Recruitment & Assessment
UNDERSTAND PEOPLE
You never finish to understand people. Even if you think you know somebody well, this person might behave in a very unusual and unexpected way. That’s what makes our social life surprisingly beautiful and yet so difficult.
On the other hand, it is also possible to foresee one person’s behavior with a reasonable degree of certainty. After all that is why our everyday life is, well, so ordinary! For that reason, it is pivotal to understand, as much this is possible, how a person is and how he/she reacts in most of the situations that have to be faced during his/her professional life. This is important in all HR activities: for the research of new people as well as for the assessment that might be proposed to the team, when analyzing competences and when performing 360° analysis.
How can we reach this goal? Beyond using specific instruments and techniques, we try to get in tune with people, always keeping in mind that they are just the way we are. They all have memories, ambitions and a future to build.
Furthermore we try to understand how they live their professional life, as this is an important part of everyone’s life.
RECRUITMENT
We help the Organizations to find the people they need to reinforce their team. Our main strength is the ability to identify people’s potential, as well as professional competences. This enables us to work with groups of professionals that are very different one from another.
The methodology we apply is very classical. After a careful assessment of the client’s need, we use passive (i.e. job announcements) and active sourcing techniques (i.e. headhunting), as well as the most advanced hunting tools available on the market, to uncover a group of talents. Once the most interesting candidates have been identified, we organize a first interview with them. We propose an individual assessment to the people we are interested in and who show interest towards the position. During the years we have developed a wide array of very efficient tools and interviewing techniques. This allows us to introduce only the most motivated and promising candidates to our clients.
Our selection procedure includes an individual assessment for all of the most interesting candidates.
We look for the perfect match between the chosen candidate and the organization needs, because we don’t just find talents: we strive hard to find talents that fit.
Throughout the whole process, we work closely with our customers in order to reach the fine harmony that the perfect candidate needs to have with the position he/she is supposed to cover.
The entire process is absolutely transparent: every week we share with our clients the hunting charts, i.e. the database we generate in order to look for the best possible candidates. In the hunting charts our client ay find the names of all the people we contacted and interviewed for the research, along with the motivations that helped us to decide which persons should go ahead, and which not.
Even if in most cases the relationship with our customers starts with a middle or executive position, it often happens that we are asked to find junior candidates and young people who have just completed their university courses. In this case, the in-depth assessment of their potential is particularly important to find the talents to invest in.
For this reason, the evaluation of his/her potential made through a specific assessment is important also in this case.
The Axia team speaks Italian, English, French, German and Vietnamese.
All the working instruments we use are available in different languages.
We use the most sophisticated instruments in order to organize video interviews in the first phase of the process. In any case, we always meet face to face with the final candidates in their home country.
We have been able to fulfill our customers’ assignments all over the world.
INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP ASSESSMENT
During the recruiting process, we always individually assess the final candidates.
Our customers frequently ask us to evaluate their employees and we do that through both individual and group assessments. Sometimes we are also asked to “validate” their researches by examining a list of candidates who have already been independently identified by them, or by other companies that do our job.
This is the reason why over the years we have developed a set of very effective proprietary tools: batteries of tests, group assessments and development centers.
Group assessments can be customized by creating specific case studies tied to the reality in which the evaluated resources operate.
INDIVIDUAL ASSESSMENT
Developing more effective tools has always been one of the most exciting part of our job. In doing this we have been greatly helped both by the constant connection we have maintained with the academic world, and by our strong personal interests. Here are the most interesting instruments we use to fulfill the Research and Selection process:
Our Fermi tests have their origins in the questions that Enrico Fermi, the famous scientist, used to ask his students to evaluate their ability to make sensible assumptions on quantities which seem impossible to calculate, given the limited information available. An example? "Tell me how many piano tuners are there in Chicago." Since the solution of most of the problems that a person faces on the job requires similar capabilities, we are interested to see how people react to these questions.
In the past, we asked people to judge their own perception of their creativity. However, we realized that people often relates creativity to the artistic expressions. This may be true, but it excludes a number of jobs and tasks that require creativity. An example? Many people would hesitate to define "creative" a scientist, probably because they have not a clear idea of what doing research means. For this reason we have developed a simple but effective tool that allows us to assess creativity and the ability to look at things from unusual perspectives.
In a limited period of time the candidate must assess the priority and the urgency of each item, how to approach them, whether to delegate them, which immediate actions are necessary, which are the employees/colleagues/managers that need to be involved.
GROUP ASSESSMENT
The group assessments can be customized creating case studies linked to the reality in which the evaluated resources operate.
