"Make sure you’ve got the things in place to track that data in a simple way that accurately tells the story."
Olivia Black
Client Solutions Director
Assessment only pays back when the data it produces gets used well. For most organizations, that is where implementation stalls: access, interpretation and confidence.
Hannah Mullaney talks to Olivia Black, who has run assessment as a consultant and in-house at Emirates Group and Deutsche Bank. They cover why one data point rarely tells the whole story, how hiring manager dashboards cut the back-and-forth, how recruiters can defend a process with confidence, and why onboarding keeps falling between teams.
In this episode
Olivia draws on more than a decade of designing assessment for clients and running it in-house to explain where assessment data goes wrong, and what the organizations that get it right do differently.
It’s a practical listen for anyone in-house who owns assessment and has to make it stick with recruiters, hiring managers and the wider business.
- Why a single data point rarely tells the whole diversity story
- What gets in the way of accessing usable assessment data
- How hiring manager dashboards cut the back-and-forth for recruiters
- Matching data outputs to the role: simple for volume, detailed for leaders
- How group profiles help shape teams and personalized learning pathways
- How recruiters can handle hiring manager challenge with confidence
- Olivia’s top three tips for anyone in-house who owns assessment
- …and so much more!
00:00:00 Hannah (Host)
Hello and welcome to The Deep Dive. I’m Hannah Mullaney, Client Solutions Director at Saville Assessment, and each episode I’ll be joined by an industry expert to discuss the hottest topics in assessment today. Let’s dive in.
00:00:20 Hannah (Host)
Hello and welcome to today’s episode of The Deep Dive. We’re going to be talking about the challenges of using assessment within organizations. And I’m joined by Olivia Black, one of Saville Assessment’s very own boomerang employees. Welcome, Olivia.
00:00:35 Olivia Black
Thank you.
00:00:37 Hannah (Host)
Olivia, you recently joined us as associate director, having spent a number of years in industry. I wonder if you could set the scene for us by just talking a little bit about your career to date?
00:00:50 Olivia Black
Sure. And I will try and keep this brief. But I started my business psychology career, I guess I’d say working for Saville Assessment, or Saville Consulting as it was back then and was part of the first kind of property trainee scheme. And they did the program back when Peter Saville, Professor Peter Saville was still a huge part of the organization. So I was very kind of lucky to kind of work under him and worked for Saville for about eight years, always in the consultancy space. So working with clients to design assessment solutions, train on assessments and general support with clients, with assessment usage globally, I was really keen to get some in-house experience so then made the view to go and work for Emirates Group and had the opportunity there to move out to Dubai and became part of the talent identification team that we’re essentially a team of in-house psychologists and focus on all things related to assessment. So my role involved a lot of kind of profiling of seeing potential senior leaders coming into the organization and advising on their potential suitability for roles, but also then designing assessment solutions and building out the framework that we were implementing there. And then decided to move back to the UK. So after being there for seven years, moved back to the UK and secured a role with Deutsche Bank as their global head of assessment and had been working there for about two and a half years and building out the assessment strategy predominantly for all things related to recruitment. So what we’re going to do around recruitment and how we assess and bring people into the organization and a lot of my work at that time will say focus on starting to build that out and implement it for early careers where they have a huge and early careers global program. So you’re kind of building out this new assessment solution around the world. But then started to miss Saville and that kind of consultancy space. So an opportunity came back, came up even to come back. And here I am back at Saville as an associate director.
00:03:27 Hannah (Host)
And we are so delighted. So lots of experience, super varied, all really interesting. And I guess you’ve now sat on both sides of the fence, so you’ve sat on the consultancy side, you sat on the in-house side. So with all of that experience that you’ve had, what would you say were the biggest challenges from an assessment perspective facing organizations today?
00:03:53 Olivia Black
Yes, So I think there are a few. I think from my experiences, what I have really seen is that the focus on data is becoming increasingly important. And so whenever you’re rolling out any kind of assessment process, it’s all about data. But how can we use data in the right way? How do we kind of keep it simple? So there’s really this kind of theme around data understanding and appropriate use of that. And there’s also something I’ve experienced really is with the recruitment teams themselves. I think there’s a lot of focus on transitioning to kind of more kind of people, partners. And with that is this expectation of having the expertise on assessment and on kind of the data and analytics. Yeah, but there isn’t necessarily the experience with that yet. So there is a lot of kind of focus on building those skills and capabilities and we look at the kind of future skills we see again, kind of linking back to data and analytics and insights those are featuring as those kind of top future skills and particularly with recruiters as well. So there’s, there’s something around that kind of Yeah. Experience piece and then lastly, I would also say that and I think this is probably been something that has been around for a while, but I think people still aren’t quite getting it right. And it’s about how we’re using that assessment data and really making the links to talent development, because often those teams are separate and completely different functions. So how do we really connect those dots and make sure that that data is really being utilized across? I think is quite a big challenge.
00:05:54 Hannah (Host)
The Holy Grail. Yeah, absolutely. And interesting stuff. Maybe let’s start on the data point, because I think that’s a really good one to make. And I think the words data and analytics have been buzzwords in organizations for quite a while now, and I think everyone wants to sort of squeeze as much value as they can out of any data that they’re gathering. But I don’t necessarily think everyone knows how to do that. Where do you think organizations struggle with this? What are they doing wrong?
00:06:30 Olivia Black
Firstly, there’s often a struggle to access the data. Yeah, so there’s a real accessibility piece here, but then I think once it’s there, there can be so much data. It’s about looking at the right thing and making sure data isn’t misused. And I think particularly in assessment. So if I think of, you know, examples of rolling out new assessment processes and you’re really wanting to kind of understand the impact that’s happening and diversity is so important and that’s something that most organizations, I believe, would be looking at and wanting to understand. What’s the impact that assessment process might be having on, you know, certain diverse populations that we’re really wanting to kind of build and bring in more into an organization. So if you’re looking at just that one step in isolation and thinking, okay, we’re seeing that, you know, X amount of females are getting through from this step, some of them might just stop there and say, great, we’re getting, you know, X amount of females or, you know, we’re not getting that many coming through and just using that one kind of data point that isn’t really telling the whole story. So really it’s about looking at building the story, really understand that you’re telling it in the right way. So, okay, but what about previously? How many applications are we getting? Three. What is the representation of females at that stage and how does that change as we go through the recruitment process? And that will start to tell you the real story. And also kind of making comparisons to before and after. So again, kind of being able to access the data in order to make comparisons is, you know, something that’s very important. But I think it’s always about looking at the right thing and making sure you’re looking at the whole picture and not kind of using one piece of data that could potentially be missed and misunderstood.
