Playing to people's strengths

18 August 2010 | By Colin Cottell

As recruiters search for ever more effective ways of recruiting the talent they need, it is surprising that an approach developed more than 40 years ago has remained virtually unchallenged in many of the UK’s HR departments and recruitment agencies.

Based on academic work by David McLelland at Harvard Business School, the competency-based model provides recruiters with a framework of core competencies, identified as predicting high performance in a particular role and often within a specific organisation. But the approach, which often manifests itself at the interview stage as a series of standard questions asking for examples of when, where and how a candidate has demonstrated a particular competency, such as team working, is itself coming under intense scrutiny. Aviva, Ernst & Young and Reckitt Benckiser are among a small but growing number of organisations that argue that the competency-based approach no longer produces the goods.

Within the last three years these three companies, most recently Reckitt Benckiser this year, have switched important aspects of their recruitment to a new and radical approach.

Based on a school of psychology known as positive psychology, the strength-based approach aims to assess and recruit people based on their natural skills and abilities. Royal Mail has also used this approach. “We can distinguish between what people can do and what people love to do,” explains Alex Linley, founding director of business psychologists and consultants CAPP, and a proponent of the strength-based approach.

“What we are saying is that an individual may have a natural talent that they will be able to demonstrate in an interview and in a role,” explains Paul Awcock, head of HR at Aviva. After working with CAPP, Aviva introduced the approach to its graduate recruitment two and a half years ago, before extending its use to entry level recruitment of call centre staff, as well as some of its professional staff.

It’s a matter of common sense, suggests Stephen Isherwood, head of graduate recruitment at Ernst & Young, where the approach was introduced two years ago. “People are at their best when they are playing to their strengths.” So what was wrong with the competency-based approach? “There was a feeling that we weren’t getting to the heart of candidates. Too many were coming into the process who were all looking and feeling the same - it was difficult to spot a good candidate,” says Isherwood.

This feeling that candidates know how the competency-based process works, and indeed often “know the answers by rote”, is hardly surprising, he suggests, when careers offices, and indeed employers, actually go out of their way to prepare candidates in advance. Awcock says that the competency-based approach “became very tired, with candidates able to draw on examples of skills they no longer possessed”.

So what are the essential differences between the two approaches in practice? “We try to inject something that is a bit different, also asking some creative questions, such as ’If you were opening a supermarket, which would it be and who would you target?’,” says Kay Smart, HR business partner, Reckitt Benckiser commercial division, which this year introduced strength-based interviews for its initial graduate interviews.

“It’s about them [candidates] thinking on their feet, allowing them to show a bit of their personality - that’s what we want to see because cultural fit is such a hugely important part of our business.” Though not adopted in a systematic way, as it is for Reckitt Benckiser’s graduate recruitment programme, the strength-based approach is also used to varying degree for non-graduate recruitment through Reckitt Benckiser’s UK business, adds Smart.

For Isherwood, one of the essential differences between the two approaches is that while the previous methodology looked at eight competencies, the new one covers 16 strengths. Based on an analysis of Ernst & Young’s high performers, desired strengths include credibility, personal responsibility, powers of analysis and ability to organise.

And unlike competency-based, which often involves probing the candidate about each of a limited numbers of competencies, strength-based interviewing typically involves less probing or even none at all. “With strength-based we have 40-50 questions. We don’t allow probing, it’s fast paced,” says Awcock.

For Awcock, another difference is that rather than telling candidates what to expect, “they face the interview cold”. He adds: “It might seem harsh, but this is deliberate because it draws the instinctive response. We want to know how natural that response is from people.”

And he gives an example of how it works in practice, citing the question: ’Are you a good listener?’ Somebody who is naturally a good listener will respond quickly and say why this is the case, he suggests. The approach can also be adopted for other stages of the selection process, such as application forms and assessment centres, says Isherwood. Again, both candidates and recruiters themselves will notice significant differences.

For example, Isherwood says that at Ernst & Young’s assessment centres graduates will do more exercises and assessors spend more time with those candidates than at traditional assessment centres. “We look to measure the candidate’s overall response to the day, as we find that when people are playing to their strengths they give more energy and focus,” he explains.

While still in its infancy, those companies that have adopted the new approach say it is already producing results. Awcock says that some of the groups of telesales staff recruited using the new methodology were released from training two weeks earlier than those selected though the old approach. Strength-based recruits also remain with the company longer, he says.

Isherwood points out that the new approach has helped to weed out unsuitable candidates earlier. While more graduates get through at the assessment centre stage (over 60% compared with 50% previously), the failure rate at the initial interview stage has risen from about 40% to more than 60%. And this is backed up anecdotally, he adds, with the business reporting that the process is better and that the company’s recruiters are getting better at spotting good candidates.

There are other benefits too, says Smart. “Candidates enjoy it because they are telling people what they are good at and that is normally what they are passionate about.” Awcock adds that candidates have told him the process is “tough but fair” and that he has yet to have a candidate say they have not enjoyed the experience.

Adopting a radically different approach to its high volume call centre recruitment has also helped candidates to differentiate Aviva from its competitors, says Awcock. “This works in our favour and will continue to do so,” he argues.

That said, adoptors of the new approach say that switching over to it cannot be rushed, as designing a new process, training recruiters and educating the business cannot be done overnight. However, with such positive results already, what sort of threat does this new kid on the block represent to the old order? And could it eventually replace the competency-based approach?

Not according to Smart, who argues that the two are complementary, with strength-based being used for initial interviews and a competency framework applied for subsequent ones. “The first stage is finding the right type of people, the second is testing their level of competency. They must have that level of competency.”

“I don’t think it is a case of one or the other,” suggests Awcock. “I see it as a healthy alternative. If competency-based works for you, that’s fine.” That said, he accepts that for roles that require certain specific technical skills, competency-based interview questions will continue to be needed.

However, recruiters such as Jon Hull, resourcing manager at RS Components, go further in rejecting the claims of this brash newcomer. While Hull agrees that candidates can prepare examples of competencies in advance, he argues that if interviewers “continue to garner the right evidence”, unsuitable candidates will eventually simply run out of things to say.

Similarly, Ann Taylor, UK head of resourcing at BAE Systems, says she doesn’t see strength-based as an alternative to the competency model. Indeed, she says the company has just reviewed its competency-based questions with the help of Alexander Mann Solutions.

Nicky Ivory, recruitment and reputation manager at McDonald’s, argues that while the core competency model will continue to play a part, “it is probably not strong enough on its own”. Strength-based will become more popular, she predicts. “It’s a great way of identifying whether someone is going to fit in or not.”

That said, she suggests there is no one single blueprint for a strength-based approach. Indeed, she points to personality-based psychometric testing, introduced for McDonald’s crew members more than two years ago, that does much the same thing. These test “what candidates do naturally”, such as whether they have a natural preference for working with customers, she explains by way of an example. “If we can find the preferred way of working and the preferred environment for the candidate, that is going to give us a better predictor of performance in the job and they are more likely to stick around,” she adds.

While the strength-based approach has made an encouraging start, and may well build momentum, for most organisations it is more likely to sit alongside a competency-based approach rather than completely replace it. As Aviva’s Awcock says: “It’s a different experience for candidates and hiring managers; it doesn’t necessarily make it better, but it makes it different.”