Reviewing Leadership Candidates Before Professional Assessment: A Strategic Guide for Hiring Managers

The biggest expense associated with your hiring process isn't the cost of the assessment —it's sending the wrong candidates to be assessed in the first place.

When organizations consistently send weak leadership candidates through professional assessment processes, the problem isn't with the assessment. It's what happens before the assessment begins, during the initial interview evaluation process. Many hiring managers treat professional evaluations as an early screening tool rather than the deep-dive, validation step mid-process that they're designed to be.

If you're seeing a pattern of disappointing assessment results, or if you’re sending too many candidates through for testing, it's time to strengthen your candidate evaluation process before anyone sits down with a consulting psychologist. This will ultimately lead to better hires that fit with your company culture seamlessly.

The Real Cost of Poor Pre-Assessment Screening

Professional leadership assessments represent a significant investment during the interview process—not just financially, but in time and organizational energy. When hiring decisions consistently depend on assessing candidates who aren't truly viable, you're not maximizing the value of that investment.

The best client partnerships happen when organizations send carefully vetted, high-potential candidates through assessment that already feel like a good cultural fit. This means the assessment becomes a strategic tool for fine-tuning hiring decisions by the hiring team, rather than a basic screening mechanism.

Resume Evaluation: Looking Beyond the Surface

Intelligence and Critical Reasoning Indicators

Leaders need above-average intelligence, particularly strong critical reasoning and communication skills, to think strategically and help organizations navigate complex challenges. Your hiring process should look for concrete evidence of these competencies before moving candidates forward to the formal assessment phase.

What to look for:

• Pattern of internal promotions: team members with strong critical reasoning typically get promoted within their organizations, they do not just move laterally between companies

• Progressive increases in responsibility: the best candidates should show expanded scope, complexity, or strategic impact within their time working in their former roles

• Strategic contributions: Look for candidate experience that indicates systems thinking, long-term planning, or organizational improvement initiatives

Organizational Fit Considerations

During your recruitment process, evaluate what types of organizations job candidates have thrived in and whether their background suggests they can succeed in your specific culture. If your organization is fast-paced, high-accountability, and relatively flat, candidates who've only succeeded in large, hierarchical environments may struggle with the transition, indicating they may not be a good fit.

Red flags to consider:

• Interview candidates who haven't been promoted within their current organization

• Multiple lateral moves without clear skill or responsibility progression

• Experience only in environments vastly different from your organizational culture

Building Realistic Job Previews and Work Samples

One of the most effective pre-assessment tools is creating work samples that mirror actual job responsibilities. This serves multiple purposes in your candidate evaluation process:

Benefits of work samples:

• Provides the job candidate a realistic preview of your company culture, expectations and challenges

• Allows evaluation of problem-solving approach and communication skills

• Helps unsuitable candidates self-select out of the hiring process

• Demonstrates how candidates handle pressure and ambiguity

• Shows a glimpse into their soft skills

Design these samples to reflect the strategic thinking, decision-making complexity, and interpersonal challenges the role actually requires.

Beware of Impression Managers

Some candidates excel at interviews but may not translate that charm into effective leadership. These "impression managers" often display:

• Exceptional interpersonal skills and natural charisma with their body language

• Strong desire to please others and leave positive impressions

• Ability to redirect conversations to their strengths

• Tendency to tell interviewers what they want to hear during the job interview

Protection strategies:

• Don't let candidates control the interview flow

• Use structured interview questions that require specific examples

• Focus on behavioral evidence rather than general statements

• Verify claims through reference checks and work samples

Designing Structured Interviews for Leadership Roles

Your interview questions should evaluate critical competencies through behavioral examples rather than hypothetical scenarios. This approach provides better insight on candidates’ abilities and how they actually perform under pressure.

Key areas to assess:

• Strategic thinking: "Describe a time when you had to analyze complex data to make a recommendation that affected your organization's direction."

• Conflict resolution: "Tell me about a situation where you had to address under-performance in someone with strong technical skills but poor collaboration."

• Change management: "Walk me through how you've managed a significant organizational change or process improvement."

Sample Structured Interview Questions

For Critical Reasoning Assessment:

• "Describe a situation where you had to make a decision with incomplete information. How did you approach it, and what was the outcome?"

• "Tell me about a time when your initial solution to a problem didn't work. How did you adjust your approach?"

For Leadership Competencies:

• "Give me an example of when you had to influence someone who initially disagreed with your perspective."

• "Describe how you've developed someone on your team who was struggling with performance."

The Strategic Timing of Professional Assessment

Professional leadership assessment should happen in the middle stage of your hiring process—after careful vetting, multiple interviews, and work sample evaluation. Think of the assessment as a halfway validation step, not an early screening tool. After the assessment, more intensive interviews with key stakeholders should take place for final decisions.

Recommended sequence:

1. Resume screening for intelligence indicators and organizational fit

2. Initial interview focusing on competencies and cultural alignment

3. Work sample or realistic job preview

4. Structured behavioral interview

5. Professional assessment for final candidates

6. Post-assessment interviews, perhaps in-person, to explore the candidate with other stakeholders.

Building Internal Capability

Consider investing in interviewer training to help your hiring managers and HR leaders build more effective candidate evaluation processes. Organizations that develop internal expertise in behavioral interviewing and competency assessment see dramatically improved candidate quality.

This includes training on:

• Designing behaviorally anchored interview questions to help understand a candidates’ skillset, including hard skills

• Recognizing impression management behaviors

• Evaluating critical reasoning through work samples, including soft skills

• Conducting effective reference checks

The Bottom Line

The goal isn't to put more barriers in front of candidates—it's to ensure that when you invest in professional assessment, you're conducting interviews with qualified candidates that have genuine leadership potential. When your pre-assessment process effectively identifies and develops strong candidates, the assessment becomes a powerful tool for making confident hiring decisions.

Remember: the best assessment results come from assessing the right candidate, not just assessing more people. It should streamline your process significantly.

Ready to strengthen your leadership candidate evaluation process? Consider partnering with experts like us who can help design custom competency frameworks and interviewer training programs that align with your organizational needs and culture. Then, when you’re ready, we’re happy to help you assess your final candidates as well.