16,000 terms describe human personality: skills, traits, competencies, values, motives, intelligence. The questionnaires used in aptitude diagnostics often focus on just a few aspects of this massive data set and describe people mainly in relation to the tasks and organizational demands placed on them.
Diagnostics is the first step towards dialogue between people who want to work together – and is therefore a perfect fit for New Work. Diagnostics targets the very areas where New Work requires and enables the greatest change: personality. There are 7 reasons why.
Digitalization, automation, and new technologies will change or eliminate jobs. New ways of thinking and leadership principles are entering companies, leading to massive process and cultural changes. With New Work, organizations and collaboration are changing, as well as tasks and job requirements – ultimately even people’s mindsets and attitudes. Fundamentally different skills are required to navigate this transformation successfully.
Various diagnostic test procedures already capture the new skills that are crucial in New Work and deliver the right skill sets for this new way of working.
1. Diagnostics Starts in the Job Market
Two out of five applicants drop out of the hiring process. Reasons include overly complicated application procedures, the need to upload too many documents, lack of appreciation, or unpleasant assessment centers. Digital selection tests will become increasingly common – a recent McKinsey study projects an 82% increase. In the future, one in three companies will use digital tools to automatically test applicants’ personal skills and conduct online interviews.
More and more providers of diagnostic tools integrate their products with applicant tracking systems, so pre-selection starts directly on a company’s career page or even in the job board itself. The stronger the relevance of the questionnaire to the job requirements, the higher the applicants’ willingness to complete it. Applicants consider around 42 minutes acceptable for an application – about the duration of a modern questionnaire system. They are open to innovative methods, which technology already makes possible – HR just needs to use them.
2. From Elbow Tactics to Servant Leadership
Research shows that humility and modesty are now more important skills than assertiveness. Leaders are becoming coaches who need the ability to analyze problems and conflicts on a meta-level and connect them with communication strategies. Adaptability is crucial: centrifugal forces in a team must be transformed into win-win situations.
Appreciation and the continuous involvement of team members are essential. Emotional competence, self-reflection, strong commitment, and enthusiasm have long been central to aptitude diagnostics. In the New Work context, these traits carry even greater weight. Today, the skills that define an ideal leader are different from those of the past.
3. Encouraging and Demanding Engagement
Job satisfaction in Germany has hit a low: 35% of employees are dissatisfied, 7.9 percentage points more than last year – the sharpest global decline. This calls for radical change.
New Work’s focus on values and inner attitudes can help. People are placed first. Hierarchies lose importance; every team member acts autonomously, pursues self-realization, and contributes to the collective.
The diagnostic question becomes: how well do person and company fit together? Diagnostics has long included values, but new tools incorporate shifts in values, adding items such as self-orientation vs. team orientation and preference for professional distance vs. a family-like work environment. For New Work, diagnostics targets a new kind of team understanding – fundamentally different from before.
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4. Who Learns the Fastest?
In Germany, 12% of jobs are at risk of automation. Those unwilling to upskill risk losing their positions. HR must offer tailored training for specific roles. Already, companies allocate an average of 3.7 days per year for employee training – a figure expected to rise to 5 days within five years. HR managers are becoming career advisors.
Learning agility is the key. Professional qualifications quickly lose value; the ability to learn and adapt matters more. People with high learning agility learn faster and extract more from new situations. Diagnostics can measure this skill, enabling HR to detect training needs automatically and prepare employees for future roles.
5. The Digital Mindset
A digital mindset is central to transformation success. Dedicated tests measure digital competence across six dimensions. There are no right or wrong answers – only stronger or weaker tendencies that may help or hinder in specific contexts.
Measured traits include technical affinity, resilience to failure, openness to experimentation, and acceptance of technological and digital change. Innovation orientation, disruptive thinking, and proactive action also define the digital mindset – all critical for supporting New Work collaboration.
6. Combining the Human and the Data
Massive digitalization efforts promote the use of online tests. Already, one in seven companies uses digital tools to find qualified employees; one in three plans to adopt them within five years. Algorithms hold huge potential – not only in recruiting but also in talent development.
HR can now make data-driven personnel decisions. Diagnostics generates data, allowing correlations with job success to be measured and planned. These tools are essential for building strong people analytics systems.
Big Data enables better job matching: analyzing employee skills, interests, and training alongside internal and external data helps prevent under- or overqualification and ensures better role alignment.
7. Diagnostics as a Digital Game
Awareness of the candidate market is part of the New Work mindset. Surprisingly, diagnostics also offers solutions for employer branding. For example:
- Customized job postings with pre-assessment questions, sometimes doubling applicant numbers.
- Hybrid solutions that derive coaching needs from diagnostics and deliver tailored learning content.
- Gamification: playful exploration of a company or career guidance games.
Classic online assessments (e.g., for cognitive ability, language skills, or technical understanding) can be turned into online games. This boosts applications not only from apprentices but across target groups. Gamification elements are popular for conveying employer branding while simultaneously testing qualifications in an engaging way.