Critical reasoning tests

HR Focus in Start-ups to Succeed

Start-up companies can come in all forms and sizes. They seem to have high failure rates, but the minority who succeed can become large and influential.

It has been seen that most start-up founders more often have a casual or off-beat culture in their thinking, dress, office space, HR practices and Marketing, as compared to traditional corporations. Some of these casual approaches, such as the use of “flat” organizational structure, in which employees can directly communicate with the Founders or CEOs informally, are practiced to promote efficiency and to enthuse employees in the workplace.

Business Strategies for Finance, Marketing, Production, Product Development and Innovation are made without a robust HR and People strategy. The importance of this needs to be highlighted as this is one pillars of the foundation on which the businesses is built, and if this pillar is weak or not there the dangers will always loom. Having a HR and People plan is like a having Finance plan which is absolutely essential to a success of a start-up. If people are not the key focus area the start-up cannot succeed. The HRand People plan needs to be budgeted in the initial phase itself.

Hiring the right person is one of the biggest challenges for the start-up – it is not that getting people is a problem but getting the right-fit certainly is for most start-up organizations. Many a times compromises are likely to be made to get the organization moving quickly hoping that the incumbents will learn and adapt as we go along – something which a start-up needs to be careful about in my opinion.

All start-ups need people who are innovative, adaptable and flexible, analytical, emotionally intelligent, team players and have willingness to learn. They should be willing multi-taskers. Easily said than done – how do we find this out in an interview of an hour or two at the most? The founder’s or CEO’s experience or gut-feel may not be sufficient to make those judgements. There is a professional way of doing thisby putting the person through professional Competency Assessment or Personality (Psychological) Tests.

As the organization matures and grows retention of good people becomes the challenge.Attracting,developing and retaining an amazing team are the hallmarks of success for any start-ups success. If there are right people they will design and redesign success strategies and fight for the organization’s success.

What HR policies should be there? How shouldthe elements of legality, predictability, fairness, equity and control be built into them require in-depth thought and insight as does the business plan. What has succeeded in one organization may not in another as each organization have a unique character and personality. Having policies is not good enough it is their proper implementation which is the tougher part and leads to dissatisfaction in most organizations over a period of time.

Just like business strategies and plans change the HR policies need to be revised and re-engineered keeping in view the business needs.

Making sure that the there is adequate focus on people besides other areas is most important in my opinion.

More Visit :- http://www.cengrow.com/

Making Performance Management Work effectively

Managing Performance and keeping the workforce motivated is becoming increasingly complex and difficult particularly for the young brigade who is far more mobile and impulsive.
No system is perfect and permanent in any organisation. We need to continuously improve and adapt our processes to the changing environment.
Most organizations do have some form of Performance Management System as in recent times even Performance Appraisal is called the same. Firstly, let me clarify that Performance Appraisal is only one of the elements of the Performance Management System.
A robust Performance Management System (PMS) has 4 distinct sub-processes:
1. Formal Target Setting Process cascading down from the Annual Business Plan. It encompasses a participatory approach and is an open, transparent,data-based and an alignedprocess wherein the organization seeks to set challenging but realistic targets for all its employees.
2. Monitoring and Control involves an institutionalised and an on-going process for giving feedback, coaching and counselling to keepthe performance on track. This is the most important part of PMS and the organization needs to build the competence of its employees – it requires specialized training. This has invariably been a weakness in most organizations we have worked for in the last 30 years
3. The Performance Appraisal against the targets set in step 1 and any revisions thereafter. This requires the elements of subjectivity to be reduced and objectivity brought in. For this the appraisal form needs to be well designed. Self-appraisal often helps to bring acceptance and reasoning in the whole process. Appraiser and Reviewer both need to be data-based and objective to keep personal biases out.
4. A clearly defined Reward and Recognition Policy linked with thePerformance Appraisal contributes to building a motivated work-force. This needs constant review and updating year on year.
It is desirable to have the whole process fully documented with timelines with responsibilities clearly demarcated.
Other process such as Career and Succession Planning need to be in place for Performance Management to be more effective. Some Organizations do keep the two processes independent. However, the retention of talent has thrown a big challenge to many organizations as they grapple with balancing these processes.
More Visit :- http://www.cengrow.com/

How to Use Psychometric Testing in Hiring

According to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, approximately 18% of the companies these days are using personality tests in the recruitment procedure, and surprisingly, this number is growing at the rate of 10-15% on an annual basis- as per many industrial and organizational psychologists and the Association of Test Publishers.

