Pre-Employment Assessments

Recently, a colleague was wondering about a pre-employment assessment her client took for a job at Mutual of Omaha. Seeing as how Mutual of Omaha is headquartered here in my hometown (Omaha) and I've had numerous clients and friends who have worked for them, I have a pretty good idea about which assessment her client took.

She was concerned because her client was told he didn't do well on the assessment, but on the strength of his network, he was able to get an interview.

You see, The Gallup Organization is located here in Omaha too. So the assessment her client took was most likely conducted by Gallup Consulting. From the Gallup website:

"The only way to understand and replicate top performance is to study top performance. Top performers in all jobs think, talk, and act differently than average and poor performers. Understanding the talents that contribute to outstanding performance is key to developing an effective talent acquisition strategy. Our consultants identify the talents that contribute to success, then work with organizational leaders to develop and refine a strategy and the supporting processes and systems that help organizations find more employees like their very best."

Marcus Buckingham, a former Gallup Sr. Researcher, has written three books about this process: "First, Break All the Rules" (1999), "Now Discover Your Strengths" (2001), and "The One Thing You Need to Know" (2005).

The principles behind his approach are outlined in his bio:

What would happen if men and women spent more than 75% of each day on the job using their strongest skills and engaged in their favorite tasks, basically doing exactly what they wanted to do?

According to Marcus Buckingham (who spent years interviewing thousands of employees at every career stage and who is widely considered one of the world's leading authorities on employee productivity and the practices of leading and managing), companies that focus on cultivating employees’ strengths rather than simply improving their weaknesses stand to dramatically increase efficiency while allowing for maximum personal growth and success.

If such a theory sounds revolutionary, that's because it is. Marcus Buckingham calls it the "strengths revolution."

Because of the Gallup presence in Omaha, many of our big corporations headquartered here (ConAgra Foods, Mutual of Omaha, etc.) use Gallup's assessments.

Usually, if you don't score well on a Gallup pre-employment assessment (conducted by phone or online), that's the end of it. They tell you, "Thanks, and good-bye." So the fact that his resume writer's client got an interview *anyway* is very unusual ... and is a testament to the resume she wrote, and his network. He'll have to have a great interview to overcome the negative assessment, because the companies that use them rely on them heavily to determine "fit."

I can't recommend any specific "workarounds" for when the negative assessment results comes up in the interview (as I said, 100% of my clients haven't gotten the interview if they didn't match up in the assessment with the pre-identified criteria). If he has time before the interview, maybe he could read, "First, Break All the Rules." Then he could ask about the specific areas where he didn't fit their criteria, and he'd know more about what kind of "fit" that was lacking between the testing and his answers.