As an HR leader, you look for ways to recruit top talent and minimize hiring mistakes. Although global labor markets have stabilized, your organization is probably still coping with a talent shortage. Two of your biggest priorities are to retain the talent you have and to hire the right people when filling job openings.
Since hiring has become so challenging, you need a secret weapon to take the guesswork out of hiring. This is why organizations like yours use assessment tests for employment to improve hiring outcomes and minimize the risk of bad hiring decisions.
What to Look for in an Assessment Test for Employment
HR managers often ask what they should look for when evaluating assessment tests for employment. We tell them it depends on the jobs they are trying to fill, the required skills, and their goals and objectives.
You must first decide whether you want to test hard skills, soft skills, or both. Hard skills are abilities candidates need to perform a job, and soft skills are behaviors and traits that determine whether a candidate is a good fit for your company’s culture. These are features to look for when you evaluate assessment tests for employment.
- Comprehensive Assessment Library: An employment assessment testing solution must provide access to a skills test library. As a leading testing solution, the eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM has hundreds of validated job- and subject-based skills tests to help you assess candidates for almost any job. For instance, if you are recruiting web designers with strong Java and Salesforce skills, the Web Designer, Java Developer, and Salesforce Developer skills tests will help you identify top applicants. You can also use cognitive assessments such as the Logical Thinking and Verbal Reasoning skills tests to measure other important job-related skills.
- Customization: The skills you need for specific jobs most likely differ from those of other companies. This means using off-the-shelf assessment tests for employment will not be effective. With the eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM, you have the option to use pre-prepared tests as-is, modify a job- or subject-based skills test by adding or deleting questions, or build an assessment test for employment by selecting questions from multiple skills tests. You can even add your own questions if needed.
- Simulations: The best way to verify candidates can do a job is to observe how they handle job-related scenarios. The eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM offers a Chat Simulation to confirm applicants know how to use popular applications, a Multitasking Simulation to evaluate their time management and organizational skills, a Digital Literacy Simulation to evaluate Internet and social media knowledge, and MS Office® Simulations to help you assess candidates’ computer proficiency.
- Behavioral Assessments: Poor job fit is the cause of 73% of hiring failures, and high turnover is one of the leading causes of decreased productivity. Skills tests measure applicants’ abilities to do a job successfully, but they do not tell you whether they are a good fit for your company culture. So, HR teams use behavioral assessments to evaluate candidates’ soft skills, such as communication, problem-solving, and teamwork abilities, and to confirm their work style is compatible with the company culture.
Why Organizations Use Assessment Tests for Employment
Companies in virtually every industry partner use assessment tests for employment to hire top candidates, reduce turnover, and prevent hiring errors. These are successes of eSkill clients in various industry sectors:
- Charger Logistics, a commercial transportation company, reduced hiring costs by 30% and time-to-hire by 33% and increased employee retention to 95% when it began using customized pre-hiring assessments.
- Encore Exchange, a medical billing service, began using pre-hiring assessments and decreased applicant screening time by 67% and time-to-hire by 33%. The company also improved quality of recruiting organization-wide.
- SolvOne, an environmental compliance company, requires new hires to complete training. Attrition was high because many candidates could not pass the course. It implemented pre-hiring assessments to improve quality of hire and increased graduation rates by 26%.
- TaskUs, is a global provider of outsourced digital and customer services that help companies protect and grow their brands. Implementing selective hiring assessments helped it improve quality of hire and reduce turnover by 25%.
- Regency Recruitment and Resources Limited, an HR solutions provider, was using another pre-hiring assessment solution. When it switched to the eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM, it reduced recruiting costs by 50% while helping clients decrease time-to-hire.
Get Started with Assessment Tests for Employment
When you hire the best people and place them in the right jobs, everything works as it should. According to a McKinsey study, if your organization replaced 20% of its average talent on a project team with top talent, the project would take less than two years to complete if the team was 400% more productive and less than a year if it was 800% more productive. It also showed that if a competitor hired talent that was 20% better than yours, that company would beat you to market on the same project, even if you had a year or two head start.
Do you want to know how assessment tests for employment can help you improve hiring throughout your organization? Contact us to request a demo.
