Shadowmatch: What is it, and why should you be using it?

In an industry where 46% of recruiters say that finding suitable candidates is one of the biggest obstacles to hiring staff, knowing which applicants to hire and which to promote within the workforce has never been more important. Making the right decision results in a candidate contributing towards and helping to grow your company; conversely, making a bad hire results in a high staff turnover and can cost your business both money and time.

Whether your organisation is a Biotech firm or a multinational pharmaceutical company, this issue is just as important. At IQVIA, we like to know that we’re hiring the best qualified candidates for the job: candidates who can fit seamlessly into our company culture, or that of our clients. We’ve found that the best method for doing so is Shadowmatch.

What is Shadowmatch?

Shadowmatch is a workforce optimisation system that can be used both to hire the ideal candidates for the role you have and help existing employees to reach their full potential. With a focus on analysing the behaviour of candidates in order to determine how good a fit they are for a role, team or company, Shadowmatch aims to build an optimal workforce that will allow a business to grow, scale and develop successfully. It’s all about determining which people are the best for which roles and responsibilities.
 
How can it be used in employee development?

Shadowmatch helps businesses to optimise their workforces. The software allows you to determine how an employee behaves, and the system will then advise how that information can be used to place those employees within a role that will best let them develop their skills. 

Employees taking part fill out a Shadowmatch form, from which the programme creates a behavioural profile. This profile is then compared to the collective behaviour of top performers within the workplace: by seeing how the most successful people within the team behave and work, the system can then determine whether the worker is a good match for the role, and how successful they are likely to be within it as a result. Using a Development Recommendation Chart, Shadowmatch can also pinpoint areas in which an employee needs to improve; for those wanting to better themselves, Shadowmatch offers up to twenty mentorship-based Personal Development Programmes, which can even be conducted by ‘mentors’ selected from within the company itself. 

The emphasis within the programme is very much on company culture, and given that this is one of the largest factors determining whether an employee stays or leaves, making decisions based upon how well a candidate or employee ‘fits’ within the business is a key priority.

Apart from encouraging employee development, using Shadowmatch to profile your employees also helps when it comes to restructuring the workplace with minimal effect on the performance of the workers there. Indeed, knowing how your employees behave, how successful they are, and what working habits they have will stand you in good stead when analysing whether they’d stand up to the challenges of a demanding role. 

How can it be used to build a strong team? 

One potential source of friction within the workplace that Shadowmatch aims to tackle is the issue of team-building. Diverse personalities within a group can sometimes create problems; however, by using the employee profiles created by filling out the Shadowmatch worksheets, the system can analyse strengths and weaknesses within the team. 

Shadowmatch will then create a Team Report that displays which employees may cause friction, and which partnerships should be avoided, within the team, and suggests which areas team leaders should focus on to ensure that their co-workers work together as efficiently as possible. This system can even be used to help onboard new members. 

Can it be used in recruitment?

There’s no better way to find out whether a prospective employee will be a good fit for the company than by questioning them on how they fit into the company culture, and whether they can stand up to the demands of the role. Shadowmatch aims to make this even easier: by analysing how the behaviour and habits of a prospective candidate compares to that of the top-performing group in the workplace, it’s much easier to see whether a candidate has the potential to be a successful team member and fit well into the business. To help businesses even further, Shadowmatch also offers an interview pack to help ensure a fair and well-structed interview process. 

Using Shadowmatch can have a huge number of benefits, both for employers and employees. Offering employees the chance to know their strengths and be able to develop upon their weaknesses, it also allows business owners to reduce their staff turn-over and build a strong team with a positive workplace culture. They say knowledge is key: if you’re looking to maximise your staff’s potential and encourage business growth, knowing as much about your employees as possible is what will enable you to make well-informed decisions about the best people for the job.

At IQVIA, we’re passionate about matching the best talent to the jobs that will allow them to flourish. Find out more about what we do here, and find about more about what Shadowmatch can do for you here. 


Sources:

https://devskiller.com/

https://www.glassdoor.co.uk