Yes, You May Hire People Who Don't Do Well On The Pre-Employment Assessment -- But Is That Wise?

Our focus at Pythia Cyber is behavioral cybersecurity. That means we bring the best in behavioral science and organizational behavior practice to the realm of cybersecurity.

We recently wrote about what it means to make the shift to a talent-based culture. 

Starting out as a talent-based culture has several components, but one of the most obvious pathways is through assessing new employees for talent.

As part of our mission, we have developed three assessments of cybersecurity talent -- front-line, manager, leader -- for the purpose of assessing talents related to effective cybersecurity performance. Talent assessment is entirely a 'normal course of business' in the behavioral science and organizational behavior realms.

An organization that tests for talent has to become used to saying 'no' to candidates that it used to hire. There's nothing wrong with those people. But they lack the new talent that is required to be successful.

A normal human response on the part of the hiring manager is -- but wait I want to hire those people!

Here is a truism that any testing company, consultant, or organization will tell you and it's absolutely true: you as the client may hire anyone you like (or accept them into your academic program) regardless of how they do on your pre-hire assessment. There is no dispute about this. But it's not wise for two main reasons.

First, when you hire (or accept into your program) people who do poorly on your assessment you are demonstrating a cognitive bias. It means that you believe you are OK using subjectivity in evaluating a candidate while the assessment, which is unable to "like" or "dislike" a candidate, is wrong in this case. But you also are saying it's right in other cases that you don't override. So why use it at all? 

You need to be careful doing this because once you start making exceptions for one person or group, people who are not favored in that way might claim you are discriminating against them -- and they're right.

It's your prerogative and you must accept responsibility for the decision.

Second, the pre-hire assessment is implemented to provide a certain set of information. Before you override it you must ask and answer four hard questions, and be honest with yourself in your replies:

1. Why do our candidates score low?

2. Are we recruiting for talent?

3. Am I willing to hire the same level of lower talent that I was looking for before because that's more comfortable for me?

4. Will the increasing challenges we face in cybersecurity be met by the level of talent we have previously had, or do we need to step up our game?

Creating the overlap of technologist and behavioral domains will take time. It will need to happen. Do it wisely.

Ask us how to make wise use of the pre-hire process to set everyone up for success -- including you.

(image credit: David Selbert)