Shadowmatch Overview

It is a question as old as industry itself and one that is growing ever more important in the South African employment landscape. How do you match the right employee to the right task under your prevailing corporate culture, to ensure success for company and individual? This is the question that a South African designed online tool called Shadowmatch is answering for their users in areas as diverse as banking, construction, agriculture and the motoring industry.

But what exactly is Shadowmatch? The Shadowmatch website defines it as a “sophisticated worksheet that enables corporate users the ability to determine what the critical success factors are for people working under particular or general working conditions in a specific area of an organisation.”

In short for those of us who are not industrial psychologists, Shadowmatch can discern between those job applicants that have the chosen skills and the work habits to adapt to a specific corporate environment, and those that may have the right resume but lack the ability to adapt.

Shadowmatch does this by grouping work teams into two groups. Firstly, the top performers or existing “benchmark employees” and secondly first-time applicants or employees that do not fit the “ideal” company benchmark. Top performers or benchmark employees in this context are defined as those team members who achieve their targets or goals regularly but in doing so contribute positively to the team and the company.

Each identified benchmark employee then completes an online questionnaire which relates to general life situations and has been tested for both the South African and international markets. The system then generates a combined map of this top performing group on 18 work habits that range from self-motivation to how disciplined the person will be, called the Benchmark Group or Shadow.

The Shadow can be described as the collective habits of the group that would be the best fit for the job, the team and the company. Anyone within or outside the organisation can then complete the same worksheet and Shadowmatch will match the results of these individuals with the Benchmark or Shadow. Thus by creating a “Shadow” of top performers one can “match” anyone against it to see what their chances of success are thus a successful “Shadowmatch” is created.

The critical success factor of Shadowmatch is the fact that each company generates its own benchmark with its own people for each department. No external or international benchmarks are imposed on any company structures so it is truly a South African tool for the South African context.

The South African motoring industry has long since been acknowledged for its innovation and creativity. It seems that supporting industries in the form of Shadowmatch have heeded the call for products that are just as innovative as well distinctly local. It is safe to say that soon Shadow-matching will not just be a term that is misconstrued for online dating.

By Theo Bezuidenhout