The Boston Consulting Group’s recent white paper, “Creating People Advantage 2010”, says that the number one issue facing companies today is the ability to Manage Talent.  They define Talent Management as the ability to identify, attract, and retain people; the creation and management of talent pools; and the staffing of leadership positions.

 Two tools to help with the Talent Management process is the ProfileXT and the CheckPoint.  In this piece we are going to address the ProfileXT.  In two weeks, we will talk about CheckPoint.  If you have been a frequent reader of these emails, you know I talk a lot about the ProfileXT.  If you have not yet tried this multi-faceted assessment tool, you are missing out on one of the most powerful Talent Management tools available.

According to The Boston Consulting Group:

• “Managing Talent — identifying, attracting, and retaining talent — continues to be the most important future human resources topic.  Corporate capabilities in this area have improved only slightly since our 2008 survey.” 
• “Managing talent, which includes issues such as talent pools and effective staffing of leadership positions, continues to be the most critical topic for executives.” 
• When special projects are set up to address Talent Management within companies, they are usually poorly managed.

If Talent Management was a manufacturing issue or an inventory issue, there would be many successful solutions.  Just think about Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma, Just-in-Time, Push-Pull, etc.  These solutions work because objective data can be gathered and measured and a solution can be applied.  But Talent Management involves people, and trying to create or collect objective data about people’s learning skills, behaviors, and their occupational interests is almost impossible… or is it?

The ProfileXT^® (PXT) is the most technologically advanced, state-of-the-art system available today for measuring human potential and predicting job performance.  The ProfileXT has been completed by almost 600,000 people.  This large, statistical database of results is what everyone taking the PXT is compared.  The PXT assessment first compares an individual against the statistical database.  It can then measure how well an individual fits specific jobs, or specific talent pools, or specific leadership positions, all in your organization.  The “job matching” feature of the PXT is unique, and it enables you to evaluate an individual relative to the qualities required to successfully perform in a specific job or a specific pool of jobs, unique to your company.

This 45-minute, online assessment reveals consistent, in-depth, and objective insight into an individual’s thinking and reasoning style, relevant behavioral traits, occupational interests, and match to specific jobs in your organization.  It helps your managers and you interview and select people who have the highest probability of being successful in a role, and provides practical recommendations for coaching them to maximum performance.  It also gives your organization consistent language and metrics to support strategic workforce and succession planning, talent management, and reorganization efforts.

Best of all, the PXT is extremely cost effective, and the reports are written in plain language that do not require a specialist to interpret the results.