The science of predicting job performance has changed a lot over the decades. While pre-employment assessments have long been predicated on quantifying personality, current methods are far more sophisticated than those of the past.

The fundamental difference today is context. In the early days, personality research was exploratory and focused on defining traits. The resulting assessments offered generalized performance recommendations, but they did not factor in job type or work environment. Ultimately, in the absence of such context, it became difficult to accurately predict how personality traits could influence work outcomes.

What the assessment world needed was an explanatory model, and it got one in the Five Factor Model of Personality, which was developed over time but became a popular tool in the 1980s. Although many researchers have developed variations and alternate models in the ensuing decades, at the time the Five Factor Model provided a conceptual foundation that improved the predictive strength of personality assessments.

Subsequent studies and developments to assessment tools have shown job analysis to be an important component in predicting workplace performance, as the results of a job analysis add the context necessary to evaluate an applicant’s personality attributes.

This balance—evaluating a person’s behavioral tendencies in the context of the job type and the work environment—forms the basis of Caliper’s approach to predicting performance. It’s a comprehensive approach that results in a high level of predictive accuracy and goes beyond simply matching a person to a job; the Caliper approach serves as the framework for strategic human-capital alignment.

To read Dr. Schoenfelder’s in-depth discussion of the above and his detailed explanation of the Caliper methodology for predicting workplace performance, click here for the free whitepaper.