Dr. Hennie Kriek
Personality Assessment in the World of Work: New Trends and Developments
As the world of work is expeditiously changing, increasingly becoming globally and technologically driven, we have seen significant changes in the use of personality assessments. To truly appreciate these changes the history of personality assessment in the workplace will be discussed at the onset of this presentation. This will be followed by an exploration of the usefulness of personality assessment in predicting later job success. The crux of the presentation will then be dedicated to the new trends and developments in the use of personality and work styles assessment in talent management. Historically, behavioral observations were used as indicators of work styles, but once the written word was adopted as a major means of communication, there was a practical shift in trend towards the use of self-report questionnaires. During the last three decades we have witnessed major re-conceptualizations of the design and process of personality and work styles measurement devices. Initially, most personality assessments were designed to measure personality as broad and general constructs. In the twenty-first century, a new generation of occupational based personality questionnaires, utilizing a combination of technology and personality-based competency taxonomies, are now providing highly contextual and flexible personal fit indicators to match individuals to jobs, teams and organizations. Emerging technologies in the assessment of personality will be discussed in closing. 
Dr Kriek is President of TTS-Top Talent Solutions Inc. and CEO of the TTS-Talent Group. He
also serves as Professor Extraordinarius at the Department of Industrial and Organisational Psychology at UNISA. His most recent position was that of President of SHL-CEB USA, Canada and Latin America. Before that he was the founding member and Managing Director of SHL South Africa.
He consults on a global basis in the end to end talent management cycle. This includes executive coaching, competency design, objective assessment, assessment centers, selection, personnel decision making, global talent management and human resource development. He worked with companies such as IBM, Deloitte, Coca-Cola, BHPBilliton, Pfizer, Enterprise Car Rental, HSBC, Capital One and Barclays to name a few.
He was a visiting Professor at Colorado State University, 1989-1990, where he conducted post-doctoral studies on fairness, discrimination, EEO and affirmative action. He published widely in the field of Human Resources and Personnel Psychology and presented scientific and practical papers at various international conferences. He currently serves on the editorial board of “Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Perspectives on Science and Practice” (USA), “Human Performance” (USA), “Southern African Business Review” (SA) and advisory editor of the “Journal of Industrial Psychology“(SA). He also acted as a member of the awards committee of the “M. Scott Myers Award for Applied Research in the Workplace” of SIOP (USA) and was consulting editor of “International Journal of Management Reviews” (UK).
Dr Kriek was awarded honorary membership of SIOPSA (Society for Industrial Psychology of South Africa) for his contribution to IO Psychology and was also awarded honorary membership of the Assessment Centre Study Group of South Africa (ACSG) for his contribution to the study of Assessment Centres.
Hennie is currently Chair of the Association of Test Publishers (ATP SA). He was Chair of PAI (People Assessment in Industry) an interest group of SIOPSA, as well as the Assessment Centre Study Group for a number of years. He also chaired a task force of SIOPSA that developed guidelines for the implementation and validation of fair personnel selection practices in 1991, 1998 and 2006. He is a Full Member of the American Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), the International Test Commission (ITC) and the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP).
He received his DLitt et Phil at the University of South Africa in 1988 and was a full-time faculty member and Professor of Industrial and Organizational Psychology at the University of South Africa from 1982 until 1994.
Dr. Suzanne Tsacoumis
The Rich-Media Storm: Wading through the rising waters
What are rich-media assessments and does using this technology really add value or is it just glitz? Are we still measuring one’s competencies or have we muddied the waters by our desire to appear progressive? Given the increased reliance on technology to screen and evaluate job and promotional candidates, organizations are continuing to search for more efficient ways to gather the information they need about one's capabilities while simultaneously trying to appear innovative and relevant. In response, many are starting to explore the possibility of integrating rich-media into their assessments. This can take a variety of forms from simply using rich-media to display the stem or scenario – as in a situational judgment item – to highly immersive simulations that allow the test taker to “interact” with the assessment and dictate how it proceeds or unfolds. Suzanne will offer a snapshot of the current landscape along with her perspective of the advantages, disadvantages and potential pitfalls of these types of assessments. She will provide insight into when it makes sense to take advantage of this technology and how practitioners can ensure the validity of their rich-media assessments. In addition, Suzanne will highlight future research needed to help inform how the field should move forward in this arena. The use of rich-media is transforming the assessment landscape; we need to be proactive in determining how best to embrace, and best use, what it can offer.