00:08:43 Hannah (Host)
That makes sense. What are the access issues? Why is that problematic in organizations?
00:08:49 Olivia Black
It’s often because of HR Systems and there’s lots of, I guess, advances with AI and a lot of kind of technology. But actually and, you know, lots of companies have invested really heavily into bringing in applicant tracking systems which can do a lot of things, but sometimes they can make the kind of pulling the data and from these systems can be very difficult or the data isn’t very usable. Yeah, and particularly in recruitment, it is a hard place to really kind of make sense of the data because often you’ve just got requisitions which are constantly changing and the data is kind of flowing in real time. So it’s, it’s I guess often the problem is getting the real time data and understanding what that looks like because it keeps evolving. But also there’s a bit of a kind of user person kind of issue because it also relies on people updating systems and inputting data correctly into the system in order for it to be correct. So often things can get pulled and, you know, we can look like we’ve got that time to hire. That’s really long, but it’s just because somebody forgot to update something and to into the system. So there’s a kind of case of kind of accessing it, pulling it, then trying to make sense of it and like work out what’s actually accurate.
00:10:29 Hannah (Host)
That data and I guess educate everyone who interfaces with that technology or is responsible for some sort of data in the importance of it being accurate and up to date and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. So that everybody understands the value.
00:10:46 Olivia Black
Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s that kind of the dashboard kind of part that is then maybe after missing from a lot of kind of systems. Yeah. And that’s what people are having to create themselves and make sure all kind of feeds through.
00:10:59 Hannah (Host)
And yes and in lean recruitment teams that really time consuming activity. Yeah. Just as you say puts quite a lot of pressure on.
00:11:09 Olivia Black
Exactly.
00:11:10 Hannah (Host)
Exactly what have you seen organizations do really well in this space.
00:11:14 Olivia Black
And I think it’s where they then build in specific teams and to do that. So the actual kind of analytics specialist who are completely expert in being able to create dashboards and understand the data so they can challenge it correctly, so I’ve seen that work really nicely. And then it’s starting to make the data a lot more accessible, but also making it visible to a much broader audience. So not just having it contained within, you know, a recruitment team, but having it kind of shared across the business because line managers are the ones who often want to know what’s going on, what, where, what’s happening with my role and how many candidates do I have, What are they up to in the process? So being able to kind of cut out all those kind of middle two and fros and just being able to access the data themselves is a huge kind of progression and really helps. So I see that work really nicely when organizations have implemented kind of hiring manager dashboards.
00:12:23 Hannah (Host)
Yeah, So it’s you’re kind of using those analytics to help with stakeholder management and kind of information flow. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
00:12:31 Olivia Black
Yeah. And I guess from an assessment perspective, bringing that in kind of more specifically than I guess really is where you do kind of bring in someone with a background. I mean that kind of business psychology background, just help ensure that you’re looking at data in the right way and with an assessment process, really making sure you’re looking at the right type of data for that process. So if it’s for early careers or, you know, volume hiring process, do we want to look at lots and lots of different scores and try and make sense of lots of different scores to make decisions? Or do we want something simple that, yeah, giving us the kind of one output that we can make a decision on that we know is right. Yeah. Whereas actually with that work for a leadership position. No, we probably want all those data points. Yeah. Really delve improvement, understand. So it’s kind of designing your data outputs in the right way.
00:13:40 Hannah (Host)
Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And I think something you mentioned earlier was around the need for simplicity, and I guess that probably links to some of what you’ve been saying there. Do you think do you think organizations overcomplicate it?
00:13:55 Olivia Black
I think they can. And yeah, at risk of doing that. And I think that’s where it can help. Having an occupational psychologist kind of make sense of that data and tell that story. And actually what what was some really nice kind of pieces of work I’ve done in the past when trying to support a certain team who are going through a big transformation kind of techno technology. There’s a few years ago where lots of technology teams were going through transformations, transitioning to other ways of working, and the focus was on a very different style of leader. So kind of supporting with helping to make decisions around teams who they’re retaining new individuals coming in. And what really helped was having a an approach that would allow us to look at different approaches to the team. So after understanding each and every individual profile, there’s a lot of data there and each person kind of has things they’re going to bring in, things that they might struggle with to a team that what was an additional data point that was so useful to look at was then the group. So having we using that kind of Saville group a nice plug, but it really did help because we were able then to plot, you know, see what everyone looked like and have everyone plotted in one overview to understand, okay, if we put this person in the role along with these people, what does our team look like? What are we missing? Have we got a lot of people all focusing on one piece? I think probably at the time it was all about pioneering. And actually, are we missing some of the professional? What’s the risk if we do that? Okay, let’s take this person out. Let’s put this person in. What does the makeup look like then? So it just helped to give that different perspective, which was so valuable in helping that team make really important people decisions.
00:16:09 Hannah (Host)
And I guess they didn’t have to do anything to get that view because, Saville plug, again, it comes straight from the system.
00:16:16 Olivia Black
Exactly. A few clicks of a button, but they found it so useful.
00:16:21 Hannah (Host)
And I actually think that those that those analytics, those group overviews that you just described that we use. So often with our clients are really brilliant because they’re distilling assessment data down into something that’s actually really, really simple and just and helping organizations answer the like the questions that really matter to them. Like am I hiring the right candidate or Yeah, what’s the gap in our leadership pipeline? And I was I was working with a client a couple of years ago who used those in a recruitment setting and they were asking the question, are we attracting the right candidates? They looked at the data and this was for a sales role, but it was a very technical sales role. So some of those kind of analytical behaviors were really important. And they looked at the data and actually they realized that the candidates that they were attracting were really low on kind of those analytical behaviors. So they went back to the job descriptions, tweaked them, included more kind of analytical behaviors and language around that. And then, lo and behold, when they looked at the data, again, having made those changes, they found they were attracting the right sort of salesperson. So I think they can give you kind of really tangible benefits. It sort of shows you the power. Getting it right, I think.
