What is Working Memory, and Why Should You Measure It?

Imagine you had a data-driven way to determine how well a candidate would perform in a leadership position.

Sure, you might already have some information about the candidate’s background, interests, and achievements from their resume and cover letter… but is that really enough to tell if they’d be a great leader? Resumes can be embellished, and even the most detailed and honest resumes won’t be able to give you in-depth insights into a candidate’s soft skills.

To get a broader picture of job candidates and make better choices in hiring and succession planning, many HR teams turn to hiring assessments. But not all assessments are created equal.

Effective assessments offer a clear, unbiased way to measure candidates’ skills, competencies, and potential. They lead to lower turnover and better business outcomes for your company.

But ineffective assessments can undermine trust in the hiring process and introduce bias, failing to select the right candidates for the job and creating a legal nightmare.
For example, one assessment type you may want to avoid is cognitive ability assessment.

What are Cognitive Ability Assessments, and Why are They Not the Best Way to Measure Ability?

Cognitive ability assessments have been used in hiring for decades. Typically, they measure qualities such as reasoning, verbal and mathematics skills, and problem-solving—all essential skills for a leadership candidate to have. These types of assessments provide useful information, and have been shown to be highly predictive of job performance.

So why should you avoid them in your hiring process?

Research has shown that cognitive ability tests can be inadvertently biased against minority groups. Some test items, such as reading or language-based questions, may include culturally specific elements that won’t be understood the same way by all test-takers. This bias has been shown to create an adverse impact as defined by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

According to the EEOC’s Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, adverse impact is “a substantially different rate of selection in hiring, promotion or other employment decision which works to the disadvantage of members of a race, sex or ethnic group.” And “a selection process which has an adverse impact on the employment opportunities of members of a race, color, religion, sex, or national origin group… and thus disproportionately screens them out is unlawfully discriminatory.”

Over the years, many employers have faced legal challenges over their use of cognitive ability tests. Since cognitive ability assessments have shown to create a race-based adverse impact, they represent a legal hazard and may introduce bias into the hiring process. Rather than using these tests, organizations should move towards using other assessments which offer similar benefits without creating an adverse impact.

Why Working Memory is a Better Option for Predicting Job Performance

The reason many employers continue to use cognitive ability assessments, despite the risks, is that they’re highly predictive of a candidate’s job performance. Fortunately, there are tests out there that offer the same (or better) benefits as cognitive ability assessments, without the adverse impact.

Hutrics offers an approach that is more predictive than traditional cognitive ability assessments, and also won’t cause adverse impact. This is known as a working memory assessment.

Working memory assessments measure the ability to temporarily retain a small amount of information in your mind. This important executive function helps people keep track of what they’re doing as they perform tasks. It has a key influence on reasoning, decision-making, and behavior, which is why it is so predictive of job performance.

Hutrics’ working memory assessments offer you many unique advantages. They’re shorter and more interactive than many cognitive ability tests, so they can help you make the candidate experience more engaging. They also test for visuospatial memory, which is key for mathematics and mental imagery, navigation, and orientation in the physical environment. In addition, they evaluate the retention of serial order information, which is closely associated with numerical cognition.

Recruitment is a serious process. Its results impact business performance and candidates’ livelihoods. Yet some assessment companies offer game-based tests to evaluate candidates. These games typically aren’t data-driven and haven’t been validated by research. When candidates see invalid games in the recruitment process, this can be frustrating for them. They may get the impression that your organization isn’t taking them seriously or respecting their time.

To get better results from your leadership recruitment process, avoid games-based recruitment tools and cognitive ability assessments that introduce an adverse impact. Instead, use Hutrics’ assessments to evaluate working memory and attention capabilities. This way, you can source candidates that are more likely to succeed in leadership positions, while avoiding the use of tests that have been shown to introduce bias. We have conducted numerous studies and have found that our assessments have a proven effect on candidate success.

To learn more about working memory and how our assessments can help your organization achieve better business results, contact us today.