Quick Answer:

A Performance Model is a data-informed snapshot of the ideal profile for a job or the characteristics that have historically predicted success in a specific role. It’s built from solid market research, an evaluation of your own top performers, and a little bit of pixie dust. And despite how it sounds, it is not a machine for manufacturing identical employees. It’s a tool for spotting the handful of tendencies that actually matter for a role, while leaving plenty of room for real diversity everywhere else.

A Real Life Example

I recently worked on a project to create competencies for technicians at a global manufacturing organization, and it turned into one of the clearest real-world examples of why this is important.

We used the PXT Select assessment as a framework for understanding what makes techs tick. We chose this tool for two reasons:

1. It covers a lot of ground in that it measures thinking skills, behavioral traits, and motivational interests.

2. It is simple and cost-effective to scale as a candidate screening assessment.

We assessed about 30 high performing technicians at varying levels. Interestingly, Behavioral Traits across the group varied quite a bit. Some technicians were steady and methodical, others had more urgency and flexibility, some were reserved while others were outgoing, and plenty of each type were doing well. But their Thinking Skills told an entirely different story. We found that technicians who advanced into higher-level roles with bigger, more complex problems to solve had stronger Thinking Skills.

I want to be careful here, because this is exactly the kind of finding that’s easy to misuse. It didn’t mean those technicians with lower Thinking Skills were bad employees or without value. Remember, we assessed high performers, many who had been strong contributors for years. What it did tell us was that specific roles with specific levels of complexity, had a real cognitive threshold, and that’s important information to have before making a hiring or promotion decision, not after and end up with someone struggling and everyone else being frustrated.

What struck their team most was how much clarity this gave them going forward. Before we had the data, promotion decisions were made on tenure and general reputation, “she’s been here five years and everyone likes her,” which is a lovely sentiment but a terrible predictor of whether someone can handle a role with significantly more complexity. Once we understood the actual pattern, promotion conversations got both kinder and more honest. Kinder, because no one was set up for failure. More honest, because they could have a real conversation about what a person needed to develop, or whether a different path within the organization might genuinely suit them better.

How a Performance Model Actually Gets Built

There are three ways to build one, and you can use them alone or in combination.

Researched Performance Models are the fastest starting point. We maintain a growing library based on data from thousands of top and bottom performers across different positions, and the U.S. Department of Labor’s O*Net database of job requirements. Each model comes with a description you can compare against your actual job description before choosing it. For a common role, like a customer service representative or a sales manager, this alone often gets you 80% of the way there without any additional legwork.

Competency Discovery Workshops and Job Analysis Surveys let you tailor a Library model to your organization’s specific version of a role. Pulling managers and individuals who perform the work together to brainstorm the required skills and behaviors is an excellent way to get subjective input while building alignment around success drivers. When you don't have time for group input, a 10-minute Job Analysis Survey lets you get input from a variety of people fast.

Concurrent Studies use your own people. You have your current top performers in a role take the assessment, and the system builds a model directly from their results. This method takes a littl emore upfront effort, but it’s also the most powerful, because it’s built entirely from your actual environment, your actual culture, and your actual definition of success, not a generic industry average.

A Word About Choosing High Performers...

Choosing existing employees to serve as "models" can be the trickiest part. High performers should be chosen with 2 things in mind:

1. Use measurable success factors - choose employees with the highest productivity, greatest efficiency, strongest problem solvers, most autonomous workers, roles models of organizational values.

2. Consider the future strategy - what changes are happening in your organization and who possesses the skills and behaviors to thrive in that future state? High performers from the past might not have what it takes to thrive in the future.

Most organizations get the most value from combining multiple methods, using a Library model as a starting point and refining it with real data from their own team and input from real people who do the work.

How do you use a performance model or job profile in the hiring process?

Once a Performance Model exists for a role, every candidates' assessment results get compared against it. At a glance, you can see how closely the candidate fits the model and then, dive in to understand why.

