A bad hiring decision harms team morale and productivity and has a negative impact on your bottom line.
Department of Labor statistics show that the cost of a bad hire can be as high as 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings, and a CareerBuilder study revealed that 74% of companies that made poor hires lost an average of $14,900 for each hiring mistake.
Onboarding a new hire can cost up to $240,000. And if the new hire does not work out, you lose the money you invested in hiring and training them, and you incur the same costs to replace them.
Mis-hires usually occur because an employee lacks the critical skills required to do the job or because they are not a good fit for the company culture. Regardless, the disruption and lost productivity cause stress for other team members and can lead to bitterness and resentment.
Just about everyone has made a bad hire. A Northwestern University report noted that 74% of companies surveyed admitted to making a mis-hire in the past. This means that three out of every four employers have made a bad hiring decision at some point. They all said they take all possible measures to increase the odds of hiring the right person.
Pre-Employment Tests Take the Guesswork Out of Hiring
The eSkill’s Talent Assessment PlatformTM takes the guesswork out of recruiting by making it possible to integrate pre-employment testing into your company’s hiring process. The eSkill Assessment Library includes thousands of skills tests organized by job and subject. You can also create custom skills tests by choosing questions from multiple assessments and adding your own questions.
Pre-Employment Tests Simplifies Your Hiring Process
Pre-employment tests provide the information you need to avoid wasting money by hiring the wrong person for the job. eSkill’s assessments can be easily integrated with your applicant tracking system (ATS) or human resources (HR) software. This allows you to fit skills tests into your application process.
While resumes should be a part of your hiring process, they may not give you an accurate assessment of an applicant’s abilities because people tend to exaggerate their abilities. In contrast, skills tests provide quantitative data that can help you quickly eliminate candidates who do not have the required skills for the position you are trying to fill.
Pre-employment test results provide a complete assessment of a candidate’s skills, knowledge, and abilities and give you an easy way to compare applicants. They offer the added benefit of reducing unconscious bias, which can affect every hire. When you reduce this implicit bias, you give everyone a fair chance to make the “shortlist” based on their own merits, increase the diversity of your workforce, and minimize the possibility of legal challenges.
Using pre-employment testing to screen candidates enables you to concentrate on top candidates and move them to the next stage of your hiring process. Since you already know which candidates have the skills to do the job, you do not need to waste time verifying resume data, checking references, and scheduling phone or in-person interviews. You use the test results to create a smaller pool of highly qualified candidates, which simplifies the process of choosing the best person for the job.
Pre-Employment Testing Helps Increase Employee Retention
Good employees can become bad hires if they do not receive the support they need. Even the best-qualified new hires will quickly become disillusioned if they do not feel the company is committed to helping them succeed. This support begins with onboarding but continues throughout an employee’s tenure.
When you bring on a new hire, it is essential to ensure they feel welcome so they can quickly assimilate into the company culture. A key aspect of this process is discussing their short- and long-term career goals and developing a customized professional development plan.
By referring to the new hire’s pre-employment tests, you can facilitate their training and development while ensuring they prioritize building the skills they will need to be successful in their new role.
Retaining employees requires a commitment to employee development for the long haul. Investing in an employee’s continued training shows them that you are committed to their future in addition to growing your company’s skill base. So, it is a win-win situation.
When you lower turnover, you spend fewer resources on rehiring to fill vacated positions and the cost of onboarding and training new hires. You also preserve your company’s knowledge base and your company culture.
Retaining good employees also makes it harder to hire bad ones. If you have fewer positions to fill, you hire fewer people. If you retain more quality hires, you do not have to run the risk of hiring a dud.
Are you interested in learning how pre-employment tests help you avoid costly hiring mistakes? Contact us to request a demo.