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June 14, 2007
Solving business ™ ˜dirty secret'

BY JOHN ZAPPE
When Yves Lermusi left as head of Taleo Research last summer to launch Checkster, he somewhat mysteriously described the new company as a career- and talent-checkup service.
Now we know what the man “ one of the “100 most influential people in recruiting“ has been up to. Checkster went public June 6, calling itself a Personal Feedback Management tool. Technically, it is. But then, a souffl is technically an egg dish. What Checkster.com offers is a way for you to discover what others think about your professional performance and competencies. Quoting Jack Welch, fabled former head of GE, Lermusi told us, "The biggest dirty little secret in business (is the) lack of candid feedback." Checkster is an effort to solve that problem.
There is no charge for individuals using the tool. A paid corporate version includes a reference-check component. Corporate and consumer versions differ mainly in the use to which they're put and the breadth of the report they produce.
In the personal version, you complete a brief assessment, rating yourself on job and career characteristics and answering a series of open-ended questions such as listing your top three key strengths. Then you invite as many as 25 of your co-workers and associates to rate you, using the same survey. Once at least three responses have been received, Checkster will prepare a report comparing your perception of yourself to the perceptions of your colleagues. This is all done anonymously, of course. You're the only one to see the results, and you make use of them as you see fit.
The paid version of the assessment has the same questions, and the basic reports are identical, but there are more bells and whistles added to help employees understand their readiness for promotion and their level of engagement. It's like the consumer version, only the employee sees the results, so the assessment is not a personnel-evaluation tool.
"We leveraged the Internet to accommodate the human reluctance to provide honest feedback," Lermusi said. Mimicking the popular 360 feedbacks, but without the time and expense of having a professional intermediary gather the results, these talent checkups make it possible to provide candid assessments for every employee in a company.
The base price is $75 for each assessment, but there are volume discounts.
The other side of the coin is the reference check. Recruiters and hiring managers who have screened down their applicant pool can have their top candidates submit a list of references who will be asked to complete the survey. The candidate does the same, but only the reference responses are provided “anonymously“ to the company. The candidate gets a complete report, with the same anonymous responses. These cost a company $50 per position, provide for checks on up to five candidates with 15 references per candidate.
Traditional reference checks are often stymied by company rules prohibiting the release of all but start and end dates, title and salary. In addition, they are usually done just before an offer is made. The Checkster reference check requires the candidate to provide at least six names, Lermusi encourages companies to conduct the check early in the process. "That way, before the interview, you have a profile of the candidate. That will make the interview time more productive," he said. Job candidates sign a waiver releasing respondents from liability for anything they might say in the assessment. Even that may not be enough to convince corporate HR departments to ease the restrictions on reference checks, but Checkster's anonymity assurances might enable it to circumvent company policies.
What's the application here for recruitment publishers? We see Checkster as a natural extension of the online recruitment process. Many job boards offer background checking as an add-on for employers. Some dating services offer background pre-screening to reduce the likelihood you'll meet an ax murderer. It's not much of leap for career sites to offer these assessments to candidates for their own improvement and to resell the service to employers. Lermusi agrees that adding Checkster to a career site makes sense. An assessment may even unearth unrecognized areas of strength that candidates can use in their job hunts. They may discover that accomplishments they didn't think very significant were seen by others as big deals," Lermusi said.