00:17:41 Olivia Black
Yeah, yeah. Very interesting.
00:17:43 Hannah (Host)
And perhaps a nice segway onto recruitment. So one of the other challenges that you sort of introduced at the beginning was this idea around kind of a lot of recruitment teams being on that journey and a sort of education when it comes to assessment and what are the what are the implications for recruitment teams here? What does it mean for them?
00:18:09 Olivia Black
Yeah, I think I guess a lot of recruiters are the ones that are so connected to the business and hiring managers and in a need to kind of develop that understanding of what the hiring manager is really looking for. So they at the same time will often have to deal with hiring managers who might have certain preferences or certain people in mind. And when you bring in assessment processes and try to really create discipline around those, it’s difficult because you can experience so much challenge from a hiring manager where the outcome doesn’t match up with what they were wanting to see and hoped for. And sometimes, you know, you get hiring managers who really get on board with the assessments and open to that challenge. But others might be more resistant. And for a recruiter to really challenge that without having all that kind of expertise and experience of using the assets and the.
00:19:15 Hannah (Host)
Confidence that that comes with that. Exactly.
00:19:18 Olivia Black
And that’s a really good point, is often kind of the confidence. It’s hard for them to kind of challenge back and know the points to challenge back. And I think that’s something that I probably didn’t really fully appreciate before going in-house. And I think that’s something now that, you know, I always want to kind of help clients with, is helping support with that stakeholder engagement and like always kind of tips for how to challenge. I know we cover a lot of that in training, but at the same time, you know, if people haven’t gone through all of the training and are a bit blind to the assessments, it’s very difficult for them to kind of handle those conversations. I think a lot of like focus is probably on learning how to deal with challenge.
00:20:10 Hannah (Host)
An Absolutely. And I guess a lot within a lot of organizations, you’re unlikely to put your whole recruitment team through kind of in-depth psychometric training, right? So I guess there’s, you know, there’s then usually a need for something a little bit lighter that’s still kind of skills builds confidence, but maybe, you know, doesn’t kind of do that deep dive that you might do if you have a real kind of in-depth expert in assessment.
00:20:37 Olivia Black
Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:40 Hannah (Host)
I think it’s a really interesting point. And I think if I think about the recruitment teams that I work with or have worked with over the years, there’s always one that comes to mind when I have these sorts of conversations and they are by far the most mature recruitment team in terms of assessment use. And they set up their processes. They are militant about the process and about defending the process. If a line manager comes and says, I don’t need to do anything, I just want to hire this person, they say, Nope, not possible. They need to go through the process. They’re really, really good at defending it. Interestingly, though, a over half, I think, of the recruiters in that team used to work in an assessment provider. So there’s a really, really strong understanding of assessment. And so I think that probably just goes to show the kind of power of that understanding and the and the associated confident.
00:21:35 Olivia Black
Yeah, yeah massively where I have probably I’ve seen both sides because again I’ve seen I’ve seen it where it’s not necessarily the recruiters who have that background but there’s a team who does and so they will pull that team and pull them into the conversations to help with that challenge. And it works really nicely at that kind of partnership. But when you don’t have a team like that in place and they don’t have the assessment background, then it is hard for them to kind of, yeah, challenge back. And there’s always this kind of desire to want to please the hiring manager and work with them, keep that relationship going. And so yeah, I think, yeah, it’s definitely an interesting topic and you know, thinking more and more how can we support in that area.
00:22:27 Hannah (Host)
Absolutely. What would be the kind of top tips you would give people in that situation? So those folks in a team where there’s not that expertise and experience in that and there isn’t maybe another team in the business that they can pull from. So that’s sort of a bit more on their own. What would what advice would you give them?
00:22:44 Olivia Black
I think probably a lot of it comes down to how the assessments are implemented in the first instance. So if you know, you’re an organization who doesn’t have any kind of set assessments in place right now and you’re about to go on that journey, I think I would really highly recommend to have certain individuals from the business be part of those discussions and decisions around assessment providers so that there’s people involved. Yeah, and almost like advocates and sponsors from the business so they can really kind of support to kind of build engagement. And I guess credibility for, for the tools I’ve seen seen it in in the Middle East. But actually there’s quite a lot of organizations that have a very mature use of assessments as you kind of saying with your example as well. And so they’re very well respected and you don’t get as much challenge. But when I guess the organizations who are less mature in their use of assessment, that’s where there is going to be a lot more challenge. But if people are brought along in the journey, I think that will massively help. So stakeholder engagement is so critical and just having lots of conversations, lots of kind of building awareness. This is this is the tool, this is what it does, this is the advantages and also having success stories that you can pull on with data to support better data points. But little success stories and case studies can also really help to yeah, win people over essentially. And keeping that discipline I think still.
00:24:46 Hannah (Host)
Yes, yes, yes. We’ve talked quite a lot about recruitment and you mentioned at the beginning this sort of Holy Grail idea of recruitment and talent teams were working better together. And I guess it probably links back to the to the data point as well. And so, you know, if you’re a talent development team and you’ve identified a gap in your leadership pipeline, yes, you might try and develop that gap. As we know, not all behaviors is developable. Some are easier to develop than others. And sometimes you might not have the time to develop those behaviors. So actually, it might be better to then strategically recruit for those sorts of behaviors. So I think there were real advantages. And in those two teams working together, and I’ve certainly seen, I think over recent years more and more organizations kind of trying to do that. And in your experience, how common is it to have to have that set up where you’ve got recruitment teams and talent development teams working very, very closely together?
