How Pre-Employment Assessments Can Help You Identify the Right Candidates for Your Team
Pre-employment assessments in the hiring process are a common and reliable method for predicting job performance. These tools can measure various factors, including personality, work style, and cognitive ability.
Employees who are not a good fit for a role, either in terms of work style or personality, are less likely to be engaged and may leave the company more quickly. Using assessments in hiring can help reduce bad hires and overall turnover rates.
They Help You Reduce Bad Hires
Pre-employment assessments allow you to remove unsuitable candidates from the hiring process quickly. By focusing on the skills and characteristics that are most important for a role, you can eliminate applicants that are unlikely to succeed or fit in with your company culture. Then, you can focus on interviewing fewer high-quality candidates who are more likely to be a good fit for your organization.
Personality and aptitude tests can also help you identify the best candidates for a job by assessing the candidate’s natural tendencies, behaviors, and work styles. This enables you to find employees who are likely to be satisfied with the job, which can lead to higher productivity and reduced company turnover.
Using these assessments can level the playing field for candidates, especially in a candidate’s market when there is a higher volume of applications for each position. By setting “dealbreaker questions” that indicate a lack of required skills, you can ensure that only applicants with the right qualifications make it to the next stage in your hiring process.
However, it is essential to select and administer these types of tests with care. Incorrectly implemented or administered assessments may be discriminatory and could lead to legal consequences. For example, if you are evaluating physical abilities, it is essential to be realistic about what is needed in the job and not overly exclude women from the role.
They Help You Reduce Turnover Rates
Getting a new employee up to speed costs time and money. The cost of replacing a single employee can be as high as 30% of their annual salary (Leadership IQ Institute). In addition, pre-employment assessment can help reduce turnover by ensuring that candidates are a good fit for your company culture and have the skills to succeed in their roles.
For example, a personality test like the DISC assessment can identify the dominant traits of a candidate and help you understand how they will interact with others in your workplace. It’s a great way to assess how well a candidate will get along with your current team members.
Another area where pre-hire assessments can help is by reducing turnover among high-potential employees. According to a study, businesses that use pre-hiring reviews see a 39% lower turnover rate among high-potential employees.
As a result, more HR and loss prevention leaders are incorporating these tools into their hiring processes. Many of these tests are designed to screen for counterproductive behaviors that lead to absenteeism and employee theft of all types. For instance, some predictive analytics tools can assess whether an applicant is likely to engage in theft or fraud and if they have a criminal record that should disqualify them from consideration for the job.
They Help You Reduce Costs
Finding the right candidate from a pool of applicants is challenging and time-consuming. Even the most advanced resumes and interviews provide only limited insight. Employment assessments are one way to get a complete picture of candidates and their skillsets, integrity, and aptitude. Assessments can also help remove unconscious bias from the hiring process.
By reducing the number of bad hires, pre-employment testing helps save companies money on both training and replacement costs. Employees who aren’t a good fit for a role will eventually underperform, either because they need to gain the skills required or enjoy the work. This can cost your company thousands of dollars in lost productivity.
By using employment tests, you can make sure the candidates you choose are a good fit for your company in terms of their personality, work style, and preferences. This can improve productivity and help you achieve tremendous business success. Employment testing can also reduce the risk of costly lawsuits, which can significantly burden your HR team. You can be confident that your selection decisions are legal and fair using the proper employment testing methods. The results of the tests can help you avoid making biased hiring decisions that could result in a lawsuit. For example, a cognitive ability or emotional intelligence (EI) test can help you avoid discrimination based on gender, age, race, religion, or disability.
They Help You Make Better Decisions
Pre-Employment Assessments provide objectivity to the hiring process that can be a valuable supplement to other tools in your toolbox. By utilizing tools that address cognition and behavior, such as personality tests, you can create more concise shortlists of candidates worth interviewing and reduce the time you need to invest in the recruiting process.
It’s important to remember that hiring assessments should be viewed as one piece of information when deciding who to hire. They are not magic tools that can make the right decisions for you, and it’s essential to take the time to look at all the different dimensions that come into play in making a good hiring decision.
Personality tests, for example, provide valuable insight into a candidate’s cognitive ability; critical thinking; motivation potential; and overall knowledge and skills. These can all affect how well they perform on the job.
The key is to ensure that you are using the proper assessment tools for your needs and that the results are accurate by conducting the tests in a way that doesn’t allow candidates to cheat, such as proctoring or invigilating. Also, remember that it’s essential to communicate with your candidates about the assessment framework and how it will impact their Candidate Experience, as this will help them feel understood and supported throughout the recruitment process.
