Executive Assessments
When you’re about to hire or promote an executive, interviews and references only tell you so much. PCI’s executive assessment services give you an independent, psychologist-led evaluation of the leaders you’re considering, measuring their cognitive ability, personality, and leadership style against the demands of the role. You’ll see where each leader is likely to excel, where the risks are, and what it will take to set them up to succeed. And unlike search firms, we don’t recruit, so our only interest is helping you make the right decision.
Why Choose PCI as Your Executive Assessment Firm?
Executive assessments are not all the same, so it pays to compare providers carefully. Our guide to choosing an executive assessment firm lists the questions to ask any partner. Here are the five areas where you’ll see the difference with PCI.
“The information presented is invaluable and has been proven time and again to be incredibly accurate and meaningful.”
— Darrin D., President & CEO
People
Our psychologists each have over 20 years of experience assessing leaders, making hiring recommendations, and offering insights that accelerate executive development. Every client - no matter how much business they do with us - gets assigned senior assessors.
Prediction
Many executive assessments have limited or no research showing that the results predict success in role. We take pride in the many validation studies that we've conducted that show a strong correlation between assessment results and many different work-related outcomes.
Process
We use psychometric test batteries and proprietary norms to evaluate participants on factors that predict success. This is followed by a structured, 1-hour interview with a psychologist that includes feedback to the participant. And, two psychologists work on every assessment to ensure objectivity.
Customization
The importance of culture fit can't be overstated. As a boutique consultancy, we have unmatched flexibility in customizing the executive assessment process to measure what's most important for success in each client's organization.
Value
At PCI, we believe in fair, transparent, value-based pricing. We don't set fees based on what we think a client is willing to pay. You'll find that our standard pricing for psychologist-led executive assessments is reasonable and competitive in the industry.
Book a Discovery Call Today
Talk with one of PCI's lead psychologists to learn more about our approach to assessing leaders. We'll answer all your questions so you can make an informed decision when comparing potential partners.
Three Ways to Use Executive Assessments
Selection
Make hiring decisions with confidence. Compare finalists against the same objective criteria and uncover gaps and risks interviews miss.
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Development
Identify your leaders' strengths to leverage, gaps to fill, and risks to manage with data-driven insights and expert advice.
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Succession Planning
Identify which leaders are ready for bigger roles, which need more time, and which may be well placed.
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Executive Assessments for Selection
Reduce the risk of costly mis-hires
Hiring or promoting an executive who ultimately fails can be one of the most expensive mistakes an organization makes. The cost of a failed executive hire can reach three to five times the individual’s annual salary once you factor in lost productivity, disruption to the team, reputational damage, and the expense of restarting the search. By combining cognitive ability testing, personality assessments, structured interviews, and peer-reviews, we provide an objective, science-based perspective that goes far beyond resumes and references.
With PCI, you can:
- Uncover gaps and risks that aren't apparent from interviews.
- Get expert advice for how to mitigate gaps and risks.
- Compare all final candidates to the same, objective criteria.
- Overcome biases that lead to poor selection decisions.
From your first contact with us, you'll be working with a senior leadership consultant with decades of experience designing and conducting leadership assessments. We don't believe in hand-offs after the sale, so that psychologist will continue to be your primary point of contact. While our approach to onboarding new clients is thorough, it's also expedient. So, we can start implementing a rigorous process as soon as you have your top candidates ready for us to assess.
Executive Assessments for Development
Accelerate growth and retain top talent
Unlike personality "type" tools used by many organizations for development, our assessments are proven to predict actual on the job behaviors. Because our assessments are backed by science, we're able to tell leaders what is holding them back and what they can do to keep moving forward.
With PCI, you can:
- Keep high potentials engaged by investing in their future.
- Give your leaders actionable insights that accelerate change.
- Ensure all high potentials have a written development plan.
We understand that your leaders are busy. And, professional development often gets pushed to the bottom of the priority list. So, we've designed our executive assessment process to maximize value and minimize time commitment.
Your leaders can complete the process in just 4 hours, spread out over a few weeks. Participants say that it's a reasonable amount of time to spend, given the value of the process. The assessment report also accelerates executive coaching by improving self-awareness and giving insights that would take months for the coach to uncover.
Executive Assessments for Succession Planning
Promote the right leaders at the right time
Succession decisions carry high stakes, and relying on performance alone often leads to mistakes. Additionally, promoting a valued leader to a role that's beyond their capabilities is a lose-lose situation. Our psychologist-led, science-backed assessments help you to avoid this by adding objectivity and rigor to your succession planning process.
While performance should be used as one input into the process, it isn't the best predictor of future potential. Most notably, cognitive ability is the single best predictor of success in complex roles. And, the best way to measure this is with psychometric tests. Additionally, personality tests uncover what's inside the person that could help or hinder them in higher pressure roles, when under more scrutiny, and when given more power.
With PCI, you can:
- Identify and invest in leaders with the highest potential to succeed as an executive.
- Increase Board confidence in business continuity.
- Combat biases with objective data and increase diversity at the executive level.
Objective and Reliable by Design
Our clients hire us to do what they can't do themselves or through their search firms - provide an unbiased, objective assessment of their candidates and internal talent. Objective assessments have higher predictive validity than subjective ones because the results are more reliable. So, we've built objectivity into every aspect of our process.
Learn More About Our Approach
Download our Executive Assessment Fact Sheet to learn more about the PCI difference.
How we keep our assessments objective
We Don't Recruit
It's nearly impossible to be both advocate and judge. That's why we don't recruit. Unlike search firms who do assessments, we feel no pressure to make a placement. So, you get an unbiased evaluation of every participant we assess.
Non-invasive, structured interviews
We don't ask about childhood experiences or decisions they made decades ago. These things are subjective, don't predict well, and make people uncomfortable. We also ask the same questions every time to evaluate their career history, personality, leadership style, and self-awareness.
We don't evaluate experience or pedigree
Why not? Because they aren't good predictors of job performance. Also, you don't need a psychologist to evaluate how well the candidate's background matches what you're looking for. That's what search firms do really well.
We weight psychometric data heavily
Scores for all participants are compared to PCI's proprietary norm group and those percentiles serve as the basis for our ratings. Interviews provide secondary data that improves the preciseness of our interpretations of the test data.
We conduct peer reviews
Two psychologists review the test data and interview notes, and assign ratings independently. Then, they come to a consensus using data-driven arguments. Finally, they discuss key strengths and gaps to gain alignment and ensure objectivity.
Interviews are voice only
Our job isn't to make a personal connection with participants. We're hired to provide an objective assessment, so eliminating sources of bias is crucial. The person's mannerisms, appearance, workspace, etc. are irrelevant to our assessment.
“The executive assessments performed by PCI are top shelf. Their analysis is insightful, accessible, refreshingly candid and reasonably priced. They are accustomed to working with tight time demands and high expectations for excellence. PCI delivers every time.”
Dr. Leslie Bracksick
Co-Founder, MyNextSeason
Reduce Risk & Ensure Executive Readiness
Start making the right executive placement decisions with hard data and advice you can trust.