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In today’s fast-paced job market, companies are mainly focused on not just hiring for experience but also for potential. The ability to identify and cultivate talent that may not yet have all the skills or years of experience but has the capacity to grow into a high-performing employee is becoming a key differentiator for successful organisations. Designing and building a comprehensive talent assessment strategy is key to identifying the right individuals for your business.
In this blog, we explore why assessing potential is critical to long-term success, how this approach can future-proof your workforce, and what strategies you can use to implement this into your recruitment process.
Understanding Potential
Employees who have the ability to develop and grow are at the core of any successful organisation. These individuals need to have a unique blend of skills, abilities, and personal characteristics that enable them to excel in their roles and make significant contributions to the company’s future success. Often earmarked as future leaders, their development is crucial for ensuring the company’s continued growth and competitiveness. Identifying these employees involves recognising those who show a combination of traits.
Amberjack’s mission is to enable a world where people are hired based on their potential. We make it our goal to remove barriers, and create more diverse, successful and resilient organisations. We have spent many years developing our approach to identifying potential to make it easily achievable, even in high-volume situations. There are three types of potential overall and should always be considered. By identifying these in your candidates, we help you find the people who can make your organisation more resilient and future focussed. These three different areas all need to be considered when understanding an individual’s overall potential:
- Mastery Potential: The ability to master the role you are hired into.
- Growth Potential: The ability to grow and master the next role in the organisational hierarchy within the same job family.
- Turn Potential: The ability to ‘take turns’. This is not just about increasing your seniority, but also overseeing different areas within the business. Turn potential is often what is meant when people talk about high potential or leadership potential when looking at Early Talent.
How to Assess Potential in the Hiring Process
Hiring for potential requires a different approach from traditional hiring processes, which often focus heavily on experience and qualifications. Building a process which is underpinned robust assessment methodology is crucial.
Using the available academic literature on potential, over 5 years of application data, insights from our clients, and the thoughts of professionals in the changing world of work, we have been able to identify 4 key pillars which define a candidate with the potential to succeed and grow. This model is the foundation for our work and enables us to turn the concept of potential into something which is identifiable and measurable.
Digital Mindset
With increasing automation in the workplace, it is important to identify individuals who have a natural inclination to utilising technology, leveraging it to think creatively, implementing technical solutions, automating, and digitalising. Interviews with visionaries such as Ade McCormack, and inspiration from the works of futurologists like Ray Kurzweil, have revealed that excellence is not always about technical knowledge.
The natural inclination towards technical solutions, automation, and digitalisation are important indicators of potential. With Peterson et al.’s (2018) Learning Model for Digital Affordances highlighting the different affordances offered by technology; Functional (operation), Perceptual (interpretation), and Adaptive (adaption and innovation), it is clear that prior knowledge of technology is not necessarily the only way to assess an individual’s strength in this area. Having a solution-based mindset and being able to explore new ideas is crucial to establishing a candidate’s potential and Digital Mindset.
Grit
As recent economic upheavals have highlighted, and many organisations are now noticing, resilience is key. When the only certainty is that uncertainty is likely, and the pace of change is ever accelerating, individuals need to be able to adjust and apply their skills seamlessly from one situation to the next. People’s ability to grow stronger through that change and remain determined is a predictor of success.
The key components of Grit are drive, agility, and resilience. Church and Silzer (2014) have identified resilience and emotional self-control as foundational personality characteristics that reliably predict leadership success and an individual’s ability to deal with and influence others. Being able to identify this talent early on is critical, and is directly linked to future sustainability and business survival.
Creative Force
With automation suited to logic-driven, linear tasks, or tasks that are traditionally ‘leftbrain’, the added human value comes from ‘right-brain’ holistic and creative thinking. Those with high levels of Potential have the confidence to implement new ideas and solutions. The creativity involved in Creative Force differs from Digital Mindset in its process-driven and future-thinking nature, rather than the pure utilisation of creative digital solutions. This future-orientated, self-driven behaviour, where an individual aims to bring change to their situation, is found to be a trait of employees who are more effective at their jobs (Bindl and Parker, 2011). Creativity is the basis behind innovation; innovators identify opportunities for success and challenge existing frameworks, as posited by Kirton’s Adaptation-Innovation Theory (1989). In this way, our Creative Force pillar recognises candidates with the potential to add new ideas and approaches. Candidates with high levels of Potential enable significant change, challenge ineffective processes, and drive positive development (Howard, 2013).
