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faq

Frequently Asked Questions

Human Resources

Over the past 30 years, we have found this not to be the case. Using assessments as part of the process typically signals to good candidates that you take selection and development seriously and that your company has a structured and systematic approach, which can also help reduce hiring bias.

At PXT Select®, our assessments go through extensive validation to assure our clients we measure exactly what we intend to measure and do so consistently. By using our personality assessments, you have a time-tested, reliable resource to help you make better decisions concerning new hires and the development of people at your organization. Helping you and your organization make better personnel decisions, reduce hiring mistakes, improve management effectiveness, and increase workforce productivity, engagement, and satisfaction.

You will also find that, over time, our assessments give you a common language and objective data to manage talent more strategically. When you use our assessments, you will have measurable, quantitative data that has a return on investment. This ROI is proven when you track the areas impacted when you use our assessments (i.e., lower training costs, better onboarding programs, stronger employee-manager relations, reduced turnover, etc.). As a result, YOU can have a significant, measurable influence on the hiring and selection processes, the organization's wellbeing, and the bottom line.

Our assessments can help you gain a deeper understanding of employees:
  • Typical behaviors
  • Problem-solving approaches
  • Learning styles
  • Communication preferences
  • Current strengths
  • Possible challenges
With this objective information, you can define training programs and tackle development needs to effectively onboard, coach, develop, and motivate your people. Our reports provide managers with clear recommendations to maximize the employee’s contribution to the organization.

Our assessments help you make better personnel decisions related to hiring and selection, promotions, team building, and succession planning. Some of our benefits include:
  • Saving time by streamlining the process and providing a consistent approach
  • Avoiding costly hiring mistakes
  • Reducing hiring bias
  • Identifying and developing talent
  • Improving managing, motivating, and engaging employees

Our assessments enable you to uncover objective information about your candidates’ and employees’ personalities, behaviors, interests, and abilities. This insight helps you quickly screen out unsuitable candidates and match others with jobs that fit their inherent capabilities. It also helps you understand strengths and limitations for successful onboarding and identifies opportunities to enhance performance and maximize long-term contribution to your organization and team.

Sales

Our assessments were created to specifically help organizations select the right people and develop them to their full potential, including sales roles. When you hire the best sales talent to fit your organization's needs, you will achieve your sales objectives faster.

Our PXT Select Sales Report allows you to evaluate an individual based on eight critical sales practices: prospecting, initiating contact, closing the sale, self-starting, working with a team, resourcefulness, building and maintaining relationships, and coachability. Combined with our powerful job-matching feature that enables you to identify the key attributes of your top sales performers, you can be confident that you will bring in the best talent when comparing new applicants. Knowing the characteristics of your top performers helps you select new hires with the right sales attributes. It will also help you manage their strengths and weaknesses to improve productivity and sales with an efficient and systematic approach.

Our sales and service assessments have a unique job-match feature that allows you to identify current high performers in your company and assess job candidates based upon the attributes of these high performers. The job-fit feature enables you to hire sales and service reps who share similar traits to your high performers, so you can basically replicate your top talent. The information provided by our assessment will help you identify the type of people you want on your sales team.

Implementation

PXT Select assessments work well with strategic initiatives that involve people-related decisions, such as succession planning, workforce growth or contraction, selection of individuals or teams, improving sales performance, and identifying high potentials. Our team will work with you to make sure you maximize the use of our assessments to help support these efforts. You will also have more informed managers and motivated employees who will help support the organization’s goals.

This will vary depending on the assessment you are using. But, for the most part, you can use assessments for hiring and selection, leadership development, improving manager-employee relations, enhancing team relations and performance, individual development plans, succession planning, career planning, and talent mobility.

Many companies use assessments as part of the above-mentioned processes, and employees and candidates have grown accustomed to expecting them. However, we also find that using assessment tools can raise concerns among some employees. The key things to always keep in mind are:
  • Communicating why and how you are using the assessments
  • Keeping the process consistent
  • Determining which processes are valuable to have the assessment data
  • Deciding when in the process you should get that data
This will help you ensure you give all candidates/employees equal opportunities.

Resources vary with the size and scope of the implementation. As in all projects, you should expect a financial investment and some time upfront to train your people to use the assessment correctly. Some clients start by assigning a talent acquisition, development professional, or HR team to manage the process in their organization and eventually evolve to train all the HR department and hiring managers in functional areas using the assessment. Your organization will work with our client services team to implement, train hiring managers and users, and facilitate any systems integration. Training can be conducted virtually, at your facilities, or in our state-of-the-art training center.

We are fully committed to your success. Your main support is our Client Service Team. You will receive a designated account manager who will help you maximize the use of the assessments. They will spend time learning about your organization and will create a deployment plan that best suits your needs and goals. You will also receive training to use our online platform. Our goal is to empower you and train you and your team so you can become an expert.

