Methodology

What we measure, and what we refuse to

This page exists because a service that sells credibility has to show its working. If anything below is wrong, or if you think a claim here is not supported, we would rather hear it than not.

01 · What is measured

Eight areas

Xpert Lens reads behaviour demonstrated during an assessment. It is not a personality test, and there is no type, profile or colour at the end of it.

What is measured, and what counts as evidence for it, comes from twenty-five years of interviewing candidates professionally — not from a model deciding for itself what mattered. More on that here.

R
Reasoning & Problem-Solving
Objectively keyed. There is a right answer and it is marked against one.
C
Communication Effectiveness
Judged from what you actually said aloud — whether there is a position, whether it is supported, whether a listener would know what you meant.
D1
Drive & Execution
Getting to a decision and following it through.
D2
Influence & Stakeholders
Moving people who do not report to you.
D3
Resilience & Composure
What you do when the situation is against you.
D4
Learning Agility
Changing your mind when the facts change.
D5
Strategic Thinking
Seeing the second-order consequence, not only the immediate one.
D6
Leading Others
How responsibility for other people is handled.
02 · How results are expressed

Bands with evidence, never scores

Each area comes back as one of three bands. There are no numbers out of ten and no percentiles anywhere in the product, because no assessment of this kind can support that precision, and a number invites a false comparison between two people who answered entirely different questions.

Evidenced

Two or more consistent data points in the run. This is the only band we will let a CV make a claim from.

Indicated

A signal appeared, but once, or weakly. Worth exploring in an interview. Not something to put on a CV as a claim.

Needs further probing

The run did not reach it. This is not a negative finding and it is not a low score — no single assessment touches everything, and we say so rather than filling the gap with an inference.
03 · Why the result can be trusted

Scored on our servers, not on your device

This is the part most assessment tools do not talk about, so we will.

Nothing that could score an answer is ever sent to your device. No answer key, and no indication of what any option signals — your browser genuinely does not have the means to work out your result.

Our servers resolve every signal, derive every band, and write the credential from their own output. The questions you were served are recorded when the assessment begins and cannot be altered afterwards.

Why this matters more than it sounds. If scoring happens in the browser, then "verified" means the candidate's own device said so — and the single thing being sold is trustworthiness, so one person noticing takes down the entire proposition rather than one feature. We changed this before taking a single payment.

04 · Fairness

What is never judged

Most people taking this assessment are working in their second or third language. Several of the things a careless assessment would penalise are not evidence of capability at all — they are evidence of where somebody grew up.

Speech timing is measured, and it is used for one purpose only: deciding whether there is enough speech to assess at all. It never sets a band.

05 · Evidence and account

Two classes of statement, always kept apart

An assessment is structured evidence. A conversation about yourself is self-reporting again, however well it is written up. A CV that says "led a turnaround" because the candidate mentioned it in a chat is not validated — it is laundered, and it looks validated because it sits next to things that are.

So the rule, which the product enforces rather than promises:

Independently evidenced — may make a claim
Derived from assessment evidence, tied to a credential ID, verifiable by anyone who follows the link.
The candidate's own account — context and phrasing only
The names, dates and numbers you supply. We will help you word them well. We will not present them as though we checked them.

The same principle runs through the assessment itself. What you say aloud can earn a band; what you type afterwards can correct what you said, but never buys a delivery band you did not demonstrate.

06 · Limits

What this is not

07 · Your data

Who sees what

Your assessment, your report, your CV and your credential belong to you. Nothing is shown to an employer or a recruiter unless you turn sharing on, and you can turn it off again — a credential you have withdrawn stops verifying.

Your CV is read to produce your own report and your own documents. It is not added to any searchable database, and it is not offered to recruiters.

You can delete the voice recording from an assessment and keep the transcript.

The full position is in the privacy policy.

Questions about any of this?

If something here does not stand up, we want to know. The methodology is meant to be argued with — that is the point of publishing it.

Write to us