Performance Profile Assessment (PPA) - Helm and Associates, Inc.

Are you considering candidates for positions where performance makes the difference between your company's success or failure?

You need our full personality assessment service:

Whether you are considering outside candidates for management or executive positions, or trying to identify current employees with untapped leadership potential, you need reliable and objective information about the strengths and liabilities they bring to the job.

  • Resumes are often little better than exercises in the candidate's creative writing ability.
  • Interview impressions are only as good as the person who conducted the interview; at best, they only show you how well-prepared the candidate is to talk to you.
  • It's more and more difficult to get any information from previous employers other than confirmation of employment dates.
  • Current employees may seem ready for advancement, but what you really know about them is how well they are doing now; you need data-driven information about hidden potential.

Our Performance Profile Assessment is based on a set of scientifically-validated personality and attitude tests that can be used with current employees and with outside candidates. Dr. Helm professionally reviews the test-taker's results and, in addition to the objective results you are provided, he includes his professional opinion regarding an Overall Recommendation, Job Match, and Promotion Potential for the position applied for. It's easy to use, and the results you get help you solve five problems you have -that we all have! - with hiring and promotion decisions:

  • You need objective, detailed information about how productive and effective the person is likely to be on the job, before you make a hiring or promotion decision. It's difficult to predict about how a person will act on the job. After all, candidates are putting their best foot forward during and interview; in fact, it's their job, during an interview, to call attention to their strengths and minimize the attention you pay to their liabilities. But you don't get to hire only a person's strengths; you get to hire or promote the whole person. The Performance Profile Assessment gives you objective information about an applicant or candidate for promotion because it is based on cutting-edge science in the measurement of the underlying characteristics that affect job performance.
  • It takes time to get to know applicants and candidates well enough to make the best possible hiring and promotion decisions, and time costs money. Do you always have time to conduct second and third follow-up interviews? The Professional Profile Assessment uses the candidate's time, not yours, and then provides you with detailed, customized information about the person's underlying work-related behavior preferences and characteristics. Not only that, but you also get follow-up interview questions, based on the person's self-described characteristics, so that you can guide the interview to learn more about the attitudes the person brings to the job.
  • Not everyone interviews well, and the Performance Profile Assessment reports help you identify candidates with potential that did not show up in the interview. Some people simply don't show to best advantage in the stress of an interview, and some interviewers don't always manage to "click" with a candidate. Don't miss out of hiring some of these uniquely-qualified candidates whose strengths may not show during the interview.
  • It costs more than you would expect to hire or promote the wrong person.  People are not interchangeable cogs who can be made to fit whatever openings you may have at a given point in time, and the costs to you and your company of hiring or promoting the wrong person add up quickly
      1. 1.  The cost of the initial selection process is lost if the person you hire or promote cannot perform successfully on the job, and you have to start another search;
      2. 2.  You lose the salary and benefits costs of the person you hire or promote who quits or is let go;
      3. 3.  Time spent training the inappropriate new or promoted employee is lost, as well as the time (money) of the trainers and supervisors;
      4. 4.  Harder to quantify, but absolutely a part of the cost of unsuccessful hiring or promotion decisions, is the cost to your company of the loss of customers or the damage to your company's reputation that results from having a person in the wrong position.
      5. 5.  Find out why experts say that, conservatively, it costs at least the equivalent of 20% of a person's annual total compensation (pay and benefits) to hire or promote the wrong person.
  • Save time and money on training. How often have you spent money on one-size-fits all training for new employees, money that did not actually address the unique problems or challenges that new employee faced?

Use the detailed results reports from the Performance Profile Assessment to ascertain who will benefit most from training, what kind of training will give your company the most bang for the buck, and to boost your succession planning by identifying future leaders - employees who have not only the knowledge and experience, but also the key temperament characteristics the underlie natural leadership.

What Is the Performance Profile Assessment?

The Performance Profile Assessment is a full assessment of a person's personality-driven, job-relevant attitudes and preferences that affect his or her work behavior.  In addition to the data-driven objective results the Performance Profile Assessment is reviewed by Dr. Helm and his professional opinion of the candidate's overall match with the job, company, and industry is expressed in three areas:

  • Overall Recommendation:  based on everything that Dr. Helm knows from the information provided by the candidate during the online assessment session, as well as on Dr. Helm's knowledge of the job requirements for which the candidate is being assessed, his knowledge of your company, and his experience with other companies in your industry.
  • Job Match:  how well-suited is this person, in terms of his or her work-related preferences and attitudes at this point in time, for the job for which he or she is being considered?
  • Promotion Potential​:  based on the candidate's job-related preferences and attitudes, at this point in time, what is the candidate's potential for future promotion to jobs of greater scope or responsibility?

