Behavioural profiling can provide additional insight into how people prefer to work, communicate and respond to different situations, supporting recruitment, development and team-building decisions.
This article explores how behavioural and team-development tools can complement traditional recruitment methods, helping legal leaders understand individual strengths, development needs and team dynamics. It also considers how these tools should be used alongside professional judgement and other job-relevant assessment methods.
Key takeaways
- Behavioural profiling can provide additional information about candidates’ and team members’ behavioural preferences.
- Behavioural assessments should complement, rather than replace, other job-relevant recruitment methods.
- Understanding different working and communication preferences can support team development and collaboration.
- Behavioural tools can help identify development areas but should not be treated as definitive measures of an individual’s suitability or potential.
- Technology and AI-based recruitment assessments should be appropriately validated and monitored for accuracy, fairness and other relevant risks.
The traditional recruitment process, while effective in many ways, doesn’t tell the whole story about a candidate. That’s why some organisations use behavioural profiling alongside other selection methods to explore candidates’ behavioural preferences and characteristics, as well as their skills and experience.
Know your people
Cast your mind back to the last time you recruited into your team.
The chances are you read each candidate’s CV and other credentials, drew up a shortlist and invited your preferred applicants to an interview where you tested their technical skillsets. Then, using your interview skills and professional judgement, you’ll have selected your preferred candidate.
This is the standard selection process in many organisations and, mostly, it works. However, although we don’t like to admit it, all of us get it wrong sometimes. Getting it wrong affects many parties.
- You’ll be disappointed in yourself.
- The candidate will feel out of place.
- Your organisation will be affected financially.
- The episode may have disrupted your clients and the rest of your team and placed additional workload on them.
Enter behavioural profiling
Organisations use a range of assessment methods when hiring, including interviews, skills and ability assessments and, in some cases, behavioural or personality assessments. Where behavioural profiling is used, it should complement other job-relevant selection methods rather than replace them. Many organisations haven't considered this type of profiling before because the recruitment process has centred on core technical skillsets and competency-based interviewing.
Used appropriately, these tools can provide additional information about individuals’ behavioural preferences and help inform decisions about recruitment, development and team composition.
When scoping a vacant role in your team and preparing a job description, take time to think about what it calls for in terms of behavioural strengths, as well technical skills and experience. By factoring these aspects from the outset, you'll be in a better position to assess candidates against the requirements of the role and make a more informed selection decision.
When doing this it is important not just to think about replacing the behaviours that the role's former occupant had (even if that was you!). It is about identifying the best mix of behaviours to meet the client's needs, your team's needs and your own needs.
Remember that a successful team is often one which is rounded in all respects, so it might mean that you need someone with a different profile to those that you already have.
Make better hiring decisions
Behavioural profiling assessments can reveal an individual's behavioural work style and preferences. Used alongside other selection methods, assessments can provide additional information about an individual’s behavioural preferences and how these may relate to the requirements of the role. This can help both the organisation and candidate consider whether the role is a good fit, while recognising that performance and job satisfaction depend on a range of factors
Assessments can also highlight areas where a team member may benefit from further support or development. This information can help leaders identify appropriate learning and development opportunities and support conversations about an individual’s role and development needs.
Armed with these insights, let’s return to your recruitment process.
As before, you’ve identified a potential candidate: they have the right experience, the right skills and their cultural values mirror those of your organisation. The candidate’s profile says they manage and influence stakeholders beyond the legal function in their current role. You invite the candidate to an interview.
At this point, behavioural analysis will give you the insights into the candidate you need.
The assessment may indicate a preference for avoiding confrontation and finds influencing stakeholders more challenging than they’ve admitted to in their application. You can design some questions for the interviews to allow you to see for yourself the strength of the preference then form a view. The candidate's behavioural trait might not be a big problem but the fundamental point is that you’ve identified this upfront, before committing yourself to the candidate. You can then factor this information when assessing this candidate up against others.
Behavioural profiling may provide additional information about a candidate’s behavioural preferences that might not emerge from a CV or conventional interview alone. By discovering this early, you can discuss learning and development needs upfront and (assuming they join your team) factor it in to how you supervise them, who you pair them up with in the legal team and which clients to assign them to.
It can also help identify issues to work on as part of their personal development plan (for example, helping them to learn ways to manage these behaviours so that they can continue to develop and to grow in their role).
Behavioural preferences and ways of working can develop over time through experience, feedback, coaching and appropriate support. Once developmental areas have been identified, managers can work with individuals to build on their strengths and develop approaches that help them perform effectively in their role.
Not just for individuals
So far, we’ve looked at behavioural traits on an individual basis. To build an effective, diverse and sustainable team, you also need to understand the group’s dynamics and the different ways people communicate and work together.
Using appropriate team-development or behavioural tools can provide insights into preferred communication styles and help team members understand how different working approaches may affect collaboration. You’ll also be able to help team members tap into their own strengths and discover for themselves how they can contribute to the wider team effort, to work more effectively with their clients and to be better participants in multi-departmental company projects.
Understanding these differences at both group and individual level can help leaders identify development needs, improve collaboration and make better use of the strengths within the team.
No matter how small or large your team, it is worth considering whether behavioural or team-development tools could add useful insight to your recruitment, development and team-building processes. Used appropriately alongside other methods, they can be a useful part of a broader approach to building effective teams.
Conclusion
Behavioural profiling can provide additional information that may not emerge from traditional recruitment methods alone. For example, a CV and interview can help you assess a candidate's skills, experience and approach, but may not provide the same insight into their behavioural preferences or approach to situations such as influencing or confrontation.
As organisations increasingly use technology and artificial intelligence in recruitment and assessment, legal and People teams should also consider how these tools are validated, used and monitored. AI-based assessment tools should be assessed for accuracy, fairness, transparency, privacy and other relevant risks, rather than assuming that automated assessments are inherently more objective
To adopt behavioural profiling into your own recruitment processes, a good starting point is your People team who will probably already be using it for recruitment purposes in other parts of your organisation.
As for retention, provide a clear career development strategy that shows your lawyers how they can develop and how you’ll support them throughout their career in your organisation.
Finally, remember it’s not just about hierarchies. Everyone likes to know that they’re progressing and what they need to do to reach the next stage of their career.
To read a viewpoint from Paul Bentall relating to this article click here.