Applied Intellect
The basis for Applied Intellect is made up of three core characteristics; Social and Emotional Intelligence, Learning Agility, and Cognitive Ability.
Self-awareness and regulation are essential for continual improvement and progression. This is where Social and Emotional Intelligence becomes an important characteristic of individuals with high levels of potential. Self management of activity and emotional wellbeing is crucial, especially in the hybrid working world; individuals need to be accountable for outcomes and less closely monitored. Social awareness and relationship management are essential for communication and effective group interactions whether they are physical, virtual, oral, or written.
Learning agility is the second key part of Applied Intellect. Learning agility, and the continual development this enables, has been found to more accurately predict long-term potential than past performance. Potential is about growth and persistent improvement, this is why “an individual’s current skill-set is of secondary importance to their ability to learn new knowledge, skills, and behaviours that will equip them to respond to future challenges” (Mitchinson and Morris, 2012).
Finally, cognitive ability, the general mental capability involving reasoning, problem solving, planning, abstract thinking, comprehension, and learning from experience (Gottfredson, 1997; Plomin & von Stumm, 2018), helps identify an individual’s capacity to apply their knowledge and intellect to a variety of situations. The flexibility and adaptability required to apply the learnings of one scenario to another is an important factor in a candidate’s potential to succeed within an organisation.
With a strong foundation in our model for identifying potential, we can assess potential in candidates using our assessment solutions to look at a candidate’s behaviours, situational judgement and applied intellect.
Why Hiring for Potential is Gaining Traction
Technological Advancements: In many industries, the pace of technological change is so fast that the skills required today may be outdated in just a few years. By assessing potential, you’re hiring people who can learn and adapt quickly to new tools, technologies, and processes.
Skill Gaps: Many organisations are struggling to find candidates with the exact skills needed for specific roles. By hiring for potential, companies can focus on candidates who may not have all the desired qualifications but have the capacity to learn and grow into the role.
Shifting Job Roles: As job descriptions evolve, particularly in fields like digital marketing, data science, and AI, focusing on future potential is more critical than ever. Employees who can adapt to these changes are invaluable.
The Cost of High Turnover: When companies hire purely based on experience, they may miss out on people who would be more committed to growing within the organisation. Candidates with high potential tend to stay longer because they are engaged by the opportunity for development. Identifying and cultivating high performers can maximise development and retention, enabling companies to leverage their unique capabilities to maintain a competitive edge.
With these trends in mind, let’s dive into why assessing potential is more than just a trend. Achieving high performance is vital for a company’s progress, and distinguishing between high performers and high potential employees is crucial. High performers excel in their current roles, but this does not necessarily mean they have the potential for leadership roles.
The Impact of Potential on Organisational Success
Assessing for potential has far-reaching effects on the success of an organisation. It extends beyond immediate hiring decisions and shapes the workforce’s future growth, culture, and job performance.
- Employees who show high potential can grow into more senior roles, helping to build a pipeline of talent within the company. This reduces the need for external recruitment for leadership roles, which can be costly and time-consuming. By developing employees internally, companies can ensure a steady flow of leaders who are already aligned with the organisational culture and values.
- Potential often correlates with curiosity, creativity, and a willingness to take risks which are qualities that drive innovation. Employees with potential are not only adaptable to change but also often drive it. They can help organisations stay ahead of the curve in a competitive landscape by bringing fresh perspectives and a growth mindset.
- Employees hired for potential often bring enthusiasm, ambition, and a drive for success. These traits can help build a more motivated engaged workforce. By creating a culture that values development, companies can increase overall employee satisfaction.
- When you invest in their development, you create a sense of loyalty and engagement that can lead to higher retention rates. Employees who see a future in the company are more likely to stay, ultimately reducing turnover.
Conclusion
Amberjack’s comprehensive talent assessment services are designed to help organisations identify and nurture high-potential candidates. By incorporating tailored assessments, we ensure that you are not just filling roles but securing the future success of your organisation.
Whether you are looking to enhance your recruitment strategy or build a pipeline of future leaders, Amberjack’s expert assessments can provide the insights you need to make informed, impactful hiring decisions. Let us help you hire for potential and drive long-term success.
