The Cognitive Psychology Behind Why Topgrading Works

The tenets of Scaling Up your business are People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. If you think about it, the People aspect directly drives both Strategy and Execution, which in turn produces industry-leading Cash flow. To drive exceptional people requires exceptional people—A Players. At our Certified Scaling Up practice, A Player Advantage LLC, we help our clients implement Topgrading, the most accurate interviewing methodology available, for all of their new hires to validate that clients are indeed hiring A Player candidates at an exceptionally high rate.

Over the last decade of implementing Topgrading, we have observed some truly remarkable results:

• Over 90% of our candidates turn out to be A Players (100% are Topgraded).
• 98% of the time, candidates of all seniority levels are willing to invest 1.5 to 3 hours to complete and return the Topgrading Career History Form Interview Guide and then participate in a 2–4 hour Topgrading panel interview with the entire leadership team.
• Our Topgrading candidates accept their job offers at an exceptionally high rate of over 92%.
• Less than 5% of our candidates negotiate or counter their offers.
• Furthermore, we have found that Topgraded candidates also onboard quicker and produce results faster than non-Topgraded candidates.

These are impressive hiring results to be sure! Keep in mind that Topgrading is Real Intelligence (RI), not Artificial Intelligence (AI). Its basic premise is that the best predictor of future job success are quantifiable results in prior roles. Candidates who participate in Topgrading are by nature more de facto invested in the company because of the time and effort necessitated by the process.

This is a good thing, and there is concrete evidence from the field of cognitive psychology that supports why Topgrading locks in the candidates that you want.

Self-Disclosure: People Like to Talk About Themselves

In The Power of Regret by Daniel Pink, Pink shares the 2012 research study by psychologists Diana Tamir of Princeton University and Jason Mitchell of Harvard University that gave their participants three choices:

1. To reveal their beliefs about themselves
2. To judge the beliefs of other people
3. To answer a trivia question

Researchers found that, overwhelmingly, participants preferred discussing themselves, with the majority choosing this option. What’s intriguing is that participants exhibited such a strong inclination to talk about themselves that they were willing to accept significantly lower compensation compared to those who chose one of the other two options.

Pink concludes, “An extensive body of literature makes it clear that disclosing our thoughts, feelings, and actions—whether by telling others or simply writing about them—brings forth a range of physical, emotional, and professional benefits.”

One of these benefits is the decisive acceptance of job offers by our clients’ candidates.

While we don’t advocate leveraging this finding to justify offering lower salaries, we do observe a correlation. During a 2–4 hour Topgrading interview, in which candidates discuss their careers extensively, we see exceptionally high job-offer acceptance rates. Additionally, very few of our clients’ candidates counter or negotiate their offers. It appears that candidates are effectively talking themselves into the job!

Click here to read the full article at aplayeradvantage.com.?

https://aplayeradvantage.com/psychology-behind-why-topgrading-works/