Of Sheep, Goats, and the Quest for Certainty

Everyone who needs to select someone else for a particular job--CEO, head of school, teacher, coach, spouse--has a problem: the odds of success are terrifyingly low given the costs of failure. This uncertainty and risk drives a Moneyball-esque (see this item in Fast Company) for a psychometric test (or tests) that can tilt the odds in the buyers favor.To be fair, the use of psychometrics as a hiring aid has a long history and has been championed by some of the biggest names in industrial psychology. As an example, Doug Bray's groundbreaking work at AT&T in the second half of the 20th Century and his collaboration with William Byham to found Development Dimensions International (DDI) stands as a case in point. Their work, along with that of numerous others, is deeply rooted in the notion that psychological science can be used to separate the sheep from the goats when it comes to hiring leaders for organizations.The desire to reduce uncertainty (what might be called error variation in the hiring process) is understandable, as is the need to efficiently differentiate among large numbers of candidates. Avionics, in its shift to a "fly by wire" approach to aviation, did much the same thing (at least philosophically) with tremendous success.The problem is that the science of silicon and composites is fundamentally different from that of human behavior. One can use data to be virtually certain in the physical sciences (hence Six Sigma in manufacturing), where the same or even close are impossible when it comes to predicting "carbon units." Moreover, one wonders what (or rather who) gets cast aside by the psychometrics. Would Steve Jobs have passed muster on assessment for an executive job at Apple? Likely not.This does not mean that advanced psychometrics, anchored to a rigorous job analysis and sharing constructs in common with what the job requires, shouldn't play a role. Data can inform the selection process and perhaps help narrow the field somewhat, but we caution against an exclusive reliance on fly-by-wire when it comes to selecting leadership talent.