Psychometric testing proves that there are certain cognitive and personality tests which help the new employees to succeed in their field and boost them for their future. Since the cost of a bad hire is extensively estimated to be a year’s salary; there are huge incentives for organizations to get hiring right. Due to lack of knowledge, unfortunately, many organizations use the wrong psychometric assessments in a wrong way and here are the followings they ought to know to minimize the potential risks and maximize their predictive accuracy, as Cengrows is helping you to achieve:

Know the law: the organization ought to keep in mind, the legal compliance when they want to add psychometric tests to their pre-employment screening system. The assessment tools, especially cognitive ability tests need to be job- relevant due to the presence of anti- discrimination laws. Competency mapping is included too for psychomotor testing.
Business needs should be known: these tests won’t help you unless you don’t have well- established measures of job performance. These days, organizations are focusing more on the predictors or independent variables rather than concentrating on dependent variables. It is important to know that if an industry doesn’t have quantitative measures of employee performance on the job, then there is no source for statistical correlations of how good these tests predict their performance. In such a case, you need to be dependent on the assessment center.
Risk of cheating is reduced: the tests like cognitive ability tests are conducted in order to safeguard the candidate; organizations should ‘proctor’ the assessment test, either by monitoring him via video conference, or noting their activities directly. But keep in mind that some candidates may be tempted to play a smart act with the result. You must compare the reference of the candidate and his interview ratings with their results to ensure whether the two are consistent or not. Such things are useful in the sales department where to need to have a smart candidate and you can be easily fooled by people by ‘impression management’. Using multiple psychometric tests can actually help the organizations to get a more consistent picture. You have to perform such tests in limit and never try to over-do it because sometimes, even a well-developed, predictive assessment battery and legally defensible won’t be of any worth if the candidate feels it being over time-consuming.
Must share the results with the candidates: every candidate has the right to see their effect these days- as per “informed consent” and few organizations also provide access to the reports based on the psychometric tests that the applicants take. Whether the candidate accepts the employment offer or not, there are both- the ethical as well as the pragmatic benefits of sharing the result.
Test the tests: job performance of an individual must be evaluated quantitatively, which give the company criteria for correctness. While hiring managers and HR, one must consume the right methodology to select and retain the authentic psychometric tests.

To undergo all these points as mentioned earlier, one ought to know and understand the business needs and make sure that you find a test that evaluates the characteristics. Some laws prohibit the company from discriminating the privacy of the candidate, but no legislation prohibits the company from using strange assessment tools.

To know more visit: Cengrow

Projective tests: Have a keener eye for talent

COMPETENCY BASED INTERVIEW A projective test is a type of personality test in which the individual is made to respond to ambiguous scenes, words or riddles. This kind of analysis emerged from the psychology of thought, which suggests that people have their behavioral traits and urges which might leave an impact on the business organizations they work with. These projective tests were intended to uncover such unconscious desires that are hidden from a normal behavior of an individual.

The projective techniques require more time and skill to administer than more objective testing methods and hence are an efficient method in assessing an individual’s competencies on the organization. They are very useful to employers in helping them obtain a comprehensive picture of a person’s personality mark the traits that they foresee as valuable to their organization and channelize it for their own as well as individual’s benefit.

The projective techniques directly or indirectly imply to competency based interviews, which have a sole purpose in an organization: to test employee’s skill. So, as interviewers you may be more interested in candidate’s experience or previous qualifications, what you need to know is whether you have the right skills to take the position on in your firm as different companies compete with different goals. You can also practically test how candidates would react in given situations. So rather than concerning yourselves with candidate’s past achievements, place emphasis on predicting how he/she would behave in a certain scenario in a business is driven environment.

