Your Questions About Illustrait Answered
Updated
by
Amy Thomas
- What does Illustrait measure?
- What is Criteria's competency framework?
- Why do competencies matter?
- My candidate has completed Illustrait before but when I try to reuse their results they are invited to complete the test. Why?
- Where can I learn more about Illustrait?
- How do I use Illustrait in my Criteria account?
What does Illustrait measure?
llustrait is a highly targeted, customisable and job-relevant measure of a candidate's personality traits, that helps organisations identify candidates who have the attributes required to be comfortable in a role, perform well, and stay longer.
It measures a candidate's competency potential for a specific role. Every role has specific competency requirements - that is, the traits, abilities and dispositions that form the basis of successful performance in a role. Almost every role requires a level of cognitive aptitude - the ability to think critically, solve problems and learn new information, and we know that this ability underpins successful performance in most roles.
In a similar way, each role has specific personality traits and dispositions that underlie successful performance. Effective salespeople are likely to enjoy selling, providing customer service, directing and coordinating, and consulting and advising. A strong manager could be someone who naturally prefers developing and coaching others, directing and coordinating, motivating and inspiring, managing change, with a strategic mindset.
Illustrait gives you a simple, targeted way to measure the specific competencies that are required to succeed in a particular role. You can either use our recommendations (based on the O*NET task requirements of a role), or you can choose your own competencies from our framework of 38 unique competencies to reflect your own unique role requirements.
What is O*Net?
The Occupational Information Network or O*Net is the United States' main source of occupational information. See their website for more information.
The US Department of Labor regularly collects task statements for the 900+ jobs listed in the O*NET database. It's an extensive, credible and well-regarded source of job requirements with over 19,000 unique task statements.
What is Criteria's competency framework?
We've developed a framework that describes the broad groups of competencies required for successful performance across jobs. You can view the PDF of the framework here.
For each group, there are a number of different individual competencies, with a total of 38 unique competencies. For any role, you can choose (or, in the case of Illustrait, we can recommend) the competencies required for successful performance.
Why do competencies matter?
They provide a common framework and language for role requirements throughout an organisation, including:
- Recruitment and selection
- Learning & development
- Career & succession planning
- Organisational change
Organisations classified as "best in class" in their category are 32% more likely than all other organisations to use a competency framework across all talent management processes (Aberdeen group).
Competency potential means measuring whether someone has the stable traits, abilities and dispositions to perform well/ be effective in a role. Many of our tests measure this, including Illustrait.
My candidate has completed Illustrait before but when I try to reuse their results they are invited to complete the test. Why?
The reuse results function will copy your candidate's results from an earlier invitation to the current one if both the following conditions are met:
- The exact email address is used for both invitations and
- The candidate completed the same version of the same assessment/s.
If the Illustrait competency set used for each invitation is different, then the two assessments are considered different, so your candidate will be asked to complete Illustrait again. For example, below are the competency sets for two invitations for the same candidate. As the second competency set has different competencies from the first set, the re-use results function will not work for the second invitation.
Competency set for first Illustrait invitation | Competency set for second Illustrait invitation |
Motivating and inspiring Effective communication Networking and building relationships Resilience and self-confidence | Motivating and inspiring Effective communication Networking and building relationships Persuading and influencing |
Note that candidates will be presented with all the relevant questions for the whole competency set. The re-use results function does not copy across the candidate's results for the competencies they have completed before asking them to complete the competencies they have not previously done. Instead, the candidate is invited to complete the new competency set as a whole unit.
Where can I learn more about Illustrait?
Click here to view our assessment guide to Illustrait.
How do I use Illustrait in my Criteria account?
Click here to view our How To Guide on Creating and Using a Competency Set.