Suzanne is President and CEO of HumRRO. Her introduction to assessment centers began in 1982 when working at AT&T with arguably the leading scientist-practitioners in this methodology. She capitalized on this experience by applying it to other assessment centers she has designed and developed during the past 35 years for operational promotional programs or selection into career development programs for a broad range of clients including the Drug Enforcement Administration, Federal Aviation Administration, Social Security Administration, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. She also used her expertise in the fundamental AC principles to help her design creative implementation procedures that, although not traditional at the time, adhered to the Assessment Center Guidelines while meeting the client’s needs associated with more efficient (i.e., shorter) administration time. Suzanne authored a chapter entitled Assessment Centers in which she describes in detail how to develop live job simulations following a content-oriented approach.
More recently, Suzanne has been spearheading innovative work in the development of valid, rich-media simulations as an alternative approach to live ACs for use in high-stakes situations such as promotion systems and self-assessment processes. Her chapter Rich-media interactive simulations: Lessons Learned addresses the nuances associated with incorporating technology to create valid “virtual” simulations. Suzanne is a fellow of the Society of Industrial-Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and the American Psychological Association (APA). She earned her Ph.D. from the University of Georgia, specializing in Industrial-Organizational Psychology and her B.A. from Bucknell University.
Dr. John C. Scott
Assessing and Selecting Leadership Talent for the 21st Century Workplace
Today’s leaders face a myriad of critical and dynamic business challenges that impact their success and ultimately the performance of the organizations they lead. The need to design leadership assessment and selection programs that offer a broadened perspective of leadership potential within the context of these organizational challenges is clear, and organizations are racing to harness new technologies that more accurately assess 21st century leaders. This presentation will explore a new leader assessment architecture that incorporates immersive technology for selecting, developing and retaining future leaders who can thrive in the context of a complex, global and dynamic work environment.
John C. Scott is chief operating officer and co-founder of APTMetrics, a global human
resource consulting firm that designs sophisticated talent management solutions for corporations and market innovators. Dr. Scott has more than 25 years of experience designing and implementing talent management and assessment systems across a variety of global, high-stakes settings. For the past 20 years he has directed talent management and leadership assessment practice at APTMetrics.
John is co-editor of the award-winning Handbook of Workplace Assessment: Evidence-Based Practices for Selecting and Developing Organizational Talent and is co-editor of the newly published handbook, Next Generation Technology-Enhanced Assessment: Global Perspectives on Occupational and Workplace Testing. He also co-edited The Human Resources Program- Evaluation Handbook and co-authored Evaluating Human Resources Programs: A 6-Phase Approach for Optimizing Performance.
Dr. Scott is a Fellow of both the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) and the American Psychological Association (APA). He has served as an APA Council Representative and is SIOP’s senior representative to the United Nations. John is a recipient of SIOP’s Distinguished Service Award, serves on the board of the Psychology Coalition at the UN, and is editor-in-chief of SIOP’s premier journal, Industrial and Organizational Psychology: Perspectives on Science and Practice.
Ben Hawkes
How to be a Perfect Partner
We are being spoiled with shiny new methods of assessing candidates: games that predict behavior, video interviews that automatically score candidates and artificial intelligence that can sniff out passive candidates based only on their social media activity. It’s hard enough for us assessment folk to keep up to date on all of this as well as all the ‘traditional’ assessment methods that are already out there. So spare a thought for how difficult and confusing it can be for our colleagues and anyone else outside of our specialized and technical industry.