Through our network of Authorized Partners, we can provide in-person training and consulting services worldwide for clients who want additional help with topics such as succession planning and leadership development.

While no professional credentialing is required, PXT Select offers training to become a Certified User of our products. This training provides a comprehensive, in-depth understanding of the development, structure, and use of the products. Your account manager can assist you if you are interested in this certification.

We recommend you eventually assess all employees, as this will give you information to help them maximize their potential and contribution to your organization. By assessing current employees, you can identify new talents, plan for talent mobility, prepare for succession planning, help managers lead, coach, train, and motivate effectively, and enable employees and teams to achieve greater productivity.

Assessing incumbents is the best way to determine the characteristics which differentiate between top performers and employees who face performance challenges.

1. You will get paired with an account manager who will customize the implementation process based on your needs.

2. You will determine the people you want to train within your organization.

3. Your account manager will train you and your designated team to make sure you are comfortable with the assessments and what they measure, explain the concepts of Job Fit and Performance Models, and how to leverage them.

No formal credentials are required; however, training is offered to become a certified user if you choose to.

4. You will receive training for using the online platform Profiles Assessment Center (PAC). PAC can integrate with Applicant Tracking System (ATS)

5. Your account manager will set up periodic check-ins to help you track your results and refine your processes if needed. This will include applying insights from the assessment results to improve organizational performance.

Keep in mind that candidates take their assessments online at their convenience. No proctor is needed. Upon completion, the system scores the assessment and notifies the hiring manager. The report can be attached to the notification and downloaded directly from PAC.

When you hire a candidate who is the best fit for the job (hire for job fit), you increase their chances of being successful and feeling satisfied in that role. This translates into a sense of engagement and wanting to stay with your organization for a longer time. Our products help you translate the job description into specific behaviors and traits. When you assess a candidate with our tools and compare them to that specific role, you can determine how well they will fit in that role—the better they fit, the less turnover you will have.
The assessments also identify areas where candidates need to be developed and coached and provide insight to help both the manager and the new hire build good, productive relationships.
Our system also offers functions that allow you to track the number of people assessed for a particular job, the number of hires, and the ability to compare that to your KPIs before using the assessment. Our team is ready to help you prove the value!

Your HR department can have as much involvement as you want. We have clients who start using our solutions in functional areas like Sales or Customer Service and only involve HR once they've proven the concept, while others start with HR and then expand to other areas.

If you want to deploy the solutions in key areas of the organization, we recommend designating a project manager or HR business partner. They can play a critical role in the program roll-out, setup, implementation of the assessments, and training. They will be your internal expert to learn how to use the assessment reports.

Our reports don't need to be interpreted by a psychologist or external consultant. They are written in professional business terms to make sure they reach a wide audience without in-depth training. 

Very easy. You will require some training to make sure you maximize the data we provide, but you don't need a psychology degree or know much about psychometrics.

In the words of one of our clients:

"The most compelling reason to use PXT Select assessments is that it is so simple to implement. Our very diverse workforce can use the tool and the reports immediately. The language used throughout the process is not HR "jargon-y;" it is clear and easy to understand. Additionally, we do not have to go through any certification to use it, and it is completely scalable."

The use of the assessments has two components:
  1. The assessment itself, including the reports
  2.  The online platform to schedule and download
They are both simple to use, and no certification is required.

All our assessments are administered and delivered online, and no proctoring is required. You can assess employees and job candidates from anywhere with Internet access. You will have access to the Admin Platform (Profiles Assessment Center), where you will generate a link (or invitation) for the candidate, send it to them via email, and they can complete it wherever they are. Once the candidate completes the assessment, you automatically receive a notification with the report of your choice.

We can also integrate with ATS (Applicant Tracking System) to help automate the process.

No. However, we strongly recommend that every employee takes the assessment for their own benefit. The assessments not only provide you with valuable information about yourself, but some of the reports reveal insights about how you can work better with your peers, your direct reports, your boss, and as part of a team.

Yes. We can use our API (Application Programming Interface) to integrate with your HRIS. We ensure a secure connection for all communication with your application. We need to scope your particular project and work with your HRIS architects, but it is certainly possible.

Not at this time. However, our team can help you understand how our scales map to your competency model.

Yes. You will have access to our Global Assessment Center. This lets you schedule assessments online and sends the candidate a link to take the assessment wherever they are, as long as they have internet access. They can take the assessment at a convenient time for them, and there are no special instructions or proctoring needed.

Absolutely. As your company grows, roles change, and new roles emerge, PXT Select can help you assess new and/or existing candidates.

You can determine when, where, and how the assessments will be implemented and move at your own pace. Some of our clients choose to begin with a pilot project in a designated department or elect to assess only new employees. This can help clients prove the concept, create a business case, and learn more about what is required to support the initiative across the entire enterprise.

