First View - Understanding FirstView™

Choosing the right people to fill jobs is one of the most important responsibilities of any manager. Peter Drucker (1964), probably America’s most respected management guru, has noted that senior managers in any organization have only two important responsibilities: (1) to set the strategic course for the organization; and (2) to put the right people in place to make certain that the course will be followed. The development of FirstView™ was instigated by our desire to assist managers in the difficult and often time-consuming task of personnel selection.

Several considerations were involved in the development of FirstView™. One was that the instrument be brief, that is, take approximately a total of 15 minutes to administer. A second was to have an instrument that could be both scored and interpreted by a personal computer (PC). A third, to develop a process that included an evaluation of both the applicant’s cognitive skills and personal/interpersonal competencies; and finally, one that produced a series of inter-view questions enabling a prospective employer to obtain additional, in-depth information about the competencies of the applicant.

Matching the job and the person: In approaching the task of filling any job, the critical question is whether or not this individual has the right characteristics to succeed in this particular type of job. Matching people with jobs is the secret of good human resources management, just as matching the right tool or machine with the job is the key to successful technical management. Prior to the development of FirstView™, it was necessary to use professional help to determine the match. Now the task of determining the match is clearly that of the manager.

Understanding the job: The first task in a successful hiring process–identifying the skills or competencies required for on-the-job success–involves far more than reviewing the traditional job description, although this is not a bad place to begin. Hiring the right people requires general familiarity with the basic requirements of the job which is to be filled. If this job is one with which the manager is not familiar, observing a competent incumbent perform the job can be a useful way to remedy this lack, as is even a brief discussion with a veteran worker who usually can provide a good bit of information about what it takes to succeed on the job..4 Another valuable source of information about what is required for success on that job is an immediate supervisor who oversees that position. Also, one may wish to interview people who have successfully held the job in the past and any former supervisors who still have an in-depth understanding of the nature of the job.

In developing an understanding of a job, use of multiple sources of information about the job is desirable, sources that will provide different perspectives on the job–incumbents, supervisors, human resources staff, managers, and so on. No doubt some divergence of opinion about what is really necessary for success in any job will surface, but some discussion and negotiation should quickly resolve these differences of opinion. 

In talking with these various people, here are some questions that need to be answered:

What does a person in this job have to do on a regular basis to succeed? 

What skills do the most successful people who hold this job or have held it recently have?

What additional competencies will people need to continue to succeed?

How will a person hired for this job know that he or she is succeeding?

Why have people failed on this job?

In what ways have the job responsibilities changed and how might they change in the future? Depending upon the nature of the job, additional questions should be added to the list. Developing a genuine understanding of the job is far more detailed than a review of the typical job description can provide. And it is not possible to evaluate the person-job match without understanding both the person and job. 

Cognitive skills: There are two fundamentally different sets of skills that impact on-the-job success: technical skills or competencies and personal/interpersonal competencies. Technical skills are the specific learned skills, knowledge, and abilities required to do the work, that is, the skills learned through formal education, training, or on-the-job experience. Obviously, it would be impossible for any single instrument to measure the multitude of technical skills required for success on the job. In any event, measuring these skills is better done through an in-depth analysis of the person’s résumé, completed application, thorough background and reference checks, and by work samples and portfolio reviews.

There is, however, one basic factor that underlies all technical skills and is essential to all jobs–cognitive skill, or intelligence. The importance of intelligence to on-the-job performance has been highlighted by Seligman (1997) who reported that the overwhelming body of research supports the conclusion that “IQ matters in all jobs,” although how much it matters depends on the nature of the job. By intelligence we mean the speed of thinking, how readily new material is learned, and how quickly underlying patterns are recognized and decisions made in response to those patterns.

In the development of FirstView™ an early decision was made to include a brief measure of the applicant’s cognitive skills, especially in the areas of fluid intelligence, inductive reasoning, and general sequential understanding, as well as quantitative understanding (Horn & Noll, 1997). On the basis of both the research and our professional experience, we were convinced that these particular cognitive skills were important to on-the-job success, regardless of the job to be performed.

Personal/Interpersonal Skills: Personal and interpersonal skills are as important as cognitive skills to success on the job although in rather different ways. One way of thinking about the differences between cognitive and personal/interpersonal skills is that the former are important in determining whether the individual can do the job while the latter are important in determining if the individual will do the job. Obviously, both ability (can) and desire (will)are necessary for on-the-job success. As one example of the importance of these personality factors it has been reported that 80 percent of all job terminations in the United States are caused by personal or interpersonal problems and that 80 percent of these are due to persistent absenteeism or tardiness (Johnson, 1987).

Considerable research evidence now supports the importance of a number of specific personality characteristics in job success. Some of these are personal–how the individual ap-proaches work and other situations, such as conscientiousness–and some are interpersonal, such as how friendly or agreeable the individual is in dealing with others. Goodstein and Lanyon (1999) provide a comprehensive review of this research literature. Both the personal and interpersonal characteristics, however, are important predictors of how the well the person will do in work situations, although each work situation has different personal and interpersonal requirements.

FirstView™ was constructed to include a measure of these fundamental personal and in-terpersonal competencies, the so-called “Big Five” (McCrae & Costa, 1997) that are known to be directly related to on-the-job success.

However, since we knew that the required personal/interpersonal competencies differ from job to job, FirstView™ was designed to provide multiple reports such as:  

Persuasive Sales

Telemarketing Sales

Retail Sales

Management

Customer Service

Administrative.6

Financial

Information Technology

Engineering

Healthcare

Food Service

Hospitality

Production

Warehouse

Driver

FirstView™ produces a short, narrative report that discusses the potential strengths of the individual for being successful in this job family, as well as the obstacles that may interfere with successful performance. When obstacles are noted, remedial actions that might be taken by management that can surmount those obstacles are also noted. This realistic, more positive approach to selecting and managing people is another unique aspect of the FirstView™ approach .

The FirstView™ report also produces a one-page chart that summarizes the “level of concern” indicated for the individual on each personality dimension It is also important to note that any information provided by FirstView™ always leaves the final decision in the hands of management where it must belong.