Why Benchmark Jobs?
Why should you use benchmarks?
Many assessment products only provide information about the candidate. With no reference to the position or industry, it’s not easy to see how this person stacks up against your ideal candidate. Making hiring and promotion decisions based on someone’s standalone results doesn’t make sense.
The Prevue Assessments compare candidates against one of our benchmarks: a customized job fit profile that outlines your ideal candidate for each role in your organization.
When you look at Prevue reports that use a benchmark, you get not only a reliable description of a person’s work-related characteristics, but you’ll also see how those traits match up against the traits you’ve decided are the best fit for the position.
Prevue automates benchmark creation, which lets you quickly and easily build benchmarks for every position at your organization. Benchmarks are built either by analyzing characteristics of the two top performers in a position, input from management surveys, or both.
Why Prevue Benchmarks?
Good HR decisions should start by determining if the abilities, interests and personality traits of candidates match those required for the job. To do this, we create a job fit profile–the benchmark–based on your organization’s needs.
Establishing accurate job requirements is vital. What if the pilot on your next flight was a risk-taker and disliked following detailed plans? Would you find it problematic if your child’s school bus driver was overly assertive and competitive?
While experience and education are important, job requirements should also identify the personal characteristics you expect in a candidate. It can be much easier to define a role’s technical requirements–like being able to use a computer, or having certain qualifications–than to define a ‘people-person’ or a ‘self-starter’.
Prevue Benchmarks visually display the desired job characteristics, and can be overlaid with candidates’ responses in Prevue Reports. Once we have a benchmark a position, any applicant can be matched to that criteria.
How a benchmark is created
Choose an existing benchmark from the Prevue Benchmark Library, or develop your own from one or a combination of the following methods:
- PREVUE BENCHMARK LIBRARY: Select a benchmark from our library by matching your job description to one of our 1000+ carefully researched options.
- CONCURRENT STUDY: Take the Prevue Assessment results of four or more top performers working in the selected position, and determine the characteristics common to those who have been successful.
- JOB DESCRIPTION SURVEY: This method is based on management’s opinion of the characteristics required for success. Job Description Surveys are completed by managers (or others familiar with the position), and the results are tabulated online to create an opinion-based benchmark.
All Prevue Benchmarks should be reviewed periodically to ensure they’re kept up-to-date with changes in job requirements or corporate culture.