The tasks in a competency based interview would range from oral and written communication to planning, organization and problem-solving. So, it is time for you as an entrepreneur to match the right skills with the right candidate and see your business grow. Cengrow has achieved this mastery with time; it is equipped with all modern techniques in analyzing candidate’s profile and his behavior to make sure your he/she does justice to the role been given. It is all a growing corporate firm needs, a workforce not smartest in the room but brightest to do the job that is assigned. Cengrow will help organizations grow through these everyday situations in which most of the business leaders fail to identify the right talent for their needs of activities. Some key competencies that employers look for in a candidate include:

Teamwork
Responsibility
Communication skills
Decision making
Leadership
Problem-solving
Goal orientation

A consultation firm helps you have a plethora of all these in the working class you hire. But where do you find one reputable company? Cengrow has been the people’s choice since past 30 years. The applications designed here helps organizations make prudential decisions when it comes to recruiting the right talent, getting relevant data from past and current and optimally utilizing the talented workforce to encourage them to do better. Cengrow, to sum up, is not just a consultation firm, but a potential power you can trust for fulfilling your ambitious business goals.

Logical Reasoning Test – Your Path To Success

imagesss

Our personality impacts how we respond to situations or behave socially. Being implicit in our understanding of people or being intuitive is part of our psychological behaviour. Logical reasoning tests are created to measure the ability to solve problems and identify logical reasoning. It involves selecting a missing shape, number or series as part of the test to demonstrate capabilities for analytical and conceptual thinking.

Each role is defined by a different set of personalities. For example, a salesperson would require to be smart & communicative, a designer needs to be creative; while a manager needs to be curious, a leader to lead the team with high spirits and enthusiasm while being motivating. Our personality is strongly correlated with our competencies and personality assessments and logical reasoning tests help in determining those competencies faster and in an efficient manner.

Logical Reasoning Tests: Perfect Aptitude Test

Developed by experienced psychologists, Logical reasoning test is timed and is recommended that candidates first get familiarised with the test style and format. Evolving around a set of images or patterns with optional answers, the test can also be referred to as an ‘analytical ability test’, that can be taken by anyone and the preparation includes training your mind to understand patterns, recognise the odd symbols or images and correctly solving the questions. It will also help in knowing the dos and don’ts of the test. Cengrow offers experts that provide personal guidance and determine relevant strengths and weaknesses using analytical ability test and other psychometric tools. This is really helpful in improving an individual’s aptitude test scores and learning the right problem-solving techniques.

Kinds of Logical Reasoning Tests

Assessment centre are digital platforms that enable people to take these tests and help organisations assess multiple qualities in their applicants in a faster efficient way. These tests are based on numerical, Verbal & Diagrammatic reasoning tests and are helpful while selecting candidates for professional jobs. Numerical tests demonstrate how an employee deals with numbers and assesses their knowledge of ratios, percentages, sales analysis and other trends. Verbal reasoning involves reading short passages and answering to questions that assess comprehension skills; while diagrammatic reasoning tests evaluate logical reasoning abilities by measuring the ability to understand flowcharts, diagrams and other sequential diagrams.

Determining Competencies & Candidate’s Potential

Simply put, logical reasoning tests are one type of personality tests that help employers choose and pick the most suited candidate or current employee for a job role. It is a standardised way to assess an individual’s logical behaviour and is quite an efficient approach in conducting interviews.

Assessing people and organizations is a highly specialized job. Cengrow makes this takes easy and manageable for organisations and are ideally placed to help you to gain this insight. Cengrow provides all kinds of assessment and psychometric tests that can help you make a better choice when it comes to selecting the right people with the right qualities.

Recruiters and employers are today utilising a combination of psychometric tests to determine personalities and hidden qualities in an individual. These tests form an important part of the interview structure and a powerful way to acknowledge people’s potential to work with the team and are therefore considered as a major part of the organisation’s decision-making process.

Psychometric Test and Finding the Right Benefits for Leadership

imaghjghjges

Psychometrics is the study of educational and psychological measurements. A psychometric test is an assessment technique that provides feedbacks that defines leadership specific personality traits and identifies key features that the person may have for leadership roles. Psychometric Testing is becoming popular with employers who want to gain insight into an individual’s leadership qualities, motivational style and other personality traits that can help them become better efficient executive leader.

Psychometric Test – Finding the Right Fit

A critical challenge for companies today is hiring and assessing the right talent. Identifying a potential candidate for their skills is difficult and can affect the business performance. Psychometric test uses cutting edge technology that is practical and easily applicable to business environments. It combines critical reasoning tests and psychometric tools to identify capabilities in a person which an organisation requires for better enhanced business performance.