The Performance Profile Assessment is the most convenient full personality assessment tool to use in your selection process: it is administered online and is available 24/7/365. It takes a candidate only about 60 minutes to complete the entire assessment, and can be completed in either English or Spanish.

The Performance Profile Assessment Results Report is organized so that you can see the candidate's work-related leadership strengths and liabilities at a glance, and detailed information is included for specific selection and development decisions when you need it.

Based on our 38 years of experience, the Performance Profile Assessment Results Report highlights five key areas that have been shown to be critically important in identifying and developing leadership potential:

Work Style:

​The person's overall work style on the job: energy level and stamina, willingness to accept direction or advice from others, approach to planning and understanding problems, overall ability to learn new information.

Management Style:

​How this person will lead and direct activities of others: willing to take charge of situations, delegate tasks and follow up, comfortable asking questions, presenting unwelcome information, likely to plan before taking action.

Dealing with People:

How this person will interact with people: energized by being around people or prefers to work independently, willingness to make an effort to get along with others, straightforward or not, diplomatic or tactless.

Problem Solving:

How this person uses information to solve problems and challenges: ability to control reactions in order to plan solutions, able to blend logical and intuitive thinking.

Mental Toughness:

This person's ability to manage his or her personal reactions and moods: able to remain calm in stressful situations, ability to focus and set aside internal emotional reactions.

The Performance Profile Assessment Results Report shows you whether each of these five areas is a strength, a caution, or a concern for this candidate, and includes extensive detail, based on how this person answered the questions on the questionnaires on which it is based, about what this person's personality-driven behavior on the job is likely to be.

Request a sample report to see how these validated results solve your problem of obtaining objective information about the strengths and liabilities that each candidate will bring to the job.

Are There Different Versions of the Performance Profile Assessment for Different Positions?

This is a common question that we are asked about the Performance Profile Assessment.  In fact, the Performance Profile Assessment is always based on the same three validated questionnaires:

  • General Information Appraisal
  • Helm Preference Inventory
  • Work Attitude Questionnaire​

Every Performance Profile Assessment is professionally reviewed and the Overall Recommendation, Job Match, and Promotion Potential are determined by the position for which the candidate is being considered, along with everything else that we know from the candidate about his or her education, military, and work experience, and our knowledge and experience with your company and your industry.

The customization of the Performance Profile Assessment is based on all of these factors.

Go Beyond Hiring/Promotion Decisions to Customized Development Tools

In addition to learning a candidate's strengths and concerns that could affect his or her leadership style or management potential, you will receive five additional reports that are customized for each candidate:

  • Interview Suggestions Booklet

This report provides interview suggestions, customized for this candidate, to help you explore potential problem areas with open-ended interview questions. And the Interview Suggestions Booklet also explains what to listen for in the answers a candidate might provide.

The Interview Suggestions Booklet helps everyone be a better interviewer, which improves the quality of the information you will have to make hiring and promotions decisions.

  • Work Attitude Questionnaire (WAQ) Results Report

    The Work Attitude Questionnaire helps you learn about job-relevant attitudes that affect a person’s work behavior and that can increase the risk that he or she will act inappropriately on the job. The Work Attitude Questionnaire evaluates a person’s attitudes toward four basic, work-related attitudes:
    • Employee pilferage and theft;
    • Substance abuse that affects job performance;
    • Temper control on the job;
    • Respect for others on the job.
  • Coaching Suggestions Guidebook

    Use this guidebook can be used throughout an employee's tenure; it includes coaching and mentoring suggestions that are customized, practical, and effective.
    The Coaching Suggestions Guidebook is arranged by the five key work areas so that you can see the effects of underlying personality-driven preferences on work-related behavior.
  • Helm Summary Report

The most common question you will get from your candidates after they complete the Management Potential Assessment is likely, "How did I do on that test?

The HELM Summary report gives you a way to answer that question and help a new supervisor or manager learn to use his or her assets to productive effect, as well as tips for how to overcome caution areas. It presents that person's results in each of the five key work-related behavior areas, showing his or her strengths and cautions in each area, as well as practical tips for improvement.

Combined with the Coaching Suggestions Guidebook, your future leaders and managers can work with their coach/mentors to develop specific action steps and feedback loops.

  • Professional Development Guide

    The Professional Development Guide is a detailed report to be given to a new manager or executive that explains in detail what he or she said about his or her work-related behavior preferences.  Arranged by the five Behavior Clusters, it provides detailed explanations of how underlying personal preferences affect behavior.  It shows the person where his or her strengths are and what caution areas may be affecting his or her successful job performance.

