Why every Job Fit characteristic matters

Every Job Fit characteristic matters - even when it is not important to the role

Compono’s Job Fit Assessment measures the alignment between what a job offers and what a candidate is looking for in their next role. The employer describes the extent to which each of the 18 work characteristics forms part of the job. The candidate describes the types of work, duties and responsibilities they would like their role to include. The assessment then identifies where the two profiles align and where there may be a mismatch.

This means a characteristic does not need to be highly important to the role to provide useful information.
For example, an office-based role may include very little manual or physical work. If the candidate is also looking for a role with little or no manual work, the two profiles are aligned. The role does not offer it, and the candidate is not expecting or seeking it.

However, if the role includes almost no manual work and the candidate is looking for a job with a strong practical, physical or hands-on component, there may be a meaningful mismatch between the work being offered and the work the candidate wants to perform.

The candidate may be capable of doing the office-based job. The issue is whether the actual responsibilities of the role reflect the type of work they are looking for.

The assessment is therefore not simply asking: “Is this characteristic important to the job?”

It is asking: “Does what this job includes align with the type of work this person wants their role to include?”

Where the employer and candidate are aligned - whether a characteristic is rated high or low - there is evidence of fit. Where the job does not offer something the candidate is strongly looking for, or includes responsibilities the candidate would prefer not to perform, the assessment identifies an area that should be explored further.

The items cut both ways

Manual work is sometimes questioned when assessing candidates for office-based roles because it may appear unrelated to the job. However, the same logic applies to every characteristic in the assessment.

Consider a coffee shop employee or retail shop assistant. Their role may contain:

• very little formal leadership responsibility;
• limited computer-based work;
• little strategic planning;
• limited responsibility for developing systems or procedures; and
• a strong practical, customer-facing and hands-on component.

Nobody would normally suggest removing the leadership or computer-related items simply because they are not central to that particular role. If the employer rates leadership as low and the candidate is also looking for a role without leadership responsibility, that is useful alignment. The person is not expecting to manage a team, and the job is not offering that responsibility. If the employer rates computer-based work as low and the candidate also prefers a role that is not predominantly computer based, that is another useful point of alignment.

However, if a candidate applying to work in a coffee shop is looking for a role with significant leadership responsibility, extensive computer work or high-level strategic decision-making, the assessment may identify that the available position does not contain the duties they are seeking.

Manual work is no different. It may be highly relevant to a tradesperson, warehouse employee, healthcare worker, barista or retail employee, but largely absent from an accounting or software role. That does not make the item inherently more or less important than leadership, technology, planning or any other characteristic.

Each item helps describe the composition of the role and compare it with the type of job the candidate is seeking. Different items will be more prominent in different jobs, but all of them can reveal either alignment or misalignment.

Example: The graduate accountant who wanted more hands-on work

One of our clients used the assessment when hiring a graduate accountant. 

As expected, the accounting position was rated low for manual and physical work. However, the successful candidate indicated that they were looking for a role with a much stronger hands-on and practical component.

This did not mean the candidate lacked the capability to perform the accounting role. It indicated that the day-to-day responsibilities of the position might not reflect the kind of work they wanted to be doing.

After approximately eight months, the candidate left the organisation. They later moved into a project management role with a building company - a position that provided greater exposure to practical work, physical environments and tangible projects.

The assessment did not determine that the candidate would leave. It did, however, identify a meaningful difference between what the accounting job offered and the type of work the candidate was looking for.

Experience and capability are not the same as job fit

A person’s employment history tells us what they have done before. Their qualifications and experience provide evidence of what they may be capable of doing. 

Neither necessarily tells us what they want to spend their time doing in their next role.

A candidate may be highly capable of managing people but want to return to specialist work. They may be capable of sitting behind a computer all day but prefer a practical and customer-facing environment. They may have performed hands-on work successfully in the past but now want a more analytical or office-based position.

The Compono Job Fit Assessment helps employers distinguish between:

• what the candidate has done before;
• what the candidate is capable of doing;
• what duties and responsibilities the job actually contains; and
• what types of work the candidate wants their next role to include.

The value lies in comparing the complete job profile with the complete candidate profile. Even a characteristic that is largely absent from a role can provide important evidence about whether the employer and candidate are genuinely on the same page.