00:25:53 Olivia Black
I don’t think very common. And I think it’s maybe seen a bit more at the very top end. So really kind of critical leadership positions. Yeah, I think there maybe is a bit more of that. Yeah, and that’s why I see it being done really well. So when there’s a thorough and leadership assessment process that all of the findings and outcomes from that are shared with somebody who if one organization kind of has transition coaches that are assigned to these leaders, say they’re sharing those insights with that individual. Yeah. Who then once the leader is comes in, kind of uses that and picks up the conversation that yeah I’ve kind of started and I think that’s where it’s really nice and they can start to build out this transition plan and help that that helps the leader a lot more settling into that organization and navigating the organization. I’ve, I think, kind of below that is I don’t see it being done so much and I think there’s yeah, I think there’s a real whitespace there I guess to do more of it and using things like onboarding reports to have all the assessment data and input to actually kind of really support individuals. I guess it also comes down to line managers and their capability and capacity to do that. But I think yeah, there’s a real I think we’re still not getting it right in a lot of areas. I’m just thinking back to another organization where we were starting to do that a lot more when they were going through big kind of change programs and a lot of work was done when they were kind of forming young teams. Always at the example I was mentioning earlier, once they did have their team in place, then they did again use all of that data. We looked at the group profiles again, they kind of gotten special kind of agile coaches. I then worked really closely with the talent development team and we created learning pathways for individuals for the whole team. And it was great because we had such granular data to be able to really personalize those learning pathways for the individual, but also understand from a group perspective collectively what are the things that they need to be thinking about and what the kind of watch falls and therefore create a whole program around? Yeah, and that worked so nicely. But yeah, other than that, I haven’t seen lots of examples where the two worked together because the teams are often so separate.
00:28:55 Hannah (Host)
And do you think that that that’s fundamentally the problem or the first problem to overcome? Like what, what is it that’s holding organizations back?
00:29:04 Olivia Black
I think that’s that is a big part of it. I mean, sometimes also just systems can grow as it sees it, getting the data from one place to another. But if people are using one system for talent development as well, then that that can really help, but that can also cause quite an issue. I think. And I think I think maybe it’s just the kind of missing piece around that being on the priority list because, you know, each team has their focus, they’ve got their priorities. So the gap in the middle, maybe people just aren’t thinking about it as much. Yeah, because it’s no none of their responsibilities and parties. So, yeah, it’s an interesting one. I do, Yeah. I’m, I’m not sure if you’ve got any insight into that. You would think.
00:30:05 Hannah (Host)
I think the I think you’re exactly right. I think what’s been really interesting whenever I have had conversations with recruitment teams that we’re working with already on the assessment side of things and you know, sort of introduced or brought in some of the onboarding solutions and said, look, you could get loads more value out of this data and they look they’ve, they’ve loved the solution, but they’ve kind of gone, it’s not really our remit. But then you go, you go, okay, well let’s chat to the talent development folk and they’re like, it’s not really our remit. So I think onboarding is sort of falling between the cracks a little bit. Having said that, I do feel like I’m seeing in much larger organizations roles now that are looking very specifically at onboarding. And so I do wonder if some organizations are recognizing that and recognizing the need to have somebody or a team responsible for it. And I wonder if we’ll see that more and more.
00:31:05 Olivia Black
Yeah, yeah, that will be interesting. And yeah, I’m thinking again, there are lots of teams that have onboarding teams, but the onboarding teams are very much focused on all the transactional, the admin, and maybe that’s where we might see that evolution as those teams actually start to focus more on those some of those human aspects. But then yeah, I think that’s a good point, is who does the onus really fall with? And actually is it again back to the line manager?
00:31:35 Hannah (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. Because even if we do see more of a focus on onboarding from an assessment perspective, actually I think what you’ll probably see is then three silos rather than two silos. So I think there’s still I think that’s still the, you know, the question of, yeah, how do you get everyone to sort of come together I think is quite a big one and kind of owning that partnership as well. I don’t have the answer for that. No, and that’s probably a whole other podcast episode. So maybe we’ll say we’ll save that one for another time.
00:32:12 Olivia Black
One for OD, special.
00:32:15 Hannah (Host)
Exactly. And Olivia, to close this out, I think there’ll be a number of people listening to this podcast, to it in-house. You have assessment as part of their remit. So speaking maybe to to those folk, what would be your top three pieces of advice that you would give them today? Ooh, Well.
00:32:39 Olivia Black
I think firstly getting the assessment provider right.
00:32:46 Hannah (Host)
And that’s Saville Assessment.
00:32:49 Olivia Black
And I’m not saying that as a, as a plug for Saville, but I think is like a really obviously great Yes. But it’s a really like it is a really good point and having you know worked with tools that aren’t tools, I think it is so important to get the provider right and the assessment solution right and to really think through that framework and and, you know, ensure that you’re getting the right technical advice from your provider and that they can support and you know, their credible and what they’re talking about and know their stuff. So I really would say that is a big thing and can really help if you’ve got these right things in place. And I would say secondly and the data going back to that but making sure that you are looking at the right data, that you’re thinking through how to track that return on investment, tracking the things that are important to the business. And that kind of links to my third point, which I’ll come to. But if you know what challenges the business are likely to have to, in your assessment, measure those things. So diversity, so important, make sure you’re measuring that and anything else that you know the businesses are going to want to know about. Make sure you’ve got the things in place to track that data in a simple way that accurately tells the story. Yeah. And work with any analytics teams to help. And I’ve done that in the past and it’s so beneficial to work with individuals like that because they really do present data in a way that makes it really clear to you, to the business, to work with those teams that great. And then thirdly, the stakeholder management. So don’t underestimate change and the impact that it can have on people and people’s reactions to it. Something that you think might be simple and for you, you can clearly see the benefits, others don’t. And I think I really feel and have experienced that recruitment and assessment is actually something that a lot of people feel they’re experts at in the business and will really kind of try and show you their experience. Yeah, you know, they’ve been doing it for X amount of years interviewing. Yeah. And so I think it’s unfortunately for people who are experts in world, it’s almost like an area where we have to kind of really show that, Yeah, actually there’s a lot of science out there and there’s a lot more to it than interviewing people. And but to do that in a way that isn’t just challenging back at them, but just helping to show that we’re all working towards the right outcome. Yeah, all kind of working together. Yeah. And I’ll just explain to you some of the research points and information that’s going to help them kind of win them over slowly. But I think, yeah, don’t underestimate the impact it can have on people and bring them along the journey. So engage with all the stakeholders, really think through all your key stakeholder players, work with your kind of HR. Business partners. If you get them on board, they can really help to get the business on board as well. So, yeah, really kind of work with as many people as you can. Yeah. Almost kind of overcommunicate. Yeah, that’s a bunch. Then under communicate.
00:36:38 Hannah (Host)
Yeah. Olivia it’s been an absolute pleasure and quite a hoot. The bloopers reel has got a lot from us today!
