Julia Langkraehr’s Blog

Using the Kolbe Index for recruitment

Using Kolbe for recruitment
Making the right choice of people to join your team is business critical, and it is not easy. People are complicated and an interview gives you very little time to assess which will be the best candidate for you.

Many employers use psychometric tests to assess candidates’ personality, however, as these don’t reveal how a person goes about doing things – their modus operandi, they can be of limited use.

The Kolbe A™  Index pinpoints people’s specific talents, natural way of taking action and explains what makes them tick, which can reveal whether someone is the right fit for your business.

Read more: Kolbe for team success

Imagine you need to appoint a new Head of Sales and Marketing. You have three shortlisted candidates who all look good on paper, so you are struggling to make a decision.

You know which one you like best, however if you pick that person, it would be on the basis of your personal preference, rather than any kind of objective criteria.

Using Kolbe gives you a way of distinguishing between the three candidates to find the right person for the role.

This Head of Sales and Marketing will need to work closely with the Chief Executive, so it is crucial they have complementary ways of working.

Kolbe identifies four different action modes: Fact Finder, Follow Thru, Quick Start and Implementor. Your CEO does his own Kolbe Index to help identify which attributes the new Head of Sales will need for them to work well together.

Read more: The four Kolbe Action Modes

His assessment shows that he is a strong Fact Finder and Quick Start – which means that to complement his skills and fill his gaps, the candidate needs to be strong on Follow Thru and Implementer.

All three candidates do a Kolbe assessment online, and one of Bold Clarity’s Certified Kolbe Consultants helps the CEO interpret each candidate’s scores and identify which candidate will be best.

The Kolbe results reveal that his first choice wouldn’t actually be a good fit – and the second choice becomes the candidate offered the job.

After they have accepted, Bold Clarity produce a report giving advice on how the CEO and new Head of Sales and Marketing can work well together, showing them how to get the best out of each other.

Clients we have worked with on recruitment have found Kolbe to be a really valuable part of their recruitment toolkit. Once they have used it once, they generally wish to use it for every role.

Kolbe enables employers to discover how a candidate will behave in a working context – and ensures that businesses are able to build healthy teams which work together successfully.

If you’d like advice about using the Kolbe Index for recruitment, contact us via hello@boldclarity.com for a chat.