• People Skills – Highly employable people interact well with customers and coworkers, particularly in stressful situations. The General Employability assessment measures how considerate or tactful people are and how calm they are when under pressure.

• Learning Skills – Highly employable people get up to speed quickly and continue to grow. The General Employability assessment predicts how quickly and proactively people are likely to learn new skills. Some businesses, such as Anheuser-Busch, Tito’s Vodka, and other distilleries, are repurposing their supply and logistics networks to produce and distribute bottles of hand sanitizer to fight the pandemic. In situations like this, the ability to learn new skills is critical. 
• Work Ethic – Highly employable people work hard and produce high-quality work products. The General Employability assessment tells us if people are likely to put in the effort needed to finish the job, follow instructions, and be dependable.

The Hogan General Employability assessment is backed by Hogan science and decades of personality data and research, making it a reliable and valid measure of employability. The report also includes several important features:

• The report provides organizations with a single overall employability score, a recommendation regarding hiring, and interview questions for each candidate.
• Scores on the report predict performance in entry-level job families, including service jobs and trades.
• Organizations can compare candidates using eight norms.
• Candidates can assess in 46 languages.
• The General Employability Report integrates with applicant tracking systems, including Taleo and iCIMS, to making high-volume hiring easier.

Employees who score well on General Employability consistently deliver for their companies. For example, in one study, we found that truck drivers who scored high on General Employability had 40% fewer accidents. In another study, we found that sales representatives who scored high on General Employability had 78% more sales. You can read our Business Outcomes Highlights for more examples of the benefits companies see from using the General Employability report.

For more information on the Hogan General Employability report, please contact your Hogan consultant or reach out to us at hoganassessments.com/contact.

Want to learn more about hiring the right way? Check out our guide to crafting next-level talent identification, interviewing, and selection processes

*This post was authored by Hogan’s director of product innovation, Brandon Ferrell, and research scientist, Michael Boudreaux.

Just a month ago, large companies in competitive industries were seeing a high rate of job turnover. Conversely, if recruitment had stopped a few months ago, the result would have been an almost immediate labor shortage.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the economy faces serious challenges. But there are also possibilities — this new situation will result in a larger talent pool available for hiring in the near future. Organizations already know the key for success is to hire the best people available. Whoever is ready for that will be the winner of the labor market and remain competitive in the coming months and years. Right now, job search engines in Europe report a dramatic drop in new job advertisements, but employers who persist can take advantage.

As epidemiologists recommend social distancing, a relevant response is to replace in-person interviews with online workforce selection methods. Aside from helping to control the spread of COVID-19, using digital methods can offer many additional benefits to improve efficiency.

In the case of large companies, a skilled labor shortage will lead to a reduction of production capacity, increased logistical challenges, and stunted growth, resulting in future revenue loss and sustainability issues. All workplaces face serious redesign tasks in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, but organizations must make good workforce decisions in order to survive long-term. In the short term, recruiting new employees or facilitating telecommuting might seem like problems, but this is also an opportunity for employers to introduce newer, more effective methods.

The vast majority of employers worldwide use a dual CV and recruitment interview process when selecting employees. The relationship between the CV and actual job performance is very low, with only a 0.1 correlation on a scale of 0 to 1. Likewise, a well-structured personal interview shows only a 0.18 correlation with the candidate’s expected effectiveness.

In contrast, proper use of assessment tools, such as critical reasoning tests and personality tests, provide a significantly higher correlation — of up to 0.4 to 0.6 — for predicting workplace performance. These tools can be of enormous benefit to companies by making selection more efficient, even in online environments.

Personality tests and applications for measuring critical reasoning abilities have been available online for a very long time, but not every company uses them on a large scale. These are used mainly for filling managerial or office positions. Assessment centers are also available online, and video interviewing (as a final round for prescreened, qualified candidates) is an established solution for large companies.

Personality tests and critical reasoning tests will produce more effective hiring decisions than people can make on their own. A resume or CV, as a personal document crafted by the candidate, does not necessarily provide real information. Recruitment interviews are not very effective because unconscious bias can lead to a much higher rate of inefficiency in employee selection.

The technical solutions for remote work have been in place for years, and most large companies employing office workers are already familiar with them. By applying valid and reliable personality tests, employers can identify candidates who will perform well with less interaction and candidates who will face engagement issues without direct contact with colleagues. This knowledge is beneficial for supervisors who have greater responsibility when employees are working remotely.

It is in the fundamental interest of the economy that every business recognizes that the technological evolution of HR over the last 20 years has provided us with all the tools needed to make our human decisions, even while maintaining social distance. While facing the COVID-19 pandemic, we should use more of the tools that are available to us, recognizing their efficacy and their ability to add value to our hiring decisions.

Continuing workforce selection and improving decision-making are in the best interest of all businesses, especially during this global crisis.

Want to learn more about hiring the right way? Check out our guide to crafting next-level talent identification, interviewing, and selection processes

The success of any organization depends on the people who work in it. Therefore, it is crucial for businesses to hire the right employees. Using valid assessment tools such as General Employability, companies can more easily identify the personality characteristics that predict employability across a wide range of jobs. In turn, businesses are more productive, have less turnover, have more satisfied and engaged employees, and are more financially successful.

Employability is defined as the ability to find a job, the ability to retain it, and the ability to find a new job should the first one go away. There are three key components of employability that the assessment considers:

• People Skills – Getting along well with others and working well in teams. People who score high on this skill seem friendly, pleasant, and helpful.

• Learning Skills – Learning the essential functions of the job and acquiring new skills as the job changes over time. Individuals with learning skills are likely to be bright, curious, and motivated to learn.

• Work Ethic – Taking instruction, working hard, and producing high-quality results in a timely fashion. Employees with good work ethic are hardworking, productive, and dependable.

Gathering responses to items such as “I am sensitive to others’ feelings” and ”I avoid trouble at all costs,” the assessment provides a general employability score. The overall score reflects the degree to which the candidate is generally employable and likely to be a productive employee. Those with exceptionally high scores (e.g., 90% or above) can often be hired straight away assuming they meet other basic job qualifications.

The General Employability assessment is an accurate predictor of on-the-job performance. It is suitable for a wide variety of non-leadership roles in virtually all industries. For instance, it is highly effective in the recruitment of bank tellers. With the General Employability tool, recruiters were able to accurately identify low and high performing bank tellers. Further, they found that the high scorers were two times more likely to be highly rated for their customer service than low scorers.

Zsolt Feher, Managing Director Europe of Hogan Assessments said “Employers report that most of their employee-related complaints concern three basic problems: poor interpersonal skills, poor personal management, and poor problem-solving skills. With General Employability, organizations will be able to obtain valuable insights into these three key areas. It is a huge time-saver for recruiters as they can leverage the power of data and predict candidates’ work ability and future success in the workplace.”