The hires that carry your organisation

Your most important roles depend on how someone works with people, not just what they know. Most hiring doesn't test for that.

Managers and senior staff carry more of your organisation than their numbers suggest. A manager with twenty people in their team shapes twenty people's work.

The cost of getting it wrong is someone who interviews well, knows the business, and spends two years unable to get anyone to change anything. These are the hires your organisation depends on most, and once they are in the role, developing them is where their value grows.

The same reports cover the rest of your business too. Management, finance, administration and graduate roles are all covered, each with a package suited to the role.

What the candidate does, and what you get

Online assessments chosen for the role, and a written report on how well the candidate fits it.

A report sets out the candidate's likely strengths and development needs, grouped by the competencies that matter for the role, then the detail behind them: reasoning results compared with a relevant norm group, and a profile of how they tend to work — how they plan, cope with pressure, work with others and take charge.

The report can be built around what the job actually asks: how someone influences people, builds relationships, makes decisions, and copes with pressure and change. Those competencies are already part of our management assessment.

The assessments combine reasoning tests with personality measures. The reasoning tests include our own Emotional Reasoning Questionnaire, an ability test of how well someone reads what others are feeling. The personality profile is usually our own Business Personality Reflections, whose twenty scales cover how someone manages themselves, their work and other people; internationally established measures such as the Hogan Personality Inventory and the Fifteen Factor Questionnaire Plus (15FQ+) are available where a role calls for them.

Built around the job you are filling

A customised report measures candidates against your position description, and turns your interview into a structured one.

A generic report describes a candidate's general abilities and working style. A customised report is tailored to the competencies in your position description, so it shows how the candidate fits the role you are filling.

That matters more than it might seem. Selection research now puts interviews built around the job — the same questions, asked of every candidate — ahead of any single test, and finds that methods designed for the specific job outperform general ones. The report's interview questions are aimed at exactly what the assessments flagged, which turns an ordinary conversation into a structured one.

Results are compared with a general population norm group. Where you have enough people in a role, they can be compared with your own staff instead.

What happens after the report

The report shapes the interview, and then the new hire's development.

The interview comes first. The recommended questions probe the specific things the report found, so you spend the time testing what matters rather than going back over the CV. One of our psychologists will talk the results through with you if a finding needs explaining.

After the hire, the report keeps its value. The development needs it identified are the natural starting point for the new hire's first months — which is where developing them begins.

Reports stay on file, and a copy can be issued again later from our archive at no cost.

The evidence behind it

Current selection research, established instruments, and reports written by psychologists.

The most thorough recent review of selection research, re-analysing decades of studies, ranked structured interviews — the same job-based questions, asked of every candidate — as the single best predictor of how someone will perform. (Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2022.) A follow-up found that methods built around the specific job outperform general ones. (Sackett and colleagues, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2023.)

A customised report is built on both findings. It is tailored to your position description, and its interview questions give you a structured interview aimed at exactly what the assessments found.

The personality measures include our own Business Personality Reflections and internationally established instruments with published norms. With its publisher, Psytech International, we developed a set of business personality reports based on the Fifteen Factor Questionnaire Plus. Every customised report is written by an organisational psychologist. Psych Press has developed and published psychometric instruments since 1995, in-house and in partnership with universities and international test publishers.

Who it suits, and who it doesn't

Organisations hiring into their own business, especially for the roles that matter most.

Where a role matters enough to watch candidates work through realistic tasks, an assessment centre goes further. Business Personality Reflections can also be used on its own, for development as well as selection, and e-recruitment manages the applications that come before any of this.

Frequently asked questions

The hires that carry your network

Your field roles have to move franchisees who own their businesses and don't report to them. Most hiring doesn't test for that.

Field consultants, area managers and franchise development managers carry more of your network than their numbers suggest. A field consultant with twenty franchisees on their patch shapes twenty businesses. And the job is unusual: they have to change what franchisees do without being able to tell them to do it.

A standard management hiring process tests whether someone can manage. In most jobs, the authority arrives with the title. In these, it doesn't, and the cost of getting it wrong is someone who interviews well, knows the brand, and spends two years unable to get anyone on their patch to change anything. These are the hires your network depends on most, and once they are in the role, developing them is where their value grows.

The same reports cover the rest of your business too. Management, finance, administration, graduate and franchise development roles are all covered, each with a package suited to the role. For those roles, being a franchisor changes little, and the report works as it would anywhere.

What the candidate does, and what you get

Online assessments chosen for the role, and a written report on how well the candidate fits it.

A report sets out the candidate's likely strengths and development needs, grouped by the competencies that matter for the role, then the detail behind them: reasoning results compared with a relevant norm group, and a profile of how they tend to work — how they plan, cope with pressure, work with others and take charge.

For a field role, the report can be built around what the job actually asks: how someone influences people, builds relationships, makes decisions, and copes with pressure and change. Those competencies are already part of our management assessment. What a franchise adds is the reason they matter more here than almost anywhere else — the franchisees on the other side of the table don't have to listen.

The assessments combine reasoning tests with personality measures. The reasoning tests include our own Emotional Reasoning Questionnaire, an ability test of how well someone reads what others are feeling. The personality profile is usually our own Business Personality Reflections, whose twenty scales cover how someone manages themselves, their work and other people; internationally established measures such as the Hogan Personality Inventory and the Fifteen Factor Questionnaire Plus (15FQ+) are available where a role calls for them.

Built around the job, not a generic manager

A customised report measures candidates against your position description, and turns your interview into a structured one.

A generic management assessment tells you whether someone has the makings of a manager. A customised report is tailored to the competencies in your position description, so it tells you whether they have the makings of this manager, in this role.

That matters more than it might seem. Selection research now puts interviews built around the job — the same questions, asked of every candidate — ahead of any single test, and finds that methods designed for the specific job outperform general ones. The report's interview questions are aimed at exactly what the assessments flagged, which turns an ordinary conversation into a structured one.

Results are compared with a general population norm group. Where you have enough people in a role, they can be compared with your own staff instead.

What happens after the report

The report shapes the interview, and then the new hire's development.

The interview comes first. The recommended questions probe the specific things the report found, so you spend the time testing what matters rather than going back over the CV. One of our psychologists will talk the results through with you if a finding needs explaining.

After the hire, the report keeps its value. The development needs it identified are the natural starting point for the new hire's first months — which, for a field role, is where developing your field team begins.

Reports stay on file, and a copy can be issued again later from our archive at no cost.

The evidence behind it

Current selection research, established instruments, and reports written by psychologists.

The most thorough recent review of selection research, re-analysing decades of studies, ranked structured interviews — the same job-based questions, asked of every candidate — as the single best predictor of how someone will perform. (Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens, Journal of Applied Psychology, 2022.) A follow-up found that methods built around the specific job outperform general ones. (Sackett and colleagues, Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2023.)

A customised report is built on both findings. It is tailored to your position description, and its interview questions give you a structured interview aimed at exactly what the assessments found.

The personality measures include our own Business Personality Reflections and internationally established instruments with published norms. With its publisher, Psytech International, we developed a set of business personality reports based on the Fifteen Factor Questionnaire Plus. Every customised report is written by an organisational psychologist. Psych Press has developed and published psychometric instruments since 1995, in-house and in partnership with universities and international test publishers.

Who it suits, and who it doesn't

Franchisors hiring into their own business, especially for the roles that work with franchisees.

Where a role matters enough to watch candidates work through realistic tasks, an assessment centre goes further. Business Personality Reflections can also be used on its own, for development as well as selection, and e-recruitment manages the applications that come before any of this.

Frequently asked questions