omnet solutions

SAN ANTONIO, TX (PRWEB) December 11, 2006

A combination of assessment solutions that analyze work styles, abilities and skills is necessary to successfully achieve a good hire, according to a new white paper entitled Retain Your Employees Before You Hire Them. The white paper was released today by leading talent assessment provider Harcourt Assessment.

“The most important step to retention begins before the hire,” explains Phillip Weiss, VP, Human Resources, for Harcourt Assessment. “A variety of assessment solutions are available to help employers tackle the problem of employee turnover head-on.”

A thorough, well-conceived and objectively-qualified hiring process results in a better understanding of a candidate as an individual. The key combination is assessing a person’s cognitive abilities, work style and skills. With this layered effort, the right candidates are identified at the start of the recruiting process, and recruiting misfires are significantly reduced. Personality assessments help ensure an employee’s job satisfaction, and determine how well the individual matches an organization’s values and culture.

Harcourt’s talent assessment solutions are grouped for employers’ convenience with solutions available to meet a host of needs, including general tests of skills and abilities, work styles and interests or specific occupational or industry needs. To sustain retention efforts, Harcourt also provides assessments for continued development in the areas of team building, personality and self-awareness.

Assessments help identify individuals with a strong passion for the company and the job – providing recruiters with the ability to quickly weed out those who may not be retainable.

“Personality and ability are complex qualities that cannot be adequately determined from an interview or by reading a resume. Just because someone is qualified on paper doesn’t mean they will be ideal for the job,” adds Judy Chartrand, Director, Talent Assessment. “Assessment provides employers with better information about candidates. With the technology and expertise available today, it makes good sense to incorporate assessments into the hiring strategy.”

The report can be downloaded by visiting Harcourt Assessment. It includes case studies, survey findings and data on employers’ turnover challenges and provides data on how personality and ability assessments can deliver a high-performance workforce.

For more information on Harcourt Assessment, visit http://www.AssessTalent.com.

About Harcourt Assessment

Based in San Antonio, Harcourt Assessment is a leading provider of high-quality assessment instruments and testing programs used by educators, psychologists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, human resource professionals, admissions and credentialing professionals, and businesses. With 85 years of experience in the assessment field, Harcourt Assessment uses a combined approach of measuring an individual’s work style and abilities to help their clients, including half of the Fortune 500, optimize their hiring process. The company is a unit of Harcourt Education, which is the global education brand of Reed Elsevier Group plc (NYSE: RUK and ENL). Reed Elsevier is a world-leading publisher and information provider operating in the science and medical, legal, education and business-to-business industry sectors.

This press release was distributed through eMediaWire by Human Resources Marketer (HR Marketer: http://www.HRmarketer.com) on behalf of the company listed above.

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The DISC assessment and profile tools are among the most widely used tools of their kind in the world. Many different types of organizations use the DISC personality profile and assessment tools to enable them to make more informed decisions about personnel selection, on-boarding, learning and development, management, and succession.

Although it’s not critical to know all about the history of products like the “>DISC personality profile and DISC test to benefit from their use, the DISC story is an interesting one that’s worth sharing.

Origin and Evolution of the DISC Personality Test and Profiling System

The DISC test and DISC personality profile – as we know them – have their roots in the work of William Moulton Marston in the early part of the 20th century.

Marston’s work and theories on human behavior were showcased in the book The Emotions of Normal People, in which he introduced his DISC theory, which basically broke down human behavior into four basic types or styles:

- Dominance

- Inducement (now commonly called Influence)

- Submissiveness (now commonly called Steadiness or Steadfastness)

- Compliance (now commonly called Conscientiousness or Conformity)

Marston’s DISC theory examined behavioral preferences and styles and attempted to understand the cause-and-effect relationship between personality and behavior in both special settings and under everyday conditions.

On top of introducing the “>DISC personality assessment and profile to the world, Marston is also credited with two other impressive achievements:

- Creating the systolic blood pressure test that would become a key component of the polygraph or “lie detector”

- He created the comic book character Wonder Woman

Continuing Development Ensures the DISC Profile and Test Stay on the Cutting Edge

As with anything good, the “>DISC personality profile and DISC test evolved over time, as people endeavored to improve and expand upon the DISC model. Psychologist John Geier and behavioralist Walter Clarke are among those who made some of the more notable contributions to the research and development of the DISC model. Geier is, in fact, credited with the creation of the first DISC “personal profile” – back in 1958 – which essentially makes it the “grandfather” to all DISC profiles, assessments, and related tools that are available today.

Moreover, the DISC personality assessment’s popularity has led to the development of a growing industry of tools and resources designed to support the DISC assessment and profiling system.

It’s also led to the development of a number of DISC imitators – many of which are legitimate and worthy alternatives, some of which are not. Because the DISC assessments and profiles are being used to help enlighten such important decisions – for both employers and employees and job hopefuls – it’s best not to take your chances with a DISC “imitation.

Ultimately, while the DISC personality profile and DISC test may have undergone research, development, and improvement over the years, the core “product” is fundamentally unchanged – very much like the psychological make-up of the species it was designed to study.