    Most important, it provides pragmatic and constructive suggestions for improving performance in specific areas, and includes suggestions about how the person can create an easy-to-follow Action Plan for implementing the useful suggestions.

    Request sample reports to see how The Professional Development Guide can be incorporated into your company's coaching and mentoring programs.

The Benefits to You of the Performance Profile Assessment:

  • You get objective, job-relevant information about candidates' leadership potential and management strengths. The Performance Profile Assessment is based on three validated employment tests that meet or exceed the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures and the American Psychological Association's Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing.
  • You gain consistency and uniformity in the selection/promotion process. The Performance Profile Assessment asks the same questions, in the same order, every time. The respondent's answers are scored and the results are presented in exactly the same way. Even the best interviewer can have a bad day and forget to ask all of the same questions of each applicant. Tests don't have bad days.
  • You save time and money because the Performance Profile Assessment questionnaires are administered online 24/7/365, in either English or Spanish, and the reports are delivered to your email inbox. The individual who completes the Management Potential Assessment answers over 250 questions without taking up an interview's time. When there are many candidates for the same position, the Performance Profile Assessment helps you narrow the number of people who will be considered to those who are best qualified and suited for the job, and it does so in a time-effective way.
  • You strengthen the quality of interviews by basing them on the individual's results to the Performance Profile Assessment. The detailed Results Report and the Interview Suggestions Booklet provide you with sample open-ended questions that will help your interviewers probe areas of concern, and they include suggestions about how to understand possible responses.
  • You avoid bias in hiring and selection procedures by using the Performance Profile Assessment because using validated employment tests properly is more legally defensible than not using them. U.S. law forbids unfair discrimination in hiring and promotion, and that includes all aspects of the process, such as interviews, application blanks, reference checks, background investigations, physical examinations, and drug testing. Our validation of the Performance Profile Assessment helps you support the case that you used information fairly in your personnel decisions.
  • Results include customized training and development suggestions and guidelines. Don't stop with the hiring or promotion decision! Our Coaching Suggestions Guidebook, HELM Summary, and Professional Development Guide reports give you customized information for each person who has completed the Performance Profile Assessment - information that enables you to help a new employee grow into his or her potential and become one of your leaders.
  • You have access to online administrative tools, including activity reports, quick reference guides, and free telephone consultation. You will have a confidential, password-protected administrative account at our web site where your results are always available, and where you can find other support material such as "How to Introduce Employment Tests to Applicants." In addition, our experts are available whenever you have questions about administering and using the Performance Profile Assessment, and there's no charge to you for answers to your questions.

Here's the Fine Print about the Performance Profile Assessment and What You Get:

The Performance Profile Assessment is on scientifically-validated, job-relevant general personality tests that specifically provide you with objective information about a candidate's work-related behavior preferences and leadership potential.



The Performance Profile Assessment is administered online at our confidential, SSL-secured web site. No personal or confidential information, such as birth date, social security number, or email address, is collected from the people who complete the Performance Profile Assessment at our web site.



Customized reports are delivered via email to your designated recipients by the end of business day that the candidate completes the Performance Profile Assessment online session:

  • Performance Profile Assessment Results Report
  • Interview Suggestions Booklet
  • Work Attitude Questionnaire Results Report
  • Coaching Suggestions Guidebook
  • HELM Summary report
  • Professional Development Guide

You also get free video training in how to use the Performance Profile Assessment; the video includes what to say to candidates, what information is in the reports, and how to manage distribution of the reports. In addition, you can call Dr. Helm if you have questions about the results reports for a candidate.

How Much Does the Performance Profile Assessment Cost?

For only $250 per person, you get all the benefits of the Performance Profile Assessment:

  • Objective, work-related information about a person's strengths and liabilities;
  • Dr. Helm's review and professional Overall Recommendation, Job Match, and Promotion Potential ratings;
  • Six customized reports (Performance Profile Assessment Results Report, Work Attitude Questionnaire Results Report, Interview Suggestions Booklet, Coaching Suggestions Guidebook, HELM Summary report, and Professional Development Guide)
  • Free telephone training and consultation
  • A secure, confidential account on our testing web site for your company that is be available to you 24/7/365
  • No set-up or maintenance fees and no contract to sign. Ever.
  • You are invoiced only for completed Performance Profile Assessments on a monthly basis.

Do you still have questions about personality testing for employment and promotion decisions?  Please take a look at our Frequently Asked Questions page by clicking here.

Performance Profile Assessments accounts are customized for your company and needs.  Call us today to set up your account and get started right away:
(800) 886-4356

Or send us a quick message and we will contact you!