00:36:48 Olivia Black
It really has.
00:36:50 Hannah (Host)
Thank you so much for joining us.
00:36:51 Olivia Black
Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
00:37:02 Hannah (Host)
We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Deep Dive. If you have, please remember to like and subscribe to. Stay tuned for our latest content. If you want more information on any of the topics you’ve heard today, check out the show Notes for case studies, resources and articles. I’ve been Hannah Mullaney. See you next time on The Deep Dive.
Hello and welcome to The Deep Dive. I’m Hannah Mullaney, Client Solutions Director at Saville Assessment, and each episode I’ll be joined by an industry expert to discuss the hottest topics in assessment today. Let’s dive in.
00:00:20 Hannah (Host)
Hello and welcome to today’s episode of The Deep Dive. We’re going to be talking about the challenges of using assessment within organizations. And I’m joined by Olivia Black, one of Saville Assessment’s very own boomerang employees. Welcome, Olivia.
00:00:35 Olivia Black
Thank you.
00:00:37 Hannah (Host)
Olivia, you recently joined us as associate director, having spent a number of years in industry. I wonder if you could set the scene for us by just talking a little bit about your career to date?
00:00:50 Olivia Black
Sure. And I will try and keep this brief. But I started my business psychology career, I guess I’d say working for Saville Assessment, or Saville Consulting as it was back then and was part of the first kind of property trainee scheme. And they did the program back when Peter Saville, Professor Peter Saville was still a huge part of the organization. So I was very kind of lucky to kind of work under him and worked for Saville for about eight years, always in the consultancy space. So working with clients to design assessment solutions, train on assessments and general support with clients, with assessment usage globally, I was really keen to get some in-house experience so then made the view to go and work for Emirates Group and had the opportunity there to move out to Dubai and became part of the talent identification team that we’re essentially a team of in-house psychologists and focus on all things related to assessment. So my role involved a lot of kind of profiling of seeing potential senior leaders coming into the organization and advising on their potential suitability for roles, but also then designing assessment solutions and building out the framework that we were implementing there. And then decided to move back to the UK. So after being there for seven years, moved back to the UK and secured a role with Deutsche Bank as their global head of assessment and had been working there for about two and a half years and building out the assessment strategy predominantly for all things related to recruitment. So what we’re going to do around recruitment and how we assess and bring people into the organization and a lot of my work at that time will say focus on starting to build that out and implement it for early careers where they have a huge and early careers global program. So you’re kind of building out this new assessment solution around the world. But then started to miss Saville and that kind of consultancy space. So an opportunity came back, came up even to come back. And here I am back at Saville as an associate director.
00:03:27 Hannah (Host)
And we are so delighted. So lots of experience, super varied, all really interesting. And I guess you’ve now sat on both sides of the fence, so you’ve sat on the consultancy side, you sat on the in-house side. So with all of that experience that you’ve had, what would you say were the biggest challenges from an assessment perspective facing organizations today?
00:03:53 Olivia Black
Yes, So I think there are a few. I think from my experiences, what I have really seen is that the focus on data is becoming increasingly important. And so whenever you’re rolling out any kind of assessment process, it’s all about data. But how can we use data in the right way? How do we kind of keep it simple? So there’s really this kind of theme around data understanding and appropriate use of that. And there’s also something I’ve experienced really is with the recruitment teams themselves. I think there’s a lot of focus on transitioning to kind of more kind of people, partners. And with that is this expectation of having the expertise on assessment and on kind of the data and analytics. Yeah, but there isn’t necessarily the experience with that yet. So there is a lot of kind of focus on building those skills and capabilities and we look at the kind of future skills we see again, kind of linking back to data and analytics and insights those are featuring as those kind of top future skills and particularly with recruiters as well. So there’s, there’s something around that kind of Yeah. Experience piece and then lastly, I would also say that and I think this is probably been something that has been around for a while, but I think people still aren’t quite getting it right. And it’s about how we’re using that assessment data and really making the links to talent development, because often those teams are separate and completely different functions. So how do we really connect those dots and make sure that that data is really being utilized across? I think is quite a big challenge.
00:05:54 Hannah (Host)
The Holy Grail. Yeah, absolutely. And interesting stuff. Maybe let’s start on the data point, because I think that’s a really good one to make. And I think the words data and analytics have been buzzwords in organizations for quite a while now, and I think everyone wants to sort of squeeze as much value as they can out of any data that they’re gathering. But I don’t necessarily think everyone knows how to do that. Where do you think organizations struggle with this? What are they doing wrong?
00:06:30 Olivia Black
Firstly, there’s often a struggle to access the data. Yeah, so there’s a real accessibility piece here, but then I think once it’s there, there can be so much data. It’s about looking at the right thing and making sure data isn’t misused. And I think particularly in assessment. So if I think of, you know, examples of rolling out new assessment processes and you’re really wanting to kind of understand the impact that’s happening and diversity is so important and that’s something that most organizations, I believe, would be looking at and wanting to understand. What’s the impact that assessment process might be having on, you know, certain diverse populations that we’re really wanting to kind of build and bring in more into an organization. So if you’re looking at just that one step in isolation and thinking, okay, we’re seeing that, you know, X amount of females are getting through from this step, some of them might just stop there and say, great, we’re getting, you know, X amount of females or, you know, we’re not getting that many coming through and just using that one kind of data point that isn’t really telling the whole story. So really it’s about looking at building the story, really understand that you’re telling it in the right way. So, okay, but what about previously? How many applications are we getting? Three. What is the representation of females at that stage and how does that change as we go through the recruitment process? And that will start to tell you the real story. And also kind of making comparisons to before and after. So again, kind of being able to access the data in order to make comparisons is, you know, something that’s very important. But I think it’s always about looking at the right thing and making sure you’re looking at the whole picture and not kind of using one piece of data that could potentially be missed and misunderstood.
00:08:43 Hannah (Host)
That makes sense. What are the access issues? Why is that problematic in organizations?
