This is a guest post written for us by eTeamUps.
Many talented HR and Talent professionals still rely on the ‘gut feel’ approach to assessing team fit. While human judgement is incredibly useful, it doesn’t always hit the mark in making the right selection decisions.
When I ask senior-level managers how they assess team fit, I am astounded by how many of them respond with something like, “I take them to the pub and see how we get on” or “the team has coffee with them and afterwards rates how much they like them.”
Selecting candidates based on professional affinity, or perceived ‘team chemistry’ can lead to a team of friends. This might be useful if the team objective is to have fun together, but for tasks requiring innovation, diversity in work-styles is critical. Recent research indicates that there is a “right” mix of team member work-styles that can lead to a top performing team. Furthermore, high performing teams don’t often feel the chemistry immediately as there is sometimes friction when integrating some aspects of diverse work-styles.
If the role you are hiring for is team-based, systematically collecting information during your selection process that taps into how well a candidate will function as part of the team is critical. Use the latest research in team science to inform which work style compatibilities are likely to be key drivers of team success. For example, research indicates that the odds of being a top performing team are 57 times more likely for teams composed of members with a high concern for others.
Modern tools such as eTeamUps can help you to better understand the suitability of candidates for team-based positions. eTeamUps incorporates the latest research findings to generate compatibility scores and insights to help companies hire for team fit and form teams that are more likely to be high performing. It’s completely different from other team or personality assessments available, because it was specifically designed to maximize the prediction of team performance at the point of team team formation.
Adding some rigor to assessing team fit will pay off in the end as you have happy team members that work well together. Save the pub for “team building”, not for selection.
