Highlands Ability Battery
The HAB is a human assessment tool that objectively measures your natural abilities by asking you to perform specific timed tasks.
Everyone is born with inherent abilities that make certain tasks preferable to others.
The HAB was founded on the work of research scientist Johnson O’Connor, who devoted his life to the study of human engineering. Almost a century of research that began with Johnson O’Connor and continues through the Johnson O’Connor Research Foundation has established that every individual is born with a unique pattern of abilities.
For that reason, people are most fulfilled in their careers when they find an environment that allows them to work primarily from their gifts and natural talents. The Highlands Ability Battery is an objective way to assess what those abilities are in a virtual, online format.
Some talents are specialized, such as a gift for music or design or a gift for theoretical thought. For others, talents may be more generalized, such as a talent for leading teams or the abilities that make teaching, selling, or writing very easy.
But does it matter if you know what your natural abilities are?
Can’t everyone learn skills and improve their job performance, regardless?
There is no question that we can all improve in different areas and acquire skills. But it takes tremendous effort to do something well for which you are not naturally suited. You will achieve fewer results and far less satisfaction doing work that does not align with your natural talents, gifts, and abilities. For individuals, this means longer, more frustrating hours with fewer rewards; for organizations, this means falling short of attaining maximum productivity.
What to expect when taking the HAB
The HAB consists of 19 virtual work samples taken online over an estimated three hours. You do not have to take the whole Battery at once, but you can do each work sample individually or break them up into smaller groups.
The HAB measures basic human abilities such as visual speed and accuracy, the ability to work with numbers and designs, inductive and analytical reasoning, idea flow, verbal and structural aptitude, musical aptitude, and several memory applications.
The HAB also measures one’s vocabulary level. Although we cannot call a person’s vocabulary level a natural ability, we have come to recognize it is a good predictor of occupational success.