00:08:49 Olivia Black
It’s often because of HR Systems and there’s lots of, I guess, advances with AI and a lot of kind of technology. But actually and, you know, lots of companies have invested really heavily into bringing in applicant tracking systems which can do a lot of things, but sometimes they can make the kind of pulling the data and from these systems can be very difficult or the data isn’t very usable. Yeah, and particularly in recruitment, it is a hard place to really kind of make sense of the data because often you’ve just got requisitions which are constantly changing and the data is kind of flowing in real time. So it’s, it’s I guess often the problem is getting the real time data and understanding what that looks like because it keeps evolving. But also there’s a bit of a kind of user person kind of issue because it also relies on people updating systems and inputting data correctly into the system in order for it to be correct. So often things can get pulled and, you know, we can look like we’ve got that time to hire. That’s really long, but it’s just because somebody forgot to update something and to into the system. So there’s a kind of case of kind of accessing it, pulling it, then trying to make sense of it and like work out what’s actually accurate.
00:10:29 Hannah (Host)
That data and I guess educate everyone who interfaces with that technology or is responsible for some sort of data in the importance of it being accurate and up to date and all of that sort of stuff. Yeah. So that everybody understands the value.
00:10:46 Olivia Black
Yeah, exactly. And I think it’s that kind of the dashboard kind of part that is then maybe after missing from a lot of kind of systems. Yeah. And that’s what people are having to create themselves and make sure all kind of feeds through.
00:10:59 Hannah (Host)
And yes and in lean recruitment teams that really time consuming activity. Yeah. Just as you say puts quite a lot of pressure on.
00:11:09 Olivia Black
Exactly.
00:11:10 Hannah (Host)
Exactly what have you seen organizations do really well in this space.
00:11:14 Olivia Black
And I think it’s where they then build in specific teams and to do that. So the actual kind of analytics specialist who are completely expert in being able to create dashboards and understand the data so they can challenge it correctly, so I’ve seen that work really nicely. And then it’s starting to make the data a lot more accessible, but also making it visible to a much broader audience. So not just having it contained within, you know, a recruitment team, but having it kind of shared across the business because line managers are the ones who often want to know what’s going on, what, where, what’s happening with my role and how many candidates do I have, What are they up to in the process? So being able to kind of cut out all those kind of middle two and fros and just being able to access the data themselves is a huge kind of progression and really helps. So I see that work really nicely when organizations have implemented kind of hiring manager dashboards.
00:12:23 Hannah (Host)
Yeah, So it’s you’re kind of using those analytics to help with stakeholder management and kind of information flow. Yeah, Yeah, exactly.
00:12:31 Olivia Black
Yeah. And I guess from an assessment perspective, bringing that in kind of more specifically than I guess really is where you do kind of bring in someone with a background. I mean that kind of business psychology background, just help ensure that you’re looking at data in the right way and with an assessment process, really making sure you’re looking at the right type of data for that process. So if it’s for early careers or, you know, volume hiring process, do we want to look at lots and lots of different scores and try and make sense of lots of different scores to make decisions? Or do we want something simple that, yeah, giving us the kind of one output that we can make a decision on that we know is right. Yeah. Whereas actually with that work for a leadership position. No, we probably want all those data points. Yeah. Really delve improvement, understand. So it’s kind of designing your data outputs in the right way.
00:13:40 Hannah (Host)
Yeah, that absolutely makes sense. And I think something you mentioned earlier was around the need for simplicity, and I guess that probably links to some of what you’ve been saying there. Do you think do you think organizations overcomplicate it?
00:13:55 Olivia Black
I think they can. And yeah, at risk of doing that. And I think that’s where it can help. Having an occupational psychologist kind of make sense of that data and tell that story. And actually what what was some really nice kind of pieces of work I’ve done in the past when trying to support a certain team who are going through a big transformation kind of techno technology. There’s a few years ago where lots of technology teams were going through transformations, transitioning to other ways of working, and the focus was on a very different style of leader. So kind of supporting with helping to make decisions around teams who they’re retaining new individuals coming in. And what really helped was having a an approach that would allow us to look at different approaches to the team. So after understanding each and every individual profile, there’s a lot of data there and each person kind of has things they’re going to bring in, things that they might struggle with to a team that what was an additional data point that was so useful to look at was then the group. So having we using that kind of Saville group a nice plug, but it really did help because we were able then to plot, you know, see what everyone looked like and have everyone plotted in one overview to understand, okay, if we put this person in the role along with these people, what does our team look like? What are we missing? Have we got a lot of people all focusing on one piece? I think probably at the time it was all about pioneering. And actually, are we missing some of the professional? What’s the risk if we do that? Okay, let’s take this person out. Let’s put this person in. What does the makeup look like then? So it just helped to give that different perspective, which was so valuable in helping that team make really important people decisions.
00:16:09 Hannah (Host)
And I guess they didn’t have to do anything to get that view because, Saville plug, again, it comes straight from the system.
00:16:16 Olivia Black
Exactly. A few clicks of a button, but they found it so useful.
00:16:21 Hannah (Host)
And I actually think that those that those analytics, those group overviews that you just described that we use. So often with our clients are really brilliant because they’re distilling assessment data down into something that’s actually really, really simple and just and helping organizations answer the like the questions that really matter to them. Like am I hiring the right candidate or Yeah, what’s the gap in our leadership pipeline? And I was I was working with a client a couple of years ago who used those in a recruitment setting and they were asking the question, are we attracting the right candidates? They looked at the data and this was for a sales role, but it was a very technical sales role. So some of those kind of analytical behaviors were really important. And they looked at the data and actually they realized that the candidates that they were attracting were really low on kind of those analytical behaviors. So they went back to the job descriptions, tweaked them, included more kind of analytical behaviors and language around that. And then, lo and behold, when they looked at the data, again, having made those changes, they found they were attracting the right sort of salesperson. So I think they can give you kind of really tangible benefits. It sort of shows you the power. Getting it right, I think.
00:17:41 Olivia Black
Yeah, yeah. Very interesting.
00:17:43 Hannah (Host)
And perhaps a nice segway onto recruitment. So one of the other challenges that you sort of introduced at the beginning was this idea around kind of a lot of recruitment teams being on that journey and a sort of education when it comes to assessment and what are the what are the implications for recruitment teams here? What does it mean for them?
