To kickstart 2021, I want to share some of our upcoming product releases. But first, let's look back at last year's innovations that fueled them.
The last twelve months have been incredibly hard on everyone across the globe as we struggled to stay safe during a global pandemic, the likes of which has not been seen for over a century. During this time, talent acquisition teams were asked to do more with less. Candidates and employees navigated a rapidly changing employment landscape, adapting to new processes designed to protect customers and team members.
Our team was acutely aware of these challenges, deciding early on to dedicate resources and modify our roadmap to do everything we could to assist our customers, as well as their employees and candidates during this unprecedented time. Here are some of the product features and enhancements that we released in 2020.
In January of 2020, the Traitify Team reviewed our product roadmap and determined that we'd construct our first "learning and development" product over the course of the year. As it became clear that COVID-19 would be an international crisis, we promptly resolved to release our first iteration of this product quickly to assist teams that were struggling with layoffs, furloughs, and increased stress and anxiety.
This "learning and development" product soon became our Traitify Engage: Employee Report, leveraging our Big Five Assessment data to provide a customized report to Employees, along with ongoing personalized insights delivered via SMS and email. The Traitify Engage: Employee Report prioritizes development of Employees through quick, bite-sized pieces of content that maximize impact while requiring very little time commitment — with particular focus on hourly employees who rarely receive these types of resources.
We already have several customers using Engage, providing engagement and development content during the onboarding process and beyond.
In an effort to continuously improve the value of our Big Five Assessment, we released a new version of the Traitify Select: Big Five Hiring Manager Report. To further leverage its use in the selection process, we focused on providing insight into how Candidates compare to the unique Ideal Candidate Profile established for the role and giving Hiring Managers interview questions that spotlight potential areas of concern.
Using our Career Discovery Assessment, we developed our Traitify Attract: Job Matcher Service in 2020 — with the aim of giving organizations an off-the-shelf solution for helping candidates discover opportunities that fit their personality and interests.
Now that we've spent a little time reviewing 2020 highlights — let's look ahead to 2021 and preview some exciting things we have planned. I know I'm super excited, and after learning what's coming, I hope you are, too!
As we continue to expand our product offerings this year, our new Cognitive Assessment will join our Big Five Assessment in helping organizations prioritize, select, and develop talent. This assessment will measure General Mental Ability ("GMA") which is considered to be one of the most effective predictors of fit and performance for certain roles. Each Candidate taking the Cognitive Assessment will respond to a series of abstract reasoning questions with varying levels of difficulty (accommodations will be made for Candidates with learning disabilities). It typically takes Candidates five minutes to complete the assessment.
The Cognitive Assessment will be able to be combined with Traitify's Big Five Assessment, to produce an aggregate score, or used independently. For each role in which the assessment is used, a unique Ideal Candidate Profile will be established that specifies the range of scores that are ideal for both the personality and cognitive components. Traitify's Customer Success and Psychology teams will work with each Customer to define these Ideal Candidate Profiles for each role — based on analysis of the role, current employee scores, interview with Managers, and existing research.
For each Candidate who completes the Cognitive Assessment, Traitify will provide a Fit Score, Recommendation (i.e "Preferred Fit" or "Potential Risk"), a full report indicating the Candidate's performance on the Cognitive Assessment, as well as their Big Five Assessment results.
As with Traitify's Big Five Assessment, the Cognitive Assessment will have the ability to be integrated with an organization's applicant tracking system, or natively within Traitify's SaaS application.
Studies have shown that the most common reasons behind an Employee's voluntary departure are lack of engagement and no opportunity for advancement within the organization. In an effort to reduce this voluntary turnover — increasing happiness in the workplace — we are continuing to expand the Traitify Engage offerings with the Traitify Engage: Manager Report.
The Traitify Engage: Manager Report will provide Managers with insights on each Employee they oversee, based on that Employee's Big Five Assessment results — including guidance on specific psychological concepts and how to apply those learning to their interactions with that employee. Additionally, the report will allow the Manager to assign micro-exercises to Employees and view any responses via SMS or email from Employees.
Customization and configuration are central tenets to everything we build at Traitify, so we're continuing to add substantial customization options to the next version of our Traitify Select: Big Five Hiring Manager Report.
Joining the update to the report just released in 2020 will be additional insights into why (or why not) a Candidate is a fit for each personality dimension/functional work area. We'll also be adding the ability to view customized interview questions for customers who desire to use their own questions or create organization-specific questions by working with our Psychology team.
Finally, each Ideal Candidate Profile will have a description of what makes a successful employee in that role. This description will help Hiring Managers to quickly understand what is a good fit for the role as they evaluate Candidates.
I'm also hoping to connect with some of you, our valued customers, this year to get feedback and input on what we're building. Reach out if you're interested in some early looks at our products — your partnership is immensely appreciated and cherished!
If you'd like to learn more about the Cognitive Assessment or upcoming Manager Reports, including how they could complement your existing usage of Traitify, please reach out to us anytime via support@traitify.com, your dedicated Customer Success Manager, or email me directly at josh@traitify.com.
