Tag Archive: Pre-hire Assessment

  1. How to Get the Most Bang from Your Pre-Hire Assessment

    Pre-hire assessments come in different shapes and sizes, and there’s more than one way to use them – which makes versatility one of this technology’s most intriguing benefits. Post implementation, organizations often discover exciting use cases and additional value from a tool that’s historically been a one-trick pony.

    For some organizations, using a pre-hire assessment means testing for job-critical soft skills and cognitive abilities before investing in a new hire. For others, the assessment is used to provide a bias-free understanding of a potential hire’s culture fit, which job in the company they’ll be best at, or how their personality and work style will contribute to the team. 

    How and when you use your pre-hire assessment is up to your organization’s talent acquisition strategy, but to ensure you get every drop of value from your chosen solution, here are a few things to keep in mind:

    Choose an assessment that’s easy

    The last thing you want is a promising solution that could have been great – if only people had used it. 

    To help grease the wheels for adoption and change management, choose an assessment with a simple and intuitive UI. This is important for reporting and analytics, too. Modern assessments have come a long way, so look for one that empowers your teams to make quick and intelligent decisions, without needing to be specially trained or have an I-O psychologist nearby to interpret the findings.

    The assessment experience should be equally friendly for candidates. Many newer assessments can be completed in 10 minutes or less, using images, optimized test design, and even games to keep candidates engaged while collecting valuable information about their potential for success and ideal career path.

    Connect with a video interviewing tool

    Most companies are already using some type of assessment, and adoption of video interviewing software is on the rise.

    Together, these tools make a perfect team, with assessments providing much-needed data and objectivity, and video interviewing adding a human layer that allows candidates to express their uniqueness and be seen as a person, not just a score. According to Deloitte Insights, “Video interviewing can reduce pre-hire assessment questions from 200 to just five and raises the possibility of one-interview hires.” That’s a heck of an endorsement!

    The best thing you can do is integrate these tools into a seamless workflow for candidates. Just as important, you want results to be seamless for hiring teams. Rather than seeing assessments and video interviews as separate data points, find an integrated solution that can aggregate information into a comprehensive candidate profile.

    Stay agile with AI

    How can assessments predict success when jobs and skills and companies are constantly changing?

    If you’re going to use an assessment to match the right person to the right role at the right time, then you need the right profile – one that’s been proven to work in organizations like yours, or a custom profile. Or, you might be using an assessment to measure culture fit, something that’s less job-specific. Either way, precision is key, and you need a solution that can use data from successful hires to create the perfect profile for your needs.

    This is how machine learning works in the world of assessments, taking in continuous streams of information, analyzing the data, and improving on its performance. This approach ensures the assessment is an accurate predictor of success, even in super-agile environments. No matter how your business pivots, an AI-powered assessment will keep pace. 

    Integrate post-hire

    Assessments are deeply rooted in the talent acquisition space. Hence the name “pre-hire assessment.”

    But, the best way to get more bang for your buck is to use this talent acquisition tool outside of TA. Take hi-po identification, for example. Gartner tells us that “high-potential employees exert 21% more effort than others, and have a 75% chance of succeeding at roles that are critical to business performance and the future leadership pipeline.” The problem is, without a way to identify hi-po’s in your company, you won’t be able to tap into or develop their potential. 

    From talent discovery and internal mobility to career pathing, development, and succession planning, assessments help in every instance – if you leverage them. So, break out of your comfort zone and forget what assessments are ‘supposed to do.” Instead, imagine what they can do. 

    Explore what’s new in assessments

    With more companies using assessments than not, it’s fair to say they’ve become a talent acquisition staple, adding important structure and rigor to the hiring process.

    That doesn’t mean you can’t get creative and have a little fun with assessments, too. There’s a wave of next-gen assessments on the market offering flexibility, engaging experiences, and analytics that didn’t exist before – without sacrificing the predictability organizations have come to know and respect about these solutions.

    Finding the right use for your needs requires careful thought and consideration, paired with a healthy dose of experimentation. When it comes to getting your biggest bang, it’s up to you to push the limits!

  2. How Can Talent Assessments Connect People to their Passions (And Help Your Company in the Process)

    With so much technology on the market and so many exciting avenues to pursue, HR is in a position to impact the business like never before. The challenge is not, what can we do, but rather, how much can we do to drive the business forward? This will depend on alignment with business strategy and smart HR tech investments.

    Organizations are taking a new approach to measuring things like quality of hire and employee engagement. New technology makes it possible for companies to track where employees are spending time, how they’re performing job tasks, and what their potential for success is – today and in the future.

    Some of the most exciting trends in HR tech are in the vein of discovering hidden talent, connecting people with their passions, and hiring not just to fill a role, but to set someone on a trajectory for lifelong success.

    Thanks to rapid innovation in the market, we’re seeing an explosion of new releases and platforms that are helping to turn these trends into tangibles. Even assessment software, which hasn’t traditionally been the flashiest piece of technology on the market, is becoming a game-changer for HR and employees everywhere.

    Here are 3 ways talent assessments will make your initiatives – and your employees – more successful:

    Find every person’s best fit

    Often, talent assessments are used in hiring as a way to measure fit to the job or fit to the company (or both!). By assessing hard skills, soft skills, or cognitive abilities, hiring teams are armed with insight on a candidate’s potential for success.

    Recruiters and managers can also start to see how a potential hire might fit on the team, as well as skills gaps they might be able to fill by adding this candidate versus another.

    If you’re hiring for a sales position, for example, an assessment will tell you how a candidate ranks on must-have soft skills like work intensity and follow through. An assessment might also tell you how strong he or she is in sales knowledge, such as prospecting and overcoming objections.