Our colleagues look to us assessment professionals for guidance, but it’s not enough for us to be experts: we have to be educators, skeptics, communicators, project managers, change experts and – most importantly – partners to the business. In this talk, the audience will learn the importance of successful business partnering, with practical steps to improve their own business partnering skills, partly based on Ben’s (not always) successful attempts to become the ‘perfect partner’.
The talk is relevant to in-house assessment professionals, as well as consultants, vendors and academics: all will find useful guidance on how to ‘translate’ our work and improve our communication and impact with non-specialists.
Ben Hawkes is the Selection Assessment Lead for Shell International. Based in London, he oversees the use of assess
ments, interviews and other selection techniques throughout Shell’s global workforce of 90,000 employees. He also contributes to internal talent projects including high potential and leadership programs.
Prior to Shell, Ben worked for over a decade at IBM Kenexa in senior consulting and product R&D roles, designing and implementing large-scale assessment and selection programs for client organisations throughout the US, Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific.
With 20 years’ worldwide experience in psychological testing and talent analytics, he regularly presents and writes about emerging assessment techniques including simulations, gaming, text analytics and video interviewing. Ben is the author of numerous articles and chapters on the use of technology to assess and predict workplace behaviour.
Ben is also Co-Founder of Blackhawke Behaviour Science, a UK- and US-based consulting practice that researches entrepreneur behaviour in order to enhance the decision making of venture capitalists and other investors in startup companies.
Away from his work in assessment, Ben is an accomplished comedy writer and performer, founding The Missing, Inc. comedy group in 2002, which went on to perform on BBC Radio and at festivals throughout the UK.
Ben graduated with a BSc (Hons) Psychology from the University of Surrey (UK) and the University of North Texas.
Angela Bailey & Steve Goodrich
The Future of the Way We Work is Here
How we select and prepare people to perform work must change. The way people engage with their employer to accomplish mission critical outcomes is more frequently being influenced by adaptive and fluid alternative work models, the need for rapidly changing organizational requirements, advanced technology, the exploitation of data, and making accommodation for employee work styles. This necessitates a change in how we assess, select, manage, and engage people to meet these critical and shifting mission requirements. Opportunities exist now to address this reorientation and have a stronger and more flexible workforce.
Angela Bailey and Steve Goodrich will engage in an interactive dialog to identify the drivers of change, how work orientation will adapt, and how assessment and selection of employees must evolve to meet these new requirements.
Angela Bailey has dedicated more than 35 years to public service, with close to 30 of those years in 
human resources. Ms. Bailey was appointed as the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) in January 2016. She is responsible for the Department’s human capital program, which includes human resources policy, systems, and programs for strategic workforce planning, recruitment and hiring, pay and leave, performance management, employee development, executive resources, labor relations, work/life and safety and health. Prior to joining DHS, Ms. Bailey served as the Chief Operating Officer, Deputy Associate Director for Recruitment and Hiring, Associate Director for Employee Services and Chief Human Capital Officer for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. Ms. Bailey began her career with the Social Security Administration and later worked for the Department of Defense in several different components and Defense agencies. Ms. Bailey has a master’s degree in Leadership from Bellevue University and participated in Harvard University’s Kennedy School National Preparedness Leadership Initiative for Executives in 2012.
Steve Goodrich is the president and CEO of The Center for Organizational Excellence, Inc. He is the 
author of Transforming Government from Congress to the Cubicle and for nearly 40 years has been leading organizations and advising political and executive leaders in government and the private sector in organizational effectiveness strategies to improve performance and effectiveness. In addition, Steve is the Chairman of the Board of the Association of Management Consulting Firms and co-founder and Vice Chair of the Government Transformation Initiative. He has served on corporate and non-profit boards, worked with the White House on transformational issues and has appeared on radio and television supporting topics on government transformation and workforce. He can be contacted at sgoodrich@center4oe.com.
