Assessment Reports

Assessment reports contain a confidential evaluation of a candidate, including the motivation and reason why someone is presented. The document is written by the consultant and provided to the client upon candidate presentation.

Assessment reports (AR) are like business cards, but come in the form of a stack of A4 documents. They provide a good insight into the quality of the firm you are dealing with. Sloppy, shoddy and simplistic writing presents like a greasy and stained business card. To my knowledge, people handing out such cards are shunned like a pest.

Unlike a business card, some AR's circulate across the client organization and replicate their impact across multiple decision makers. A slapdash, inane AR will do much damage to the reputation of a search firm. On the other hand, well-written, intelligent and comprehensive AR's can lead to more business. More than once a client praised the professionalism of a firm precisely because of the high quality of candidate reports.

The truth is that quite a lot of consultants and recruiters dislike writing AR's and it shows: spelling and grammatical errors, sleep inducing text that can pass as a cure for insomnia, and worse, missing relevant key elements of the candidates' career history.

Let me spell it out:

The quality of the assessment report mirrors the quality of a consultant and his organization.

I was asked once by a hiring manager to attach the original CV of the candidate to my AR. She claimed it would give her an idea of how a candidate presents himself in written, but indirectly also of our value-add as consultants, especially how deep and detailed we interview. This is the acid test of good AR writing: it must provide a candidate evaluation that is much, much more informative than the original candidate CV.

The Assessment Report should contain the following content:

a. An introduction, usually an impression of a candidate. Here I  include a paragraph a describing my motivation as why a candidate is a good pick for the role, in another I outline his or her motivation to consider the position. This part is key: it must make abundantly clear why a candidate was shortlisted, and why he is motivated to consider the position. Failure to clearly do so makes the assessment report loose its meaning right at the start.

b. A personality, soft skills assessment. Though I am not a psychologist, and I do not administer candidates a battery of psychometric tests, I provide my impression of how a candidate presents, both as a professional and as a person. Furthermore, the behavioural questions I ask allow me to draw a profile of how the candidate in question would fit into the clients' organization.

When we have come across profiles we believe are relevant, clients start to ask "how is he or she", or "how would he or she fit into the role"  ? Is the candidate outgoing, brazen, considerate, eloquent, bottom line oriented, aggressive, assertive, confident, talkative, listening, inquisitive, stylish, analytical, humorless, sophisticated, and so on.... The variety of adjectives is limitless, but the personality is unique.

A great consultant will manage to capture this uniqueness in his personality assessment, because 50% of the hiring decsion will be based on the personality, character and attitude of a candidate.

c. An assessment of hard skills. This covers the basic CV history, but enriched so to speak, with our interview notes. It contains why candidates changed jobs, whom they were reporting to, responsibilities, achievements, as we learned during the interview - which can be quite different, and far more informative than what is represented in the CV.

d. Formal CV history, starting with a detailed outline off the current employment, with current (some do not share those details) and expected compensation, as well the notice period.

I had once a client who recounted to me how the salary expectation of a candidate was stated in the AR as gross, while the candidate clearly told the consultant netto. The mistake only came to surface when the candidate rejected the offer of the client: this search firm lost their client. One single, small mistake lost this search firm a client which is amongst the ten most valuable global technology companies.

e. Education, training and certifications. Some certifications do matter significantly, especially with finance and ITC professionals.

f. Personal details: age, marital status, contact details, and so on....

A complete report can run into 14-15 pages, and it represent the formal result of the work done up to shortlist presentation.

I was surprised during my first months on the job how few clients actually read the AR's. They subject the reports to casual browsing, looking forward to interview as quickly as possible.  Some just pay attention to the CV history, and call with a request why a particular candidate was selected. For some talking goes easier than reading.....

The clients that actually go into a detailed reading of the AR's are usually the most demanding, but also most valuable clients. A well-written and comprehensive assessment report will be a testimony of the thoroughness and diligence of the consultant and firm behind the document. The opposite is equally valid. Consultants and search firms shoot themselves in the feet producing and presenting crap AR's.  Again, caveat emptor !