It's important to know that only a unicorn will achieve 100% match. Chasing perfect matches will cost you good people who would likely thrive in the role. What you'll tend to find is that certain traits are very important for a specific role, as in the case above where Thinking Skills proved to be more important than many of the Behavioral Traits. There will also likely be a few characteristics that fully align with your organizational culture and values. Those are truly the important factors to consider.

A good assessment tool will explore the gaps more fully and provide recommended behavioral interview questions designed to understand how the candidate compensates for the gap and even questions to validate where they completely match the desired profile.

In essence, using a performance model or job profile helps to get everyone in your organization aligned around what's important for success. It provides helpful prompts for asking better interview and reference check questions. And, it provides data-informed input to fuel hiring and promotional decisions.

Quick Answers to What People Actually Ask Me

Does a Performance Model mean I’m trying to hire the same person over and over? No, and this is the single biggest misconception about them. We're not creating clones and frankly, a team full of identical thinkers is a liability, not an asset. Every team I’ve ever seen thrive had people who approached problems differently, pushed back differently, and brought different energy into a room. What a Performance Model does is something much narrower and more useful. It tells you which specific tendencies tend to show up in the people who succeed in a given role, so you can weigh those specifically, instead of vaguely hoping a candidate “seems like a good fit,” which is really just a nicer way of saying “seems like me” or “seems like the last person who had this job.”

What if my top performers don’t have much in common? That’s useful information too. It usually means the role is genuinely flexible to different working styles, and your Performance Model should reflect a wider acceptable range rather than a narrow one. Sometimes, it's only a few characteristics that truly correlate with high performance.

Can I build a Performance Model for a brand-new role that doesn’t exist anywhere else in my company? Absolutely. We have hundreds of researched performance models in our library. Then, we can chat about how it should be customized based on your unique needs.

How many people do I need for a reliable Concurrent Study? A data scientist would likely recommend a few dozen top performers for a statistically reliable model, but I recognize that particularly in smaller companies, that might be impossible. Don't let that stop you. Getting data from your high performers is fascinating, even if it's just from a few people. You might also like certain traits of one employee and other traits from another. Even data from one or two people will provide a consistent format that you can compare and contrast with the Library Model.

Should I rebuild a Performance Model once I have it, or is it set in stone? I recommend revisiting your performance models periodically for a few reasons:

• When creating Performance Models, I always ask about your organization's future business strategy and how this role will contribute to its success. As your strategy evolves, so should the performance models behind it.

• Even when using assessments, you will still have some folks that don't succeed on the job. Over time, this is also important data to feed into your Performance Model so you don't make the same hiring mistakes down the road.

• Expectations change with new management. As new hiring managers enter the picture, review the Performance Model with them. It helps them to understand the types of individuals who have thrived in the past and it provides an objective way for them to articulate their own preferences.

Can two very different roles share the same Performance Model? Occasionally, if the underlying demands genuinely overlap, but I’d treat that as the exception rather than the default. Even similar-sounding titles often carry meaningfully different complexity, pace, or people-management demands once you look closely. People are motivated by different things. Some are motivated by working with others, others by more analytical work, while others like working with their hands. Sometimes, the most significant differentiators aren't brainpower or personality, but rather true motivational interests.

Need More Information?

If you haven’t yet read "What Does a Pre-Employment Assessment Actually Measure?," that’s the foundational piece this one builds on, since you need to understand Thinking Style, Behavioral Traits, and Interests before a Performance Model means much of anything. And if you’re still building internal buy-in for why any of this is worth doing, "8 Benefits of Using Pre-Employment Testing" will give you some fuel.

Don’t wait for the “perfect” model before you start using one. An imperfect Performance Model built today beats another year of hiring on gut instinct while you wait for certainty that never fully arrives.

Curious how this looks for a specific role at your organization? Let's build a Performance Model for a position you're trying to fill. Then, try the assessment with your top candidate for free to validate your thinking, while getting recommended questions for reference checks and final interviews. Just schedule a call with me or email me at [email protected] to get started.

Stay Ignited!