A psychometric test provides employers an accurate analysis and insight of the candidate’s suitability to the required role. Recruitment also becomes easier once employers and the human resource development team gets accessible well-validated results and know how ‘fit’ the candidate will be for the job role based on his personality and ability.

It is a more objective approach to measure and access personality profiles and traits than the otherwise subjective measurements and offers an impartial judgement for selection. It is a fair way to judge with consistent results. It is indeed a powerful and a proven tool for delivering significant business value to organisations looking for the best fit and helps decision making process more streamlined. Further understanding people’s strengths and weaknesses will also help know what motivates them or how one can improve their potential by added skills etc. This can be beneficial for organisations to make decisions regarding promotions and offering them work depending on their abilities to perform better.

Additionally the assessment also helps discover new potential employers that may not have been identified at first, but have the ability to transform with added skills and trainings for succession management.

Cengrow designs and develops future-forward psychometric assessments, which uses technology to connect competencies and personalities by measuring intellect, emotional intelligence and behavioural values. Psychometric tests are transforming the modern workplace and is also improving the ability to perform or carryout the designated tasks in a much efficient way. It requires close collaboration and assists companies to select those candidates who are performers and will be a good ‘fit’ to both the company’s culture and role and also drive business performance to success.

Psychomotor Testing: Efficient Operational performance

Psychomotor Testing is a unique yet an important element of the hiring process in companies. Covering a full range of job-specific aptitudes, cognitive ability and personality tests, this test offers a comprehensive solution to hire and manage the right employee and accurately predict performance metric for specific roles.

Why is it Important?

Psychometric tests cover a mix of ability and aptitude tests that includes a specific questionnaire on competency mapping to help deliver a clear and concise insight into the candidate’s talent, attitude and attributes. It highlights the key performance areas of the employee and helps companies to understand the behaviour and psychic of an individual. Interviewers can get a first-hand insight on employee by assessing the logical reasoning abilities of an individual and how one responds to changing situations or challenges that sprout in a working environment.

Benefits of Psychomotor Testing

Conducting Psychomotor Testing not only benefits an organisation in assessing and hiring the right candidates but also helps in improving the organisations internal workforce.

Most of the Psychomotor Testing are prepared with multiple-choice questions and timed. Unlike other tests, these tests do not have a right or wrong answer but focuses on the candidates/employee’s personality and general outlook. Moreover, these tests can be conducted offline and can also be integrated and automated online, making them easy to use and convenient for all kinds of companies.

It is important for organisations today to focus on evaluating performance and growth potential of its employees and most of the companies are adapting and preparing psychometric tools including a questionnaire on competency mapping that helps employers introspect and enhance their workforce and gauge the right talent. Cengrow, a global consulting firm designs and conducts performance management tests along with a range of assessment solutions including psychometric testing, competency mapping and other tools that help businesses lead and perform better.

These kinds of questionnaires offer role clarity and make the selection process simpler and much more effective than the traditional hiring method of just interviewing the candidates.

Organisations following competency mapping have benefitted immensely by getting a chance to identify potential employees, analysing the person’s core strengths, key competencies and how one reflects in a demanding work atmosphere. Additionally, competency mapping provides an insight on a person’s work style and specific skills that may be suitable of the open or higher position in and within the organisation. By giving a fair insight of the employee, the employers can effectively map the right person to the specific job and help him perform better or move up with the roles fitting his personality.

In short, competency mapping helps identify qualifies individuals, assesses performance of the existing workforce and focuses on enhancing productivity of the organisations objectives and reach its overall objective for a successful growth.

It is time to select and develop your organisations human asset by choosing an experienced business consulting firm like Cengrow that offers tailor-made solutions like competency mapping assessments and psychomotor testing to help you hire the right talent. It is time to adapt new tools and methodologies that enhance your organisation’s goal setting, performance appraisals and employee’s career planning in a better more improved way.

Competency Assessment – Key to Better Hiring

One of the most challenging tasks for the human resources – HR team in any organisation is to search, find and choose the right talent. Competence at work is crucial for projects productivity and in the overall growth of an organisation. When it comes to recognizing employee competencies, most organisations fail to recognise and utilise their true talent and skills. This is the reason so many organisations today conduct competency assessments or ask employees to undertake a competency mapping questionnaire that help them effectively hire and manage their workforce.

