2-minute read
Lauren Jeffery Smith – Principal People Scientist
16th April 2026
I’ve been eager to get back to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Annual Conference ever since I first attended in Chicago in 2024. The scale of the event, the practical relevance of the sessions, and the chance to connect with I–O psychologists from some of the world’s biggest organizations are what makes SIOP unlike anything else in the field. Outside work, I also love to go and see live music, particularly jazz, so you can imagine my excitement when I saw that New Orleans would be the setting for this year’s conference.
I’ll be chairing the symposium Skills, Career and Leadership Development: Perspectives and Approaches (8am on Thursday, April 30), which will bring together practitioners sharing research and real-world examples from organizations including Verizon and Northside Hospital. The session will cover scaling leadership programs and evaluating the impact of development interventions, with WTW’s Tiffany Shortridge sharing her thoughts and insights on the topics discussed.
My own paper within the symposium, Making Skills Development More Powerful Through Personalization, is something I’ve been working on for a while as we explore new and exciting ways to support skills, career and leadership development using our Wave assessments.
Modern workplaces demand continuous development, but most development interventions treat people as if they are all the same. We know personality shapes how people learn and yet insights from this rarely properly feed into practical, role-specific development guidance. That’s the opportunity I want to explore: how connecting personality science directly to skills development can make interventions more targeted, more motivating, and ultimately more effective.
If you work in talent development, L&D, or people analytics, come along! We’d love to hear your thoughts in the discussion too.
I’m also really looking forward to the panel discussion Generative AI and the Future of Assessment: From Mitigating Cheating to Embracing Innovation (2pm on Thursday, April 30). This will bring together global assessment leaders from TTS, Talogy, Aon, ProboTalent, Hogan, and our very own Chief Science Officer, Rab MacIver.
The panel will cover a wide range of topics relating to the impact AI is having on the world of assessment right now, from the very real challenges around misuse and maintaining the integrity of assessments, to the opportunities to augment current practices, as well as the emerging question of whether AI proficiency itself should be treated as a criterion-relevant skill we should be actively evaluating for.
While there is certainly no shortage of AI sessions on the agenda (I counted nearly 70 with “AI” in the title!), this discussion will provide a unique opportunity to hear the insights of thought leaders from some of the biggest names in assessment who would typically be competing commercially rather than collaborating. We’ll get to see first-hand where their thinking does (and does not!) align on this crucial topic, undoubtedly generating even more questions for us to consider for the future.
This continues to be a relevant conversation and will be a valuable session for anyone working with and using assessments.
I hope to see lots of you in New Orleans! If you’re attending either of our sessions, please do say hello. If you want to come and chat assessments during the coffee breaks, Evan Fisher and Connor Hunsicker will also be hosting the Saville Assessment stand (Booth 310) in the Exhibition Hall throughout the conference.
And if I don’t manage to catch you during the conference itself, you might find me after in one of the many live music venues New Orleans has to offer. Either way, see you there!
