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With the proliferation of AI-driven recruiting software, it may seem that candidate screening is becoming easier than ever. But, for specialized employee populations — security cleared personnel, police and public safety officers, critical infrastructure employees and more — finding quality candidates can’t be solved with technology alone.

Some specialized labor pools are extremely small, like cleared employees. Other security-focused jobs are physically demanding and dangerous. These types of roles can present mental health challenges due to their high-stress nature. As a result, organizations across government and the private sector are struggling to recruit new workers.

Fortunately, there are tools available to HR departments and staffing agencies tasked with finding employees for high-security positions. Personality, behavioral and cognitive assessments complement existing screening tools and interviews, and they help identify potential employees with the personality traits needed for success in high-pressure or security-cleared roles. 

“High-security jobs inherently require a high level of stress management, adaptability and personal integrity in a candidate,” says Patrick Moran, Pearson’s director of sales for government and public safety. “Personality measures capture these and other key aspects of a person’s presentation of themselves in these unique workplace settings.”

Assessments can improve the recruitment process for high-security candidates in a number of important ways, including:

Educators know literacy development is a complex process that goes beyond decoding words on a page. While assessments are essential to ensure students get the interventions they need, educators might find additional holistic support in a surprising element — through helping develop social-emotional skills.

Let's take a closer look at how social-emotional learning (SEL) can support literacy development and improve student outcomes.

With the end of the Great Resignation, it may seem that employee retention is no longer a top problem for HR leaders. But in high-security industries — those involving security clearances, running critical infrastructure, managing private security personnel and more — retention remains a costly challenge.  

This specialized labor pool is small; for example, just over a million people in the United States have a Top Secret security clearance, and while that number seems large out of context, when considering the number of roles to be filled, it’s actually not very big. On top of the constrained candidate pool, hiring in these high-security industries is a laborious process complete with extensive background checks, identity verification and a specific set of skills required.  

The time and effort it takes to hire high-security employees and ensure they obtain the training and clearances they need for their jobs mean that losing an employee carries prohibitive costs and can leave critical roles unfilled.  

What can HR leaders do to prevent turnover in these industries? Competitive compensation packages are table stakes, particularly as inflation hits all sectors of the economy. But there is more to staying at a job than just the salary. HR leaders can utilize these five strategies to reduce turnover in this unique employee population. 

Concerns about youth mental health have reached crisis levels – in one recent survey, 20% of Canadians between the ages of 12 and 25 reported experiencing poor or bad mental health conditions. As society aims to combat this crisis, educators play a critical role in identifying signs of mental distress in the school community.

MPQ coauthors John Kamp, PhD, and Martin Sellbom, PhD, answer some frequently asked questions about the newly published Multidimensional Personality Questionnaire (MPQ).

Q&A with BOT-3 Product Manager, Melinda Cooper

The BOT™-3 is nearly ready to launch! You’ve asked such thoughtful questions about the new test, so we’ve assembled the most common ones, then grouped them by topic to make it easier for you to find the answers you’re seeking.

Links to get more information about the BOT-3 , BOT-3 Brief, and budget-stretching bundling options can be found at the end of this Q&A. Please reach out to your assessment consultant if you have questions we have not covered here.