All notes

Assessment narrows uncertainty about capability. It does not remove it, and processes designed as though it does fail predictably.

1. What an Assessment Is Actually For
2. Prediction, and What the Evidence Supports
3. The Gap Between What Is Measured and What Matters
4. Job Analysis: Knowing What You Are Selecting For
5. Reliability and Validity, Without the Statistics
6. The Question to Ask Before Designing Anything

The ordering between methods is more reliable than the numbers attached to them, and it is stable across analyses.

1. Work Samples
2. Structured Interviews
3. Unstructured Interviews, and Why They Persist
4. Cognitive Ability Tests
5. Personality Questionnaires
6. Situational Judgement Tests
7. Portfolios and Past Work
8. Which Method Predicts What

Each requirement assigned to exactly one method that can assess it. Anything unassigned comes out.

1. Starting From the Job, Not From the Catalogue
2. Designing a Work Sample That Fits
3. Writing Structured Interview Questions
4. Scoring Rubrics That Interviewers Can Apply
5. How Long an Assessment Should Take
6. Take-Home Tasks and Unpaid Labour
7. Sequencing: What to Assess and When

Every additional hurdle selects on slack as well as on capability, and the people it removes have less of the first rather than less of the second.

1. Adverse Impact, Measured
2. Accessibility and Adjustments
3. Language, and What You Are Actually Testing
4. Experience Proxies and What They Exclude
5. Assessment Anxiety and Its Effects
6. Candidates Who Cannot Take Time Off
7. Auditing Your Own Process

Calibration is the highest-return hour available to most organisations, and almost nobody spends it.

1. Training Assessors
2. Calibration Between Assessors
3. Recording Decisions
4. Candidate Communication
5. Giving Feedback
6. When an Assessment Goes Wrong

Most exposure sits in indirect discrimination: neutral requirements that disadvantage a group and cannot be justified.

1. Discrimination Law, in Outline
2. Data Protection and Candidate Records
3. Automated Decisions and Scoring
4. Records, Retention and Challenges
5. Cross-Border Hiring

Internal candidates frequently receive less assessment than external ones, which is the wrong way round.

1. Internal Promotion and Its Different Problems
2. Assessing Existing Staff
3. Apprenticeships and Entry-Level Routes
4. Certification and Licensing
5. Skills Gaps and What Assessment Reveals
6. Reassessment Over Time

The end state as a checklist, twelve common failures, and where to start.

1. What a Working Process Looks Like
2. What Assessment Cannot Do
3. Common Failures, Listed
4. Costs, Honestly
5. Glossary and Where to Start