Hire Right the First Time with the Kolbe Assessment

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Personality matters, especially in small businesses where you’re working closely with each team member. But looking at each potential team member’s strengths (as well as your own) can truly help you curate a dream team within your own business.

There’s a lot of talk about different personality tests to help screen candidates for different roles. And while these are important, personality traits will only get you so far in business. If you don’t have the unique strengths it takes to lead, research, implement or just get started, you need to find others who can help you do that.

My go-to is always the Kolbe Assessment. Using an assessment like this can help you narrow the applicant list and give you a smaller pool of prospects to interview. It saves you time and money by hiring the right person with the right strengths for the position, the first time.

For $55, you’ll know exactly what your prospective team members are strong in and where they won’t fit in your business. That’s a small price to pay, compared to the cost of a bad hire.

How Kolbe Assessment Works

Kolbe is a 36-question assessment that helps determine each person’s natural instincts and conative strengths–not their personality traits. If you’ve never used Kolbe before, know that it’s not just for business. It’s a great tool to make the most of any relationship–your roommates, your partner, your children, etc.

In any setting, it’s important to understand people so you can do more with the people you have. It identifies instinctive strengths so you can utilize talent in the right part of your business.

The scores received don’t technically rank individuals in different areas, but rather show where on a continuum the person falls. Since everyone is unique, no score is considered “bad,” but rather just…different.

The Kolbe Action Modes

The Kolbe Assessment identifies four human instincts and quantifies them based on how you answer the given questions.

• Fact Finder identifies how we gather and share information.
• Follow Thru looks at how we arrange and design.
• Quick Start identifies how we deal with risk and uncertainty.
• Implementor tells us how we handle space and tangibles.

When you have prospective team members take the assessment, you’ll be able to identify who is a good fit for a specific position based on their Kolbe score. For example, if you’re looking for an operations person, someone who is strong in implementing and getting things done, you’ll want someone who has high scores in Fact Finder and Follow Thru and likely lower in Quick Start. Someone in a research-heavy role like a writer or developer should score high in Fact Finder.

When to Use the Kolbe Assessment

The larger your business, the more likely you are to use assessments because you’ve seen success in the tool and continue to grow. But when smaller businesses invest in Kolbe, they’re able to make better decisions about who to hire into which roles–which saves them time and money.

I honestly think there’s a place for Kolbe in nearly every business.

But if you want to understand other people and hire people who complement your strengths (rather than duplicate them), it’s important you get to know yourself too. Every business owner should take the Kolbe before having team members or prospects take it. This helps you put the right people in the right roles, identifying which people should do which jobs and how they work together to be more productive.

Kolbe isn’t about finding out what’s “wrong” with someone. Instead, it’s about understanding who each individual is so they can work in their own unique way, capitalizing on that person’s strengths to better your business and your life.