Subscribe via RSS Feed Connect on LinkedIn

A high GI score…. is this bad news?

18th February 2016

GI

No, we are not talking about another fad diet, but whether candidate reports showing high levels of GI (good impressions) are bad news?

Scoring high on GI is not in itself an issue, it just says that the candidate has exaggerated their responses to make a ‘Good Impression’ (GI).

camera lensHere is an analogy – imagine the GI score as being like the focus on a camera. If the GI score is low then the profile is really in focus and we can see that we’ve got a fair and accurate representation of the candidate. If the GI score is high and ‘distorted’…ie out of focus, then we can’t really be sure what the candidate is actually like as we can’t really ‘see’, its a bit fuzzy!

But we have a safety measure, the standardised interview questions in each report. We use these to probe, verify, gain evidence and validate the profile. The questions help us to build evidence of what the candidate is actually like and we can then compare those scores (at interview) to the scores in their profile report to see if it all adds up. Do the responses match the profile? If so, great. If not, where should the scores fall? If they fall somewhere else, is it good thing or a warning sign..?   Lastly, a high GI score can mean the candidate is probably “faking good” or trying to tell us what they think we are looking for, this can be common especially in some sales roles.proceed_with_caution

If we know this we can do something about it – all that’s needed is some extra time to work out where the candidate actually is and if they are still of interest to us or indeed a good fit for the job.  About 1.4% of candidates will probably flag high Good Impression in the assessment process, so knowing what to do on those occasions is useful, if everything else is good, then proceed to interview with caution!

Filed in: Candidates scoring

About the Author:

Nikky van Bommel is the Marketing Director for Big 5 Assessments and has worked in the Psychometric Testing industry for over 10 years. Nikky is responsible for all marketing and social media for the organisation.

Comments are closed.