Article
One: Psychometric Product Review: Harrison Assessments by
Louise Triance
Company Name: Omni HR Solutions (UK)
Product Name: Harrison Assessments (HA)
Website Address: www.omnihrs.co.uk
Description (provided by Omni): “For 25 years, by matching people with roles that they enjoy, Harrison Assessments has reliably predicted job performance for 80 – 90% of respondents throughout
Australasia.”
Cost: No set up fee, no license fee, Reports cost from £8 - £120
Do you have to be qualified to interpret the questionnaires:
No, all reports are presented as either a percentage suitability score or as a narrative. However, advanced training is available for developing job templates and expert interpretation.
Candidate Experience (“guinea pig” candidate was Jaime): The questionnaire took 20 minutes to complete. However there were no instructions or examples. You find yourself straight in and starting the questionnaire. As someone who uses these tools a lot, I found it fairly straight forward but wondered if it may pose a problem for people who are unused to these sorts of instruments.
There were some strange sentences, that I was asked to order in terms of preference or how much I felt they reflected my style or personality, which I felt were irrelevant to me and as a result made me question its relevance in a work context
When I was sent the feedback reports there was simply too much - 57 pages in total over 4 reports. However I felt the content of the reports was accurate.
Overview of Feedback Report: I was sent the same four reports that Jaime received. They were a behavioural comparison (22 pages long), The Paradox report (15 pages long), a Summary Traits Report (9 pages) and a Career Summary (11 pages). Normally, however, a client wouldn’t purchase all these reports. Omni recommend the Behavioural comparison report for most recruitment/selection needs. With this report the candidate is compared against a specific job role. There are 50 different job roles that can be chosen from.
This profile is based on how much an individual enjoys performing certain tasks, rather than the “type” that their responses conform to. The purpose of the report is match people against jobs that maximises tasks/behaviours that they enjoy and minimises tasks/behaviours that they don’t enjoy.
The Behavioural comparison report firstly shows what percentage of the job requirements have been met and then goes on to break down the job role into essential traits showing how closely the candidate matches these. For example for the “Management – Technical” job role, that Jaime was compared to, some of the essential traits are “takes initiative”, “wants to lead” and “Analytical”. The narrative part of the report looks at each of these traits (including a number of “traits that could hinder success for this position”) and explains how the candidate’s personality relates to the trait. I found this narrative section to be rather basic and in some places too simplistic. A useful part of the report is an interviewing guide where each of the essential traits is given a suggested probing question and leads the interviewer to look for certain elements in the answer. I’m sure this would be useful for an inexperienced interviewed. Finally there are a few pages that look at how you would manage, develop and retain the candidate.
The traits and definitions and career summary reports would be of use in a career counselling or development situation. However, probably more beneficial to raw graduates or those at a major career crossroads.
Summary
I thought that the behavioural impact report would probably be useful for an infrequent or less experienced recruiter. The narrative wasn’t detailed enough for me to feel I’d be comfortable using it on senior candidates. Because the data around traits in the report is different for each job function you do not get a list of personality characteristics in the same way you do with some other questionnaires – this may make it difficult to extract information that is not explicitly stated in the report. However, it is possible to also buy the full trait report for a candidate. Additionally it may be useful to note that Omni suggest the tool is most beneficial when being used for bulk recruitment – screening advert response to create a short list for interview.
For more information: Andrew O’Connell was my contact at Omni HR Solutions. He can be contacted on 0131 3325271 or via email at
andrewoc@omnihrs.co.uk
Louise Triance is a British Psychological Society level A&B trained assessor, conducting psychometrics on behalf of recruiters. For more information call Louise on 01635 254881 or email
louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk
or visit http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/tests.htm
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