    Ideally, the assessment would then roll up the results into one overall score, with the ability to drill down into each different skill set.

    But say a candidate isn’t a great fit for the job they applied to. In a tight talent market, employers can’t afford to throw out applications. Rather than simply tagging someone as a poor fit, new assessment software allows recruiters to match candidates to other open positions in their company.

    This way, recruiters can make use of every candidate in their applicant pool, fill more jobs, and help more people improve their livelihood. It’s a win-win all around.

    Discover pathways to future roles

    Once you’ve got the right people in the right roles, you can sit back and relax. Just kidding! As good practitioners know, hiring is just the beginning of an employee’s *hopefully long and productive* journey with your company.

    This is where the pre-hire assessment comes back into play. One assessment can help guide the next several years of an employee’s journey. That’s why many employers see it as “the data that keeps on giving” – it continues providing value long after the hiring decision has been made.

    First, assessment results can be used as onboarding guides, helping new hires get up to speed quickly based on their strengths and opportunities in the role. Then, after ramp up, assessments can help employees and their managers see what’s next.

    Say your sales hire is killing it – hitting quota every quarter and helping the entire team succeed. She’s raised her hand for a sales manager position, and looking at performance, she’s the most deserving of the promotion.

    But, leading a sales team requires a very different skill set than what’s she’s using today. Your top salesperson is about to move into untested waters, and if she fails, you could lose her for good. Using an assessment, you can see her potential for success in a management role, along with development suggestions to make the transition easier.

    Together, the salesperson, her manager, and others from L&D can identify an employee’s ideal career path and steps to get there. The assessment creates the perfect scenario where promotions are based on skills, not just performance, and every employee has the opportunity to grow.

    Illuminate hidden skills and strengths

    Similar to promotions, decisions about who is considered a ‘high potential’ are often subjective. In many cases, putting someone’s name in the hat for a hi-po program depends on how important development is to a given manager.

    In a system like this, great people get overlooked. And isn’t HR’s goal to engage and retain as many employees as possible, not just a select few?

    Assessments can improve how you select people for hi-po programs, and thanks to tailored development plans that now come with assessment results, you can drastically scale participation in hi-po programs.

    Equally important, assessments can help re-define what you mean by ‘high potential.’ Does high potential mean potential for leadership in your company? If so, what are the mission-critical skills and competencies your leadership teams have today, and what will they need in the future?

    Assessments give you instant insight into the skills and competencies that matter most in your business, ensuring that no one is overlooked. You may find more than one diamond in the rough. Perhaps a quiet contributor today becomes a pivotal future leader.

    So, rather than let an employee’s potential wither away – or worse! – lose them to a competitor, you can use assessments to discover hidden talent and tips the odds in your favor.

    START YOUR JOURNEY WITH ASSESSMENTS TODAY

  3. How to Assess a Candidate’s Skills before an Interview

    According to new LinkedIn research, 69% of professionals believe that skills are more important than a college degree when looking for a job, and 76% wish there was a way for hiring managers to verify their skills so they could stand out amongst other candidates.

    Recruiting teams share the same wish – to see a more complete picture of a candidate, beyond the resume. But how?

    Pre-hire assessments add an additional layer of intelligence to help solve the visibility problem in hiring. Using assessments, candidates can show off their skills, and recruiters can be sure match the right people to the right roles, every time.

    Aberdeen research from a few years ago found that 2/3 of companies use pre-hire assessments. And that number has surely grown. At most companies, “pre-hire assessments are a fundamental part of the hiring strategy.” Without them, assessing the skills and strengths of your candidate pool would be slow and subjective, at best.

    What to assess?

    Pre-hire assessments come in many forms. There are hard skills assessments, like LinkedIn launched earlier this year, that measure software or coding skills, for example.

    Then there are soft skills assessments, which are becoming increasingly important as 80% of professionals say soft skills are critical to company success. According to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends report, soft skills like creativity, persuasion, and collaboration are in high demand – but, less than half of companies have a formal process in place to measure them.

    There are also cognitive assessments that measure skills like logical reasoning or reading comprehension, similar to a college entrance exam. Abstract reasoning is a popular cognitive assessment because it measures an individual’s ability to learn, which can help you gauge their trajectory or long-term contribution to your company.

    Finally, there are culture fit assessments that measure values and motivations in comparison with the company’s CulturalDNA. Does a potential hire value collaboration above precision? Are they more motivated to drive results or delight customers? There’s no wrong answer, but knowing these aspects will help ensure happy, successful hires.

    With different assessments to illuminate different skills sets, you’ll begin to see candidates as real, multi-dimensional people – much more than bullet points on a page. It’s a quick and objective way to assess candidates for job fit, culture fit, and career potential so you immediately know who should move on the interview stage.

    Ah, the clarity!

    Most assessments can be completed in under 20 minutes, depending on the skill or type of job you’re assessing for. Once completed, your team will have data you can use to rank or shortlist candidates, as well as insight on hidden strengths and career potential that you wouldn’t have gotten from a resume, a phone call, or even an in-person interview.

    Using assessments, you’ll see your entire hiring process become more streamlined, with improved decision making every step of the way. Recruiters can focus on pursing the most promising candidates, and because results can be shared, hiring teams are aligned and able to collaborate on decisions like never before.

    Some assessments (like ours!) even generate an interview guide based on the candidate’s potential weaknesses and areas for improvement. That way, interviewers know exactly what to ask and can learn the most about a candidate in a limited amount of time.

    Best of all, candidates’ skills can finally shine through. Today, 52% of professionals say they feel their skills have been overlooked in the hiring process in the past. We’re on a mission to change that – so job seekers can get the jobs they deserve, and employers like you never miss a great candidate again!

    START YOUR JOURNEY WITH ASSESSMENTS TODAY