by Glenn Gutmacher

I was recently approached by JOBehaviors' president Mark Tinney about his Web-based employment matching service. This company uses a compatibility assessment to determine which type of job is the best behavioral fit for you. Similarly, it allows companies to search and find candidates who score highly in the types of jobs they want to hire for. The science behind it is they do an in-depth job analysis done with people who have found long-term fulfillment and job satisfaction. Their research supposedly identified hundreds of behaviors that are critical for one's long-term happiness in each career and thus, theoretically, can identify the job that is the best behavioral fit.

They currently offer online assessments for various jobs in Healthcare, Banking, Childcare, Construction, Transportation, Retail, Insurance, and Sports/Sports Management), Call Centers, Education, and Sales, which (for what's offered online) tend to skew to blue collar or lower-paying professional jobs.

The assessment is an online survey that presents over 100 pairs of statements, but only takes about 15 minutes to complete. You need to choose which statement in each pair is most applicable to you (many statements recur, but as part of different pairings). This format must be considered valid, as a Microsoft-approved vendor recently had me do an online survey about my work style in preparation for a team meeting I'll be attending later this month, and it was in the same format.

I've always enjoyed golf and got pretty good at it (though haven't had much time to play in recent years since our boys were born), so I thought I'd take the Golf Career Candidate assessment. My rating was 1 out of 5, which means I'm not suited to that work. (Obviously, playing as an avocation and being a golf pro are two very different things!) The results interpretation presented after completing the survey says, in part, "Studies confirm that individuals scoring 2-stars or lower are unlikely to find long-term fulfillment or happiness in this line of work. While you are free to share your result and contact information through your JOBehaviors Account, our partners are most interested in discussing training and/or employment opportunities with 3, 4, or 5-star candidates." And then they encourage you to take the assessments for other jobs until you find the right one (of course!).

On the good side, I think it's fabulous that's it's free for job-seekers to take and see the results of their assessment (most companies in this space charge for the latter). This is especially true for suspicious jobseekers who might not otherwise be willing to dip their toe in the assessment waters for a specific company until they were well into the application process. Instead, this incents them because the results can be shared with various companies, but the user controls which ones (see FAQs). The costs are all on the employer side, though you can get a free demo account.

My concerns are that it's fairly easy for someone to trick the survey. One could tell pretty fast what the "good" answers should be in each pair, and start answering that way. I also suspect there are very few clients in each category, so until this gets to critical mass, there aren't many employers who will see someone's assessment. Lastly, it's concerning that the Services link in their main navigation is broken (I'm not talking some deep interior link here).

But hey, all businesses have to start somewhere, and they do have some raving client testimonials, so hopefully we'll see more employers hopping on board, as well as competitors adopting and building on this model.