Pekin Insurance

Pekin Insurance, a mid-size insurance company’s hiring managers were dissatisfied with their hiring assessment, claiming it did not help them to hire the caliber of professionals that they were seeking. We worked with top management to clarify their assessment needs and replaced the legacy assessment with the PXTS. As a result, managers value the assessment report and use it as part of their interviewing and hiring decisions. In addition, turnover has gone down and employee engagement has gone up!

In 2015 the V.P. of HR at a mid-size insurance company with around 1500 employees shared with me that they had been using a hiring assessment as part of their recruiting process for over a decade, but not without a lot of pushback from their hiring managers who argued the tool did not help them make a better hiring decision. And, the sales department had chosen to use the DiSC at some point in the last decade because they felt it gave them more substantive information to assist with the selection process than the aforementioned candidate assessment tool did.

So we met with the H.R. leadership and their recruiting team to see if we could assist them. After listening to their recruiting challenges, we proposed a method for getting their managers to become true partners of the recruiting process by educating the hiring manager on how to make a more scientifically predictive hiring decision. We also suggested a new candidate assessment tool, the PXT Select tool that had a better predictive validity history than the tool they were currently using.

We implemented a phased approach starting with:
Train the recruiters on the new applicant assessment tool, the PXTS, and the administrative platform the recruiters will use to invite candidates to take the assessment and deliver the completed report to the hiring manager.

Train the hiring manager on the re-defined selection process, the PXTS tool, how the managers will work with Paramount Potentials to create an “ideal candidate” assessment profile, and how to use the tool as part of the behavioral interview method.
First create “ideal candidate” job profiles for those positions in the company with the following:

• High turnover,
• High growth and/or
• High volume

Create the remaining “ideal candidate” job profiles as a position became open or newly created
The insurance company “went live” with the new process and assessment administration following the above phases being completed.

By involving Pekin Insurance’s recruiters and the hiring managers in the development of the new selection approach, we have been able to re-ignite manager involvement in the recruiting process.
Additional benefits have been reduced turnover and increased employee performance standards. And because of the tool we selected for them, they are now using it to coach performance expectations in the first 90 days of the new hire’s employment.