Competency Assessment – Placing Right People in The Right Jobs

Competency assessment is a process that has been designed to measure and assess an individuals or a group’s performance consistently in relation to the business requirements of the organisations they are enrolling or applying for. The process includes a competency mapping questionnaire that the employee answers and helps organisations understand and identify key attributes and skills that the person has in order to fulfil his job roles & responsibilities. In fact the employee too will be happy to be fit for the job he is assigned to and that shall help him build a positive relationship with co-workers, seniors and coordinated better internally.

Psychomotor testing not only helps gauge a person’s performance effectiveness but also his ability to process and follow instructions and react to situations succinctly.

Vital Requirement for All Organisations

Competency assessment is vital to all organisations big or small, new or old as it assists in hiring the right talent. It can also help organization in a variety of other tools and measures including a 360 degree feedback that helps in job promotions, internal assessments etc.

Every company needs to implement competency mapping assessment and make it an essential exercise. It will enhance the performance of each role and will help improve training and development procedures and in turn improve functional and technical competencies of the workforce.

The business environment is constantly changing and with a dynamic business it is imperative for the human resources to implement the right competency mapping and truly evolve talent management, development and overall employee appraisal format.

In recent times, global competition defines an organisation’s growth and business strategies need to be implemented for efficient workforce. Technology presents new solutions and with new tools and applications being launched constantly, customised assessment solutions including psychometric tests, competency mapping and other career-based approaches have enhanced human resource’s management and have proven positive in enhancing the organisations productivity and overall growth. So if your organisation is in need to match the right talent with the right jobs, get in touch with a business consulting firm like Cengrow, a respected and recognised international consulting firm that specializes in designing, preparing and conducting competency assessments, psychomotor tools, Critical Reasoning Test and psychometric testing for leadership and many other proven methodology and tolls for organisations and sectors located globally.

Critical Reasoning Tests – Helping Organizations Recruit Better

we-make-sure-that-your-people-contribute-to-your-organizations-strategic-goals-cengrow

With increasing demands on recruiting people with intellectual skills, a flexible skill set and diverse sources of knowledge, organisations are now adapting methods and tools that involve the employees taking a critical reasoning test.

How Critical Thinkers Thinks

Remember a critical thinker will raise relevant questions, gather & access information, interpret everything with a well-reasoned conclusion, thinks open-mindedly and communicates effectively to figure out even the most complex of issues. It is an important skill that can be learn and applied to life situations that calls for reflection, needs thorough analysis and planning. This trait helps you make the right choice, decide better and solve problems in a very effective manner.

Critical thinkers are an Asset to the Company

Critical thinkers examine their actions and see why they make the decisions they do. And that is what makes them an asset to the company. This person can think well and solve problems systematically. They have an open mind that is flexible to change with changing environment and can change their views based on new acquired knowledge. Most of all they can figure the difference between facts and opinions.

Critical thinking helps form better communication as it helps the person understand other’s views, thoughts and experiences clearly. In a fast changing workplace this helps enhance work relations and benefits in working with different people belonging to diverse backgrounds.

Critical thinking refers to being able to make out judgements with reasons that are logical in nature and are well-thought out. It helps employees and managers to look at a situation from all view points and weigh down possible solutions before concluding or coming up with a final answer.

Critical reasoning tests are held to understand the mental activity of the person rather than just his emotional sense. Undergoing this test helps activates flow of ideas, symbols and associations and involves a complex process of reflection and analysis that bring forth concepts and reasons. This way, an individual does not simply accept all arguments but also questions such arguments or questions and helps in concluding the right answer.

How to Improve Your Critical Reasoning Scores:

There are numerous ways to master critical reasoning but the top three tips that help improve a critical reasoning test performance involves giving the simplest of answers that the test makers can understand, expressing the answers in clear concise manner that uses easy to understand language and most importantly to understand what is being asked. Once you can adopt these tips, you can crack your scores perfectly!

An experienced company like Cengrow (Centre for Growth Alternatives) is one among global leaders in management consulting firms and has transformed businesses in all sectors and regions in India and across the planet. They offers a range of capability enhancement solutions that are designed and conducted to meet an organisations objective on improving competencies of people on behavioural sciences and objective-based skill training in technical, functional and cross-functional areas.