Product Features

The reports generated will depend on the personality assessment you use. All our assessments provide multiple reports to support different stages of the process. 

Some of our reports include (this list is not all-encompassing, please note that the reports vary per assessment):
- Selection reports
- Interview guides
- Coaching reports
- Team analysis and compatibility reports
- Managerial compatibility reports
- Sales reports
- Leadership reports
- 360 reports

You don't need a psychometrician to understand the reports. The reports use common business language and therefore are easy to use, not only for HR teams but also for hiring managers to share with their people.

All our assessments are designed to help you obtain objective, reliable and accurate data to make your hiring decisions easier.
 
We offer assessments for pre-screening, hiring and selection, and 360 development. The cornerstone of our assessments is job fit, so you will find that most of our solutions offer you a comparison between a specific job and the individual’s traits that will make them successful in that particular job. 

With our solutions, you can address the most common employee-related challenges present in all organizations:

- Reduce Turnover: PXT Select®, ProfileXT®, Step One Survey®, Customer Service Profile™
- Select for Job Fit: PXT Select, ProfileXT, PXT Select® Non-Cognitive, Customer Service Profile
- Replicate Top Sales Performers: PXT Select Sales Report™
- Discover Next Generation leaders: PXT Select Leadership Report™, Checkpoint 360°™

The time required depends on the assessment but usually ranges from 15 minutes for the shorter one to 60 minutes for the longest one. Typically, the longer the assessment, the more comprehensive the resulting information; however, we do not put a time limit on our assessments.

In a nutshell, we help you predict job performance and hire for success.
When you have clarity on job requirements, you can hire a candidate who is the best fit for the job, and, as a result, you are increasing their chances of being successful and performing well in the job.
Our assessments give you deep, objective insight into a candidate’s personality, behaviors, and interests, which are key areas to determine on-the-job performance.

PXT Select assessments help you develop your employees by clearly identifying challenge areas and actionable tips to improve productivity and relationships with customers, co-workers, and managers.

Yes. We help you predict job performance and hire for success.
When you have clarity on job requirements, you can hire a candidate who is the best fit for the job, and, as a result, you are increasing their chances of being successful and performing well. Our research confirms this.

R&D and Legal

Although most of our products focus on hiring and selection and are validated for that, they also provide you with versatile information that can be used for coaching and development.

Our assessments can be used for many different purposes in an organization, and we recommend that you take full advantage of the reports and job matching capabilities.

Yes. We invest heavily in ongoing research and development to ensure our assessments exceed all employment assessment guidelines. Our assessments exceed the thirteen requirements set by the US Department of Labor for assessments and meet all the EEOC, ADA, DOL, and Civil Rights Act requirements. Our research also monitors the assessments to ensure no gender, age, or ethnic bias.

Yes. We take the science behind our assessments very seriously and invest heavily to do so. We employ a team of full-time psychologists and psychometricians who conduct ongoing research and development to ensure our assessment instruments exceed all employment assessment guidelines. Our assessments exceed the thirteen requirements set by the Department of Labor for assessments and meet all the EEOC, ADA, DOL, and Civil Rights Act requirements. The assessments are also continually monitored to ensure no gender, age, or ethnic bias. Our assessments are reliable and valid based on rigorous scientific standards.

ROI and Performance

We will help you establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your objectives. For this process to work best, it is very important to outline your objectives from the beginning. Then, we will help you establish benchmarks and goals to track your progress and return on investment.

Some of the more popular KPIs that deliver cost savings and productivity improvements include:
  • Reduce time-to-hire and overall recruiting expenses
  • Reduce absenteeism, theft, and turnover
  • Increase employee satisfaction and engagement
  • Increase sales performance, quota attainment, and customer loyalty
  • Increase return on investment for training and development

We will coordinate with you on how to measure success and make sure we help you track the financial benefits of using PXT Select assessments. Depending on your goals and needs, our metrics can include:

 
  • Saving on recruiting and hiring costs
  • Reduced costs associated with employee theft and absenteeism
  • Saving on training and development costs
  • Ramp-up time to attain full productivity on a given role
  • Increase sales performance and customer loyalty

What we help you measure relies heavily on your organization's ability to share certain data. We, of course, guarantee confidentiality and have excellent practices for privacy and security, so you’ll know your data is safe.

 Some examples include: 
  • One of our clients in the hospitality industry now spends one-fifth of what they used to on hiring expenses. 
  • A financial services company started using ProfileXT® and discovered their ROI to be $100 for every $1 spent. 
Assessments also provide additional benefits like saving time, energy, and effort in hiring and developing your employees.
 

Questions?

Please reach out to your PXT Select product provider, who will be happy to assist with your needs.