INFORMATION ON THE COMPANY
Altera is a medium-sized company (about 250 employees) based in Denmark. Although operationally independent, it is part of a group of 10 companies scattered in various Countries of Western Europe. The group operates in the manufacturing industry producing a variety of products ranging from metal components sold to other industries (within the Group and outside), to electrical components supplied to the industries producing PC, to large electrical generators.
SACCHI: CONSULTANT
The decision of which plant to close and which one will remain open risks to jeopardize the generally positive climate of Eletec. The issue is not only economic, but invests several areas, also generating jealousies between the executives and tensions with the Unions.
Our Fermi challenges have their origins in the questions that Enrico Fermi, the famous scientist, used to ask his students to evaluate their ability to make sensible assumptions on quantities which seem impossible to calculate, given the limited information available. An example? "Tell me how many piano tuners are there in Chicago." Since the solution of most of the problems that a person faces on the job requires similar capabilities, we are interested to see how people react to these questions.
In the past, we asked people to judge their own perception of their creativity. However, we realized that people often relates creativity to the artistic expressions. This may be true, but it excludes a number of jobs and tasks that require creativity. An example? Many people would hesitate to define "creative" a scientist, probably because they have not a clear idea of what doing research means. For this reason we have developed a simple but effective tool that allows us to assess creativity and the ability to look at things from unusual perspectives.
In a limited period of time the candidate must assess the priority and the urgency of each item, how to approach them, whether to delegate them, which immediate actions are necessary, which are the employees/colleagues/managers that need to be involved.
THE KORO MODEL
1_ To give our customers a clear idea of the candidate’s strengths we grade each of the 14 items of KORO.
2_ The evaluations are expressed on a 1 to 7 scale, using the statistical distribution of a bell curve (*).
3_ We then give extensive written explanations of each individual area (Knowledge, Organization, Relations, Goals), as well as a closing overall statement, and a final synthetic numerical value.
In addition to the numerical evaluation, the candidate profile includes a more descriptive part in which the assessment’s results are explicated.
This part, divided into the four areas of KORO, is completed by an indication on the main strengths of the person and a final synthesis.
After any assessment, each candidate receives a complete verbal feedback.
JPEG Descriptive part of the KORO model [TO BE DEFINED]
USING AXIA TOOLS
In the last years our clients have shown a growing interest in our assessment tools. In 2015 one company formally asked us to be able to use our instruments. We decided that it could be an interesting chance of professional growth for both our client and us, so we assessed together how we could manage the task and we reached a satisfying solution. Since then we propose to the companies that find it useful to have a rich basket of assessment tools the get a full license to use everything they need in complete operational authonomy.
For us it has been a great satisfaction seeing that our almost 30 years long effort to develop tools that can enhance recruitment and assessment tasks is appreciated from the market.
Our proposal to emply AXIA tools is based upon the following points:
- we offer yearly contracts: for a fixed fee the clients can use our tools as many times they like
- our tools are divided in two groups: some of them can be handed out on line, while some others are not. For the first ones we generate a web application that enables the client to be fully autonomous; for the latter we hand out custom versions of the master files, so that the tools may be printed when necessary
- when clients sign a yearly contract, they get unlimited training for the personnel that will use our tools, until they reach a full operational capability
- every timewe develop our tools they are upgraded in real time lso for our clients, who can be able to use state-of-the-art technology
Should you be interested to get more info about this possibility, please contact us at the following mail:axia@axiahrm.it
ANALYSIS OF COMPETENCES
Skills are the connection between interpersonal skills and know-how.
Thinking in terms of skills pushes Organizations to better understand what they expect from their employees.
For this reason we have developed:
- the ability to recognize and classify the strategic skills that are necessary to cover the various professional roles
- a set of tools that help both to define the expected competences, and to find the skills actually available in people who work in the organizations
360° ANALYSIS
The 360° analysis aims to evaluate the management skills of an individual, involving the person himself, his bosses, co-workers, some colleagues and – possibly – even external clients in the process.
This type of “investigation” presents three main advantages:
- Completeness: the opinions of the relevant people who more strongly interact with the evaluated manager
- Objectivity: the “investigation” questionnaire has been designed to minimize subjectivity
- Comprehensiveness: the 10 managerial detected skills and the 34 basic elements (with their 136 indicators) cover all types of behaviors that, when available, allow the manager to positively contribute to the welfare of his Organization
The result of this analysis consists in a report in which the manager can see all the opinions expressed by his colleagues, taking awareness of his strengths and of the areas that require development.