How to Customize Skills Assessments to Improve Hiring

Hiring mistakes are expensive. Industry research shows that recruiting, hiring, and onboarding a new employee can cost as much as $240,000. If the employee is let go or leaves voluntarily, the organization loses its investment and must incur additional costs to find a replacement.

Filling critical job roles is especially challenging because we are experiencing an unprecedented talent shortage that is affecting every industry. Companies struggle to recruit top candidates before competitors hire them, and many critical job roles are going unfilled.

Organizations know that having a top-notch team can mean meeting or not meeting corporate goals and objectives. According to McKinsey, if you replaced 20% of the average talent assigned to a three-year-long project with great talent, it would take less than two years to complete the project. Furthermore, if team members were 400% more productive, the project would take less than a year to complete. Finally, if a competitor’s project team had team members who were 20% better than yours, the company would beat you to market on the same project, even if you had a one- or two-year head start.

HR leaders know that implementing a skills assessment solution is the best way to recruit top candidates and that the solution must allow them to customize skills assessment tests for all their positions.

Why Customizing Skills Assessments is Important

As every HR professional knows, each organization has its own way of doing things. A job at Company X could have completely different requirements than a position at Company Y, even if the job titles are the same. This means “one-size-fits-all” skills assessments are ineffective in many cases.

How to Customize Skills Assessment Tests

The eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM provides three ways for clients to create skills assessment tests that perfectly match their job roles.

1. Edit Existing Skills Assessment Tests: The eSkill Assessment Library contains hundreds of job- and subject-related skills assessments. You can use the off-the-shelf versions or select one that meets your basic needs and delete irrelevant questions to the job. For example, if you were hiring a senior-level Python programmer, you could delete questions on the Python Skills Test that you felt were too basic.

• Create a Skills Assessment Using Several Tests: This option is perfect for assessing applicants’ job skills in multiple areas. Choose the subjects, set the difficulty level and test length, and the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM builds a skills assessment that meets your specified criteria. For instance, if you were hiring data entry clerks, you would want to ensure they had strong Excel® skills. You could also evaluate their general computer proficiency using other MS Office® skills tests and math skills with the Basic Math assessment by designating the topic areas and difficulty level for each. When the skill assessment test is created, you can review it and add or delete questions as needed.

• Build Skills Assessments by Choosing Your Own Questions: With the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM, you can build customized skills assessment tests by choosing questions from various tests and adding your own questions. This is an ideal option for organizations that test applicants’ and employees’ knowledge of company and industry policies and procedures. For example, if a manufacturing company requires employees and new hires to complete safety training, the HR team can choose questions from existing skills assessments, such as Workplace Safety and Safety Procedures, and add proprietary questions.

Skills Assessment Customization Examples

Organizations worldwide depend on skills assessment tests to streamline recruiting and improve hiring outcomes. The following examples illustrate how two eSkill clients customize skills assessments to facilitate hiring and training and reduce hiring costs.

• ELIA Transmission Belgium (ELIA)

ELIA Transmission Belgium (ELIA) is an electrical power distributor that serves Belgium and parts of Germany. European Union (EU) law requires all engineers and technicians working on the company’s hazardous high-voltage electrical distribution sites to complete safety training. Questions are very specific to high-voltage safety and quality certification, which means certification officers must import over 1,300 proprietary questions. They must also create test versions in Dutch, French, English, and eight other languages. So, ELIA uses the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM to create customized skills assessment tests using proprietary content.

• Ryan LLC

Ryan LLC provides tax consulting services to companies in the real estate, oil and gas, business services, transportation, and utility sectors. The HR team tests new hires on multiple subjects and topics. This was very expensive because they had to pay for tests individually. It became a big cost problem when many hiring managers began requiring candidates to complete up to five assessments. Ryan LLC solved the problem by implementing the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM. The HR team can now create one skills assessment for each job that covers all job and subject areas hiring managers want to include.

Customization Improves Hiring Outcomes

Every organization has unique needs, and ready-made skills assessments are often unpractical. This is why you need a solution that allows you to create customized skills assessment tests for all your job roles.

Do you want to see how customizing skills assessments can streamline your recruiting process and simplify hiring? Contact us to request a demo.