Learning Agility as a Candidate Assessment Strategy

The world of work is changing rapidly and employees need to continuously keep their skills updated.  A candidate’s ability to be open, flexible and adaptable has become more important than ever before.  Candidates who have high learning agility excel at understanding new, complex business problems.  Business success is correlated with identifying a new opportunity, developing a plan based on the market potentials and implementing that plan in a timely and cost-effective manner.  Candidates with high learning agility are much more curious than the average candidate.  They embrace challenges.  They quickly overcome obstacles to achieve their goals.  Learning Agility is a key component of leadership potential and it can be clearly defined and measured. Here are some important aspects of learning agility: 

 

Mental Agility

Candidates who have mental agility are comfortable with complexity.  They examine problems in unique ways.  They make insightful connections between different things and they can explain those insights in a simple way so others can understand. Mental Agility is more like street smarts than academic smarts. 

People Agility

Candidates who have people agility have exceptional ability to speak and work with others.  They are open-minded toward others and they bring out the best in others. They seek to understand what others mean and they take the opinions of others seriously. It is easy for them to establish relationships with others and they learn quickly from the input of others.  They are open to a wide range of individual perspectives.  They value diversity of thought. They like to surround themselves with a diverse team.

Change Agility

Candidates who have change agility are comfortable with new experiences or change.  They are willing to lead transformation efforts. They can identify and seize new opportunities in the environment faster than others. They have the ability to transform information into ideas that address market needs.  They enjoy introducing new ideas and they dislike the status quo.  Candidates who are change agile can be viewed as disruptive, because they are always trying to change things even if they are not broken.

Results Agility

Candidates who have results agility are people who get results even under crisis conditions and they have an optimistic outlook.  They inspire others to achieve more than they thought possible. They exhibit the sort of charisma that inspires others. Individuals who are high in results agility perform well in novel situations because of their resourcefulness.  They repeatedly deliver top-level results in new and challenging situations.

Self-Awareness

Self-Awareness describes candidates who understand their strengths, weaknesses and even their blind spots. They are constantly seeking feedback and personal insights.  High self-awareness usually leads to humility, rather than overconfidence. 

Measuring Learning Agility

There are several assessment tools currently available to measure learning agility.  When organizations want to evaluate a new candidate assessment strategy USA it is helpful to do a small pilot study to determine the feasibility, costs and benefits of the new candidate assessment strategy USA.  Pilot studies are conducted to avoid wasting larger amounts of time and money on an assessment strategy that won’t deliver the business outcomes that the hiring managers want.  If the new assessment strategy can clearly distinguish between your current high performers and low performers, it will be able to predict performance in your candidates.  The pilot study should be able to show a good correlation between individuals who score high on the learning agility assessment and individuals who perform at high levels on the job.