Armand's Story
Real world discussion on Holland:Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu is a classic bureaucracy in that the firm is highly process driven, and focused on a core partner hierarchy inherited from the legacy of the organization’s accounting firm lineage. Due to the highly process intensive and regimented structure of internal politics and relationships, Deloitte strongly prefers to select candidates based on both scholastic performance and psychometric testing.
With a staff turnover rate of more than 27% per annum Deloitte strives to minimize internal conflict and maximize the potential of new hires to both succeed and integrate into the already commercially successful team. Acutely aware of both the staff retention consequences and commercial fallout of disharmony within the work environment, Deloitte also has a policy of strictly controlling both the formation of work teams, assignment of engagement managers, and handling of new graduate hires.
To facilitate the selection of candidates and formation of team harmony, Deloitte uses the Holland Personality Model, in a two staged approach. Firstly the team itself must be examined from a diversity and composition point of view, to determine the types of personalities involved, the number of each type, and the assignment of engagement managers based on the personality matrix.
Additionally the organizational culture in each office is also examined according to he same six personality types. Although Deloitte is a classic Enterprising/Conservative culture, each office does have a level of political and sociological variation.
New candidates on application are interviewed for technical and scholastic ability, then graded in order of preference by the assigned hiring team member. Following the formation of a short list, the engagement manager will be assigned the task of psychometric testing and a short social interview over coffee or lunch, to determine how the potential candidate will behave during a business meeting.
The psychometric test used by Deloitte is based on the Holland matrix, and is also designed to not intimidate potential candidates. Although disguised as a “get to know the graduate” questionnaire, the results of the test are considered by the engagement manager, partner, and human resources manager.
Once a candidate’s personality profile has been identified, it is compared using the Holland personality relationship diagram to both the firm’s culture, and to the dominate personality type of the working team that the graduate will be a member off. It is standard hiring practice that should a candidate have an opposing personality type to the firm’s culture, the partner, or the work team, then this candidate will be exempt from selection.
Although the psychological approach of Deloitte to candidate hire is open to self-awareness abuse, especially if the candidate has knowledge of the firm, or Holland’s theory, the testing has proven to be sound. Graduate turnover at Deloitte is less than 14%, which is half that of the firm’s annual staff attrition rate.
An example of sound business management, and psychology assisting a commercial outcome.
