5y
Appreciate the feedback, but we are unapologetic about the assessments we use. There are four in total, and a fifth that we derive from one of the other four.
First, we use a tool we use called PeopleDNA that allow us to pattern match successful employees to the data we see in potential new hires. There are certain behaviors that make it difficult for you in our environment. For example... if you have low tact, and decide to behave with low tact in front of a client, you may very well be excused from that account. If you get your feelings hurt easily and have low recovery time, we've found that people don't actively reengage when faced with push back from the client. Just two examples of situations we need to avoid.
We also use PeopleDNA to derive if you are growth mindset or fixed mindset. If you are going to work here, you have to see learning as a positive and failure as a learning experience. If you struggle, and can't be coached, or if you take developmental feedback personally... it's super hard to get you on the right track. That puts both of us in a pretty bad position. Not fun for anyone.
We use a tool called Color Code which we've found predictive of behavior on client engagements. Color Code measures you on two dimensions, logical or emotional, controlling or non controlling. We have roles in our organization for lots of different personality types, but we have found certain motivations tend to work better for certain kinds of roles. For example, if you are high emotion and low control, you are not a good fit for any of our engagement orchestration roles. Those are better suited for people with high logical control and low emotion.
We also assess IQ and EQ. To work here, in most roles, you have to be a dynamic problem solver and you have to be able to read the emotional tone of your client. I've personally worked with brilliant, experienced agilists who were tone deaf to the emotional discomfort of the people they were coaching. The hypothesis is you have to be able to read the people you are working with, and dynamically pivot approach based on that read. These tools give us some indication if that ability is in your wheelhouse.
In short, who you are is as important as what you know. We turn down brilliant, knowledgeable agilists every day for spots on our team. We take hiring and firing super seriously. We view a job offer as a commitment and we take that commitment seriously. It is very difficult to get fired from LeadingAgile, we want to give our people every opportunity to succeed. We have a PhD level psychologist on staff and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year on executive level coaching to help people improve.
Given all that, we interview people all the time who go against target profile, because we don't believe people reduce down to a simple set of heuristics. We have an interview strategy around hunting for compensating controls which may give you the ability to perform differently from your base profile. Our interviewers are trained to find these compensation mechanisms and make a recommendation to hire if they are sufficiently demonstrated.
Our assessments are in place to help both you and us make the best decision possible. We don't want to set you up for failure. More often than not, we've found that this data helps us do just that. Sorry you didn't appreciate our approach here... but we've actually found that resistance to taking these test... is an early indicator of a poor cultural fit for our organization. It seems their very presence may have saved both of us some hassle.