00:18:09 Olivia Black
Yeah, I think I guess a lot of recruiters are the ones that are so connected to the business and hiring managers and in a need to kind of develop that understanding of what the hiring manager is really looking for. So they at the same time will often have to deal with hiring managers who might have certain preferences or certain people in mind. And when you bring in assessment processes and try to really create discipline around those, it’s difficult because you can experience so much challenge from a hiring manager where the outcome doesn’t match up with what they were wanting to see and hoped for. And sometimes, you know, you get hiring managers who really get on board with the assessments and open to that challenge. But others might be more resistant. And for a recruiter to really challenge that without having all that kind of expertise and experience of using the assets and the.
00:19:15 Hannah (Host)
Confidence that that comes with that. Exactly.
00:19:18 Olivia Black
And that’s a really good point, is often kind of the confidence. It’s hard for them to kind of challenge back and know the points to challenge back. And I think that’s something that I probably didn’t really fully appreciate before going in-house. And I think that’s something now that, you know, I always want to kind of help clients with, is helping support with that stakeholder engagement and like always kind of tips for how to challenge. I know we cover a lot of that in training, but at the same time, you know, if people haven’t gone through all of the training and are a bit blind to the assessments, it’s very difficult for them to kind of handle those conversations. I think a lot of like focus is probably on learning how to deal with challenge.
00:20:10 Hannah (Host)
An Absolutely. And I guess a lot within a lot of organizations, you’re unlikely to put your whole recruitment team through kind of in-depth psychometric training, right? So I guess there’s, you know, there’s then usually a need for something a little bit lighter that’s still kind of skills builds confidence, but maybe, you know, doesn’t kind of do that deep dive that you might do if you have a real kind of in-depth expert in assessment.
00:20:37 Olivia Black
Yeah. Yeah.
00:20:40 Hannah (Host)
I think it’s a really interesting point. And I think if I think about the recruitment teams that I work with or have worked with over the years, there’s always one that comes to mind when I have these sorts of conversations and they are by far the most mature recruitment team in terms of assessment use. And they set up their processes. They are militant about the process and about defending the process. If a line manager comes and says, I don’t need to do anything, I just want to hire this person, they say, Nope, not possible. They need to go through the process. They’re really, really good at defending it. Interestingly, though, a over half, I think, of the recruiters in that team used to work in an assessment provider. So there’s a really, really strong understanding of assessment. And so I think that probably just goes to show the kind of power of that understanding and the and the associated confident.
00:21:35 Olivia Black
Yeah, yeah massively where I have probably I’ve seen both sides because again I’ve seen I’ve seen it where it’s not necessarily the recruiters who have that background but there’s a team who does and so they will pull that team and pull them into the conversations to help with that challenge. And it works really nicely at that kind of partnership. But when you don’t have a team like that in place and they don’t have the assessment background, then it is hard for them to kind of, yeah, challenge back. And there’s always this kind of desire to want to please the hiring manager and work with them, keep that relationship going. And so yeah, I think, yeah, it’s definitely an interesting topic and you know, thinking more and more how can we support in that area.
00:22:27 Hannah (Host)
Absolutely. What would be the kind of top tips you would give people in that situation? So those folks in a team where there’s not that expertise and experience in that and there isn’t maybe another team in the business that they can pull from. So that’s sort of a bit more on their own. What would what advice would you give them?
00:22:44 Olivia Black
I think probably a lot of it comes down to how the assessments are implemented in the first instance. So if you know, you’re an organization who doesn’t have any kind of set assessments in place right now and you’re about to go on that journey, I think I would really highly recommend to have certain individuals from the business be part of those discussions and decisions around assessment providers so that there’s people involved. Yeah, and almost like advocates and sponsors from the business so they can really kind of support to kind of build engagement. And I guess credibility for, for the tools I’ve seen seen it in in the Middle East. But actually there’s quite a lot of organizations that have a very mature use of assessments as you kind of saying with your example as well. And so they’re very well respected and you don’t get as much challenge. But when I guess the organizations who are less mature in their use of assessment, that’s where there is going to be a lot more challenge. But if people are brought along in the journey, I think that will massively help. So stakeholder engagement is so critical and just having lots of conversations, lots of kind of building awareness. This is this is the tool, this is what it does, this is the advantages and also having success stories that you can pull on with data to support better data points. But little success stories and case studies can also really help to yeah, win people over essentially. And keeping that discipline I think still.
00:24:46 Hannah (Host)
Yes, yes, yes. We’ve talked quite a lot about recruitment and you mentioned at the beginning this sort of Holy Grail idea of recruitment and talent teams were working better together. And I guess it probably links back to the to the data point as well. And so, you know, if you’re a talent development team and you’ve identified a gap in your leadership pipeline, yes, you might try and develop that gap. As we know, not all behaviors is developable. Some are easier to develop than others. And sometimes you might not have the time to develop those behaviors. So actually, it might be better to then strategically recruit for those sorts of behaviors. So I think there were real advantages. And in those two teams working together, and I’ve certainly seen, I think over recent years more and more organizations kind of trying to do that. And in your experience, how common is it to have to have that set up where you’ve got recruitment teams and talent development teams working very, very closely together?
00:25:53 Olivia Black
I don’t think very common. And I think it’s maybe seen a bit more at the very top end. So really kind of critical leadership positions. Yeah, I think there maybe is a bit more of that. Yeah, and that’s why I see it being done really well. So when there’s a thorough and leadership assessment process that all of the findings and outcomes from that are shared with somebody who if one organization kind of has transition coaches that are assigned to these leaders, say they’re sharing those insights with that individual. Yeah. Who then once the leader is comes in, kind of uses that and picks up the conversation that yeah I’ve kind of started and I think that’s where it’s really nice and they can start to build out this transition plan and help that that helps the leader a lot more settling into that organization and navigating the organization. I’ve, I think, kind of below that is I don’t see it being done so much and I think there’s yeah, I think there’s a real whitespace there I guess to do more of it and using things like onboarding reports to have all the assessment data and input to actually kind of really support individuals. I guess it also comes down to line managers and their capability and capacity to do that. But I think yeah, there’s a real I think we’re still not getting it right in a lot of areas. I’m just thinking back to another organization where we were starting to do that a lot more when they were going through big kind of change programs and a lot of work was done when they were kind of forming young teams. Always at the example I was mentioning earlier, once they did have their team in place, then they did again use all of that data. We looked at the group profiles again, they kind of gotten special kind of agile coaches. I then worked really closely with the talent development team and we created learning pathways for individuals for the whole team. And it was great because we had such granular data to be able to really personalize those learning pathways for the individual, but also understand from a group perspective collectively what are the things that they need to be thinking about and what the kind of watch falls and therefore create a whole program around? Yeah, and that worked so nicely. But yeah, other than that, I haven’t seen lots of examples where the two worked together because the teams are often so separate.
