Mercy, to be a data scientist. The new geek is chic. That is where the world is going–big data is a big deal, but getting to the big insight is the trick.
According to a recent The Economist article:
Chief information officers (CIOs) have become somewhat more prominent in the executive suite, and a new kind of professional has emerged, the data scientist, who combines the skills of software programmer, statistician and storyteller/artist to extract the nuggets of gold hidden under mountains of data. Hal Varian, Google’s chief economist, predicts that the job of statistician will become the “sexiest” around. Data, he explains, are widely available; what is scarce is the ability to extract wisdom from them.
What is scarce is the ability to extract wisdom from them, like the very nature of evaluating future employees and current ones. Assessments have been around for decades — personality, skills, behavioral, role-based — and I/O psychologists have been involved in developing reliable and valid ones, many of which are used by most mid-sized to large enterprises.
As the global economy pushes and pulls itself beyond the post-apocalyptic, businesses big and small are looking inside as much as outside their organizations for the highest quality of fit and productivity possible with their full-time, part-time and contingent workforce. And that means assessments galore measuring myriad hard and soft skills — super powers, if you will, that will propel the business into the stratosphere. Predictive assessments that take a bunch of data, analyze it and create projections of whether or not you and I will be compatible with an employer, with its employees, with its positions.
However, according to one of our #TChat Radio Show guests last night – Charles Handler, Ph.D., President/Founder of Rocket-Hire – Effective prediction requires precision; precision requires detailed effort. The more corners you cut, the less effective the results.
Properly administered assessments are critical in selecting the right people for an organization as well as moving them around inside the org. However, understanding what you’re looking for in applicants outside and in and what you’re trying to measure are even more important before you start administering assessments willy-nilly. Yes, I wrote willy-nilly. And then why the combined human interviewing element with correctly identified and applied assessment is what elevates the final predictive results.
Extracting assessment wisdom is a human endeavor.
Thanks again to our wonderful panelists last night – Charles Handler PhD, President/Founder of Rocket-Hire; Kate Nasser, The People-Skills Coach™, President, CAS, Inc; and Julie Moreland, President of PeopleClues — the lovely Meghan M. Biro and Maren Hogan, and our ever-supportive Sean Charles and Kyle Lagunas for a wonderful #TChat Radio last night. Join myself and the rest of the #TChat team next week when we discuss video in your workforce–training, recruiting, onboarding & collaboration! Same time (7:00p ET, 6:00p CT, 4:00p PT or wherever you are), same place. Right on.
Feature image by: Davide Restivo
