What Most Teams Miss About Assessments
Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash
They use them to decide. The best teams use them to develop.
Every hiring manager has been there: two exceptional finalists, both nailed the interviews, both have impressive track records, and both would likely succeed in the role. How do you make the final call? More importantly, once you've made that call, how do you ensure your chosen candidate hits the ground running?
Because when the wrong key hire happens, you don’t just lose time. You lose momentum.
The opportunity most teams miss is using assessments as part of the strategy, not just part of the process. While many organizations view assessments purely as a screening tool, forward-thinking teams leverage them for a dual purpose: not just to decide who to hire, but to determine how to develop them.
The High Cost of Getting It Wrong
At the leadership and key-hire level, hiring mistakes are expensive. A mis-hire can easily cost multiples of base salary once you factor in recruiting fees, severance, opportunity cost, lost productivity, and team disruption. But even “good” hires who lack proper onboarding support can take 6–12 months longer to reach full productivity than leaders who start with a structured development plan.
The stakes demand more than gut instinct.
Rethinking the Role of Assessments
Most recruiting processes follow a predictable pattern: screen resumes, conduct interviews, check references, make an offer. Assessments, when used at all, typically appear as a hurdle candidates must clear, another filtering mechanism in an already lengthy process.
This approach misses a critical opportunity.
The best assessment programs do two jobs: they help you choose confidently, and they tell you how to onboard the person you choose.
Strategic assessments serve two distinct but equally valuable functions:
1. The Tiebreaker Function: When you have multiple strong candidates who perform similarly in interviews, objective assessment data provides clarity needed to make a confident final decision.
2. The Development Roadmap Function: Once you’ve selected your candidate, assessment results become a blueprint for their first 90 days and beyond, highlighting potential gaps, learning preferences, and development needs before they show up as performance issues.
Assessment Types and Their Applications
Different assessment categories serve different strategic purposes:
Skills & Technical Assessments: These evaluate specific competencies required for the role. For a Head of Engineering, this might include system design exercises or architecture case studies. For a Controller candidate, financial scenarios or compliance challenges.
As a selection tool: Validates claimed expertise and reveals depth of knowledge
As a development tool: Identifies specific technical areas needing reinforcement or training
Behavioral & Personality Assessments: Tools like Hogan or Predictive Index can illuminate working style, motivators, and interpersonal tendencies. (Tools like DISC can be helpful for communication and coaching, but they’re best treated as development aids rather than pass/fail filters.)
As a selection tool: Helps anticipate culture and team dynamics when interpreted responsibly
As a development tool: Informs management approach, communication strategies, and potential friction points with existing team members
Cognitive Ability Tests: Measure problem-solving, critical thinking, and learning agility.
As a selection tool: Indicates capacity for strategic thinking and complex problem-solving
As a development tool: Less applicable as a “training plan,” though results can inform onboarding pace, complexity, and support
Work Samples & Case Studies: Real-world scenarios or projects similar to what the role will encounter.
As a selection tool: Demonstrates applied skills and decision-making process
As a development tool: Reveals methodological gaps or areas where the candidate’s previous company environment differs from yours
Structured Reference Checks: A consistent reference framework (rather than informal conversations) that explores patterns across leadership, execution, collaboration, and resilience.
As a selection tool: Validates interview impressions with real-world feedback
As a development tool: Identifies recurring blind spots and coaching themes to address early
Use Case 1: Breaking the Tie
You’re hiring a Head of Sales for a high-growth fintech company. After extensive interviews, you’ve narrowed it to two candidates:
Candidate A: 15 years of enterprise sales experience, excellent references, strong cultural fit based on interviews.
Candidate B: 12 years of sales leadership, built two teams from scratch, equally impressive interpersonally.
Both can do the job. Both want the job. Your team is split.
This is where strategic assessment use becomes invaluable. A well-designed sales leadership assessment might reveal:
Candidate A excels at managing established teams but has limited experience building new processes
Candidate B demonstrates strong coaching capabilities but may struggle with the longer sales cycles your product requires
The assessment doesn’t make the decision for you. It reduces guesswork by showing how each finalist tends to operate when the pressure is real. Combined with your company’s actual needs (Are you building from scratch or optimizing an existing team? Is your sales cycle 3 months or 18 months?), you can make a more informed choice.
Use Case 2: The Onboarding Advantage
Here’s where most companies leave value on the table.
You’ve made your selection. Candidate B accepted your offer and starts in three weeks. Most companies would file away the assessment results and move on. Strategic teams do something different.
