What is the recruitment challenge?

‘Those who build great companies understand that the ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets, or technology, or competition, or products. It is one thing above all others; the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.’

Jim Collins ‘From Good to Great’

Traditional approaches to recruitment tend to be based on screening based on past performance in previous roles and/or academic results; recruiters may also use psychometric profiling to understand preferences or personality types.

What if all of this could be done faster, more objectively and more accurately – and with the confidence that you were making the right decisions about the talent you are hiring?

Why is it especially important to know who you are hiring?

People – a business’s most important resource – are also its greatest source of risk. Getting the right people in the right seats for your business is key to success and one of the biggest challenges that leaders and managers face. Basing hiring decisions on past performance can be costly: just because someone has performed well in the past doesn’t mean they can perform in your unique environment now and in the future.

Research has shown that the cost of a bad hire is typically around £30,000. In addition, mis-hires are likely to have a negative effect on employee morale, team performance and customer retention. It may also lead to large legal bills and less quantifiable costs – particularly in manager’s time – in disengaging the bad hire and re-engaging a, hopefully, less disruptive replacement. The collateral damage to a business’s reputation is immeasurable.

What is CatapultRecruit?

CatapultRecruit is a specialist business intelligence toolset specifically designed to support recruiters and line managers with an accurate, objective and current information about the attitudes, skills and talents new hires will bring to their organisation. Further, it provides the opportunity to objectively screen in those who will be an asset to your organisation and screen out those who would pose a potential risk. Data regarding how to bring out the best in the individual along with any risk factors help define the role of supervisors, training provision and coaching.

The approach that we use to help recruit and onboard talent effectively is:

• Objective and ‘ungameable’
• Measurable
• Future-focused
• Communicable
• Accurate and detailed, and
• A tool for development and progress

CatapultRecruit is underpinned by Axiometrics® profiling which was developed from the value science work of the Nobel-nominated Dr. Robert S. Hartman. It enables us to identify the internal valuing system and associated thinking patterns that influence our attitudes, decisions and consequent actions; it determines why we do what we do.

After more than 40 years of development, Axiometrics® scientists have refined Hartman’s mathematical modelling to measure real-life variables with remarkable accuracy and precision.

Axiometrics® profiling is now widely used to measure and assess capacities and risk attributes of individuals, teams and organisations across the world. It is seen as complementary to other approaches used in human resource management such as those delivered by psychologists, anthropologists and neuroscientists.

What does CatapultRecruit do for you?

We work with recruiting organisations and managers to create a unique benchmark at organisation, department, team or role level that defines ‘good’ for that business. Creating a bespoke benchmark allows you to select attitudes, competencies and behaviours that would be strengths in a given role or organisation and de-select those that would be ‘toxic’. The resulting information will give you information about an individual’s:

• Skills – identifies and measures competencies that discriminate between high and low performers
• Talent – a measure of how well an individual thinks and makes decisions; a measure of performance potential
• Access– a measure of how well an individual can utilise their talent in a specific environment
• Attitude – a measure of biases in one’s thinking that can increase or decrease their reliability to make accurate or reliable decisions

The results are collated in an easy-to-interpret ‘heatmap’.

How is CatapultRecruit delivered?

CatapultRecruit is based on a simple, 20-minute, on-line statement-ordering exercise undertaken by designated staff. It is non-invasive and has the following characteristics:

• Identifies how we make sense of our experiences and, consequently, how we are likely to behave
• Makes no attempt to classify or categorise individuals
• Is based on a single Universal Norm – and emphatically not one ‘created’ to validate a result
• Does not discriminate for age, gender, creed or culture and is validated by the EEOC in the US
• Is able to predict future performance based on current attributes relative to a defined environment

And provides:

• A robust and inclusive benchmarking approach
• Interview Guides to recruiting line managers
• Employability Guides to candidates where required
• Consultancy and support at each step of the recruitment process

What value is added by CatapultRecruit?

CatapultRecruit has been developed to ensure that the recruiting/’owning’ line manager can simply and cost-effectively:

• Screen in those people who will add value to your organisation; screen out those who would pose a potential risk
• Remove unconscious bias from the screening process
• Focus on future vs. past performance in alignment to the needs of the role and organisation
• Improve the new recruits’ ability to get the job done
• Understand individuals’ propensity for ‘risky’ behaviour
• Understand personal leadership and communication styles
• Understand qualities, attributes, strengths and vulnerabilities
• Develop trusted individuals – whose data may be aggregated to create team or organisational-level views – and to get the best out of them whilst retaining the right talent and best performers.