00:28:55 Hannah (Host)
And do you think that that that’s fundamentally the problem or the first problem to overcome? Like what, what is it that’s holding organizations back?
00:29:04 Olivia Black
I think that’s that is a big part of it. I mean, sometimes also just systems can grow as it sees it, getting the data from one place to another. But if people are using one system for talent development as well, then that that can really help, but that can also cause quite an issue. I think. And I think I think maybe it’s just the kind of missing piece around that being on the priority list because, you know, each team has their focus, they’ve got their priorities. So the gap in the middle, maybe people just aren’t thinking about it as much. Yeah, because it’s no none of their responsibilities and parties. So, yeah, it’s an interesting one. I do, Yeah. I’m, I’m not sure if you’ve got any insight into that. You would think.
00:30:05 Hannah (Host)
I think the I think you’re exactly right. I think what’s been really interesting whenever I have had conversations with recruitment teams that we’re working with already on the assessment side of things and you know, sort of introduced or brought in some of the onboarding solutions and said, look, you could get loads more value out of this data and they look they’ve, they’ve loved the solution, but they’ve kind of gone, it’s not really our remit. But then you go, you go, okay, well let’s chat to the talent development folk and they’re like, it’s not really our remit. So I think onboarding is sort of falling between the cracks a little bit. Having said that, I do feel like I’m seeing in much larger organizations roles now that are looking very specifically at onboarding. And so I do wonder if some organizations are recognizing that and recognizing the need to have somebody or a team responsible for it. And I wonder if we’ll see that more and more.
00:31:05 Olivia Black
Yeah, yeah, that will be interesting. And yeah, I’m thinking again, there are lots of teams that have onboarding teams, but the onboarding teams are very much focused on all the transactional, the admin, and maybe that’s where we might see that evolution as those teams actually start to focus more on those some of those human aspects. But then yeah, I think that’s a good point, is who does the onus really fall with? And actually is it again back to the line manager?
00:31:35 Hannah (Host)
Yeah, absolutely. Because even if we do see more of a focus on onboarding from an assessment perspective, actually I think what you’ll probably see is then three silos rather than two silos. So I think there’s still I think that’s still the, you know, the question of, yeah, how do you get everyone to sort of come together I think is quite a big one and kind of owning that partnership as well. I don’t have the answer for that. No, and that’s probably a whole other podcast episode. So maybe we’ll say we’ll save that one for another time.
00:32:12 Olivia Black
One for OD, special.
00:32:15 Hannah (Host)
Exactly. And Olivia, to close this out, I think there’ll be a number of people listening to this podcast, to it in-house. You have assessment as part of their remit. So speaking maybe to to those folk, what would be your top three pieces of advice that you would give them today? Ooh, Well.
00:32:39 Olivia Black
I think firstly getting the assessment provider right.
00:32:46 Hannah (Host)
And that’s Saville Assessment.
00:32:49 Olivia Black
And I’m not saying that as a, as a plug for Saville, but I think is like a really obviously great Yes. But it’s a really like it is a really good point and having you know worked with tools that aren’t tools, I think it is so important to get the provider right and the assessment solution right and to really think through that framework and and, you know, ensure that you’re getting the right technical advice from your provider and that they can support and you know, their credible and what they’re talking about and know their stuff. So I really would say that is a big thing and can really help if you’ve got these right things in place. And I would say secondly and the data going back to that but making sure that you are looking at the right data, that you’re thinking through how to track that return on investment, tracking the things that are important to the business. And that kind of links to my third point, which I’ll come to. But if you know what challenges the business are likely to have to, in your assessment, measure those things. So diversity, so important, make sure you’re measuring that and anything else that you know the businesses are going to want to know about. Make sure you’ve got the things in place to track that data in a simple way that accurately tells the story. Yeah. And work with any analytics teams to help. And I’ve done that in the past and it’s so beneficial to work with individuals like that because they really do present data in a way that makes it really clear to you, to the business, to work with those teams that great. And then thirdly, the stakeholder management. So don’t underestimate change and the impact that it can have on people and people’s reactions to it. Something that you think might be simple and for you, you can clearly see the benefits, others don’t. And I think I really feel and have experienced that recruitment and assessment is actually something that a lot of people feel they’re experts at in the business and will really kind of try and show you their experience. Yeah, you know, they’ve been doing it for X amount of years interviewing. Yeah. And so I think it’s unfortunately for people who are experts in world, it’s almost like an area where we have to kind of really show that, Yeah, actually there’s a lot of science out there and there’s a lot more to it than interviewing people. And but to do that in a way that isn’t just challenging back at them, but just helping to show that we’re all working towards the right outcome. Yeah, all kind of working together. Yeah. And I’ll just explain to you some of the research points and information that’s going to help them kind of win them over slowly. But I think, yeah, don’t underestimate the impact it can have on people and bring them along the journey. So engage with all the stakeholders, really think through all your key stakeholder players, work with your kind of HR. Business partners. If you get them on board, they can really help to get the business on board as well. So, yeah, really kind of work with as many people as you can. Yeah. Almost kind of overcommunicate. Yeah, that’s a bunch. Then under communicate.
00:36:38 Hannah (Host)
Yeah. Olivia it’s been an absolute pleasure and quite a hoot. The bloopers reel has got a lot from us today!
00:36:48 Olivia Black
It really has.
00:36:50 Hannah (Host)
Thank you so much for joining us.
00:36:51 Olivia Black
Thank you. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure.
00:37:02 Hannah (Host)
We hope you’ve enjoyed today’s episode of The Deep Dive. If you have, please remember to like and subscribe to. Stay tuned for our latest content. If you want more information on any of the topics you’ve heard today, check out the show Notes for case studies, resources and articles. I’ve been Hannah Mullaney. See you next time on The Deep Dive.
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