You sit down with the hiring manager and translate the findings into an onboarding plan:
“The assessment suggests our new Head of Sales has exceptional people development skills, and that she’ll ramp fastest with early exposure to consultative, long-cycle enterprise sales. Here’s what we should do in her first 90 days…”
Suddenly, you’re not reacting to performance gaps six months in, you’re proactively addressing them from day one:
Week 1–2: Pair her with your top enterprise AE for pipeline reviews and customer calls
Month 1: Enroll her in your preferred enterprise sales methodology training
Month 2: Have her shadow complex deal negotiations with the CRO
Month 3: She leads her first enterprise deal with coaching support
Assessments aren’t just data. When used correctly, they become a practical success plan. You’ve:
Reduced time-to-productivity by months
Demonstrated investment in her success from day one
Set clear, data-backed development priorities
Given the hiring manager a structured plan instead of vague “get up to speed” guidance
What To Do With Results: Turn Them Into a 1-Page Onboarding Brief
If you want assessments to drive real ROI, don’t overcomplicate it. Translate results into a one-page brief that the new hire and manager can use immediately:
Role outcomes (first 90 days): 3–5 measurable outcomes
Strengths to leverage immediately: 2–3
Risk factors to monitor: 2–3 (what could derail performance if ignored)
Top skill gaps to close: 2–3
Manager adjustments: communication style, feedback cadence, decision-making preferences
Early stakeholder plan: who to align with in the first 30 days and why
Support plan: training, mentoring, shadowing, coaching
Check-ins: Day 14 / 30 / 60 / 90
This turns an assessment from a report into a shared playbook.
Implementation Best Practices
To maximize both selection and development value from assessments:
Timing Matters: Administer assessments after initial screening but before final rounds. This gives you data for selection decisions and enough lead time to prepare a development plan before the start date.
Choose Validated Tools: Use assessments with proven reliability and validity, particularly for roles with meaningful scope and decision-making responsibility. Unvalidated tools can produce noisy results and increase risk.
Ensure Job Relevance: Every assessment should tie directly to competencies required for success in the specific role. Assessment for assessment’s sake wastes time and can create legal exposure.
Standardize Interpretation: Don’t let every hiring manager interpret results differently. Use a consistent interpretation process (internal trained owner, vendor debrief, or IO-psych partner) so results are applied fairly and consistently.
Protect the Candidate Experience: Be transparent about why you’re using assessments and how results will be used. Candidates are far more receptive when they see you’re investing in their success, not just screening them out.
Combine, Don’t Replace: Assessments should complement, never replace, structured interviews, reference checks, and work samples. The best hiring decisions come from multiple data points.
Share Results Appropriately: If you hire the candidate, share relevant insights with them and their manager. This builds trust and supports honest development conversations early.
Using Assessments Ethically and Fairly
Assessments can be powerful, but only when used responsibly. A few non-negotiables:
Use job-related, validated tools whenever possible
Administer them consistently across candidates for the same role
Avoid “labeling” candidates. Treat results as hypotheses to test, not identities
Watch for adverse impact and consult HR/legal partners when appropriate
Never use a single assessment as a pass/fail decision in isolation
When assessments are applied with consistency and care, they improve both quality of hire and candidate trust.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Over-reliance: No assessment is 100% predictive. Use them as one input among many.
Analysis Paralysis: Don’t let the perfect assessment strategy slow down a time-sensitive hire. A good process executed consistently beats a complex process no one follows.
Ignoring Legal Considerations: Ensure assessments don’t create adverse impact on protected classes. Use validated tools and consult legal counsel when in doubt.
One-Size-Fits-All Thinking: A great assessment for a Controller may be useless for a Head of Marketing. Tailor your approach to the role.
Using Results as Labels: Assessment results should guide questions and onboarding plans, not define a person.
Filing and Forgetting: The biggest missed opportunity. If you don’t use results for development planning, you’re leaving ROI on the table.
The Bottom Line
The companies that win talent aren’t always the ones with the biggest compensation packages. They’re the ones that demonstrate commitment to their people’s success from day one.
By using assessments through a dual lens, as both a selection tool and a development roadmap, you turn what could be a simple checkpoint into a real advantage that:
Increases decision confidence when choosing between strong candidates
Reduces time-to-productivity for new hires
Demonstrates leadership development investment
Provides objective inputs for coaching conversations
Reduces the risk of expensive mis-hires
The assessment isn’t the end of the evaluation process. It’s the beginning of the development conversation.
About Terrace Vanguard LLC
Terrace Vanguard is my executive search and recruiting consultancy. I support companies hiring for key roles, from Director-level leaders to critical individual contributors, across Technology, Fintech, Construction, and Manufacturing sectors. My approach is practical: I help clients make confident hiring decisions, then translate hiring data (including assessments) into an onboarding plan that gets people productive faster.
Hiring right now? Let’s talk about how I can support the search.