Selecting School Leavers with Talent

POTENTIA® Junior is a method for recognising and developing talent among young, inexperienced staff in an organisation. It can also be used effectively with applicants for employment such as apprenticeships or educational sponsorship such as bursaries for school leavers. It focuses particularly on identifying people who have not (yet) been through tertiary education, but who have the potential to become naturally effective supervisors or managers in the course of time.

Appraising young people with limited experience is notoriously difficult. Applicants typically come from a wide variety of backgrounds and often have very diverse levels of general experience. Many will be inexperienced and nervous about selection procedures. Traditionally, selection has focused on educational attainment and social skills, both of which are heavily influenced by chance circumstances of the young person’s upbringing and opportunities. Lack of developed work and social competence may mask strong underlying abilities which have not yet had the chance to be expressed or to blossom.

The traditional interview focuses on developed competence and results rather than on the individual’s innate abilities. A candidate who is nervous, introvert or ‘unpolished’, or one who has been deprived of opportunities to show the extent of his or her talents is less likely to be accepted than one whose background has been more conducive to development. The attractive, well-presented, socially-confident and fluent candidate almost always has an advantage in a normal interview situation. These competences – and others like them – are a measure of what the individual has learnt. Of much greater importance to modern organisations competing in a business environment which is increasingly complex and rapidly changing, is what its people can learn into the future. The ability of employees to learn – that is, their Potential – is the single most important factor in ensuring the future prosperity of the business. ‘Traditional’ selection methods ignore this area almost entirely.

POTENTIA® Junior offers an entirely different approach to selection at this level. They are designed to focus primarily on what a candidate can do in the future, not on what they have done in the past. They concentrate on processes that enable people to learn and grow from experience and training available, not on the end result. For example, they measure not how ‘mature’ a young person is – which is a matter of circumstances – but the underlying capacity to become mature. The past is irrelevant, it is future performance that counts.

The processes or qualities measured by POTENTIA® are:

• Sense of (self) Confidence
• Achievement Motivation
• Purposeful Curiosity
• Mental Alertness
• Empathy

The Qualities were identified through an international research project with Teachers, Supervisors of young people in industry and commerce, and direct observations of 120 school leavers at work. The aim was to identify distinctive and fundamental differences between children and teenagers who had already achieved ‘success’, or were confidently expected to do so, and those whose potential was regarded as lower.