How Pre-Employment Assessment Tests Help You Minimize Hiring Mistakes

It is every HR professional’s dream to find the “perfect” candidate for every position. However, this is easier said than done for a couple of reasons. First, there is a lack of candidates with the skills organizations need. Companies have been seeing a growing shortage of in-demand skills for the past decade.

The second problem is HR teams can no longer assume the information on candidates’ resumes is accurate because over 85% of candidates lie on their resumes and during job interviews.  So, the candidate of your dreams could end up being your worst nightmare.

How Hiring Mistakes Impact Productivity

HR leaders strive to avoid hiring mistakes because they are expensive, counterproductive, and often negatively affect the morale of team members. According to research compiled by LinkedIn and the US Department of Labor, the cost of a bad hire can range as high as $240,000 when you factor in recruiting expenses, staff disruption, incomplete projects, potential litigation costs, and possible loss of customer goodwill.

Organizations worldwide across all industry sectors have adopted pre-employment assessment testing solutions to minimize the risk of hiring mistakes.

Pre-Employment Testing Minimizes Hiring Mistakes

Companies often receive thousands of applications when they post a job. So, they need an easy and efficient way to identify top candidates and weed out unqualified candidates.

Pre-employment test results show which applicants have the skills and experience necessary for the job. So, recruiters can focus on the best-qualified candidates, screen out the unqualified ones, and make hiring decisions based on quantifiable data.

How Pre-Employment Testing Solutions Work

Pre-employment testing solutions enable HR professionals to instantly evaluate applicants’ ability to do a job. Those with the right skills and experience advance through the hiring process, and those who do not receive a message thanking them for their interest.

When organizations evaluate pre-employment testing solutions, many choose the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM because of the flexibility it offers. Their HR team has access to hundreds of validated job- and subject-based skills tests in the eSkill Assessment Library.

They can use the standardized pre-employment tests “as is” or build custom assessments by selecting questions from multiple assessments. For example, if an HR team for a law firm is hiring administrative assistants, recruiters can choose questions from MS Office® assessments such as MS Word® and MS Excel® and add questions from the Legal Typing and Legal Terminology assessments.

Companies can also add their own questions if needed. For instance, if an organization wanted to test employees or applicants on safety regulations unique to their company or needed to make testing content available in several different languages, they could upload the questions and create their own pre-employment assessment test.

How to Improve Pre-Employment Testing Outcomes

Pre-employment tests confirm that candidates have the skills to perform a job, but they do not always provide all the information HR teams need to evaluate candidates thoroughly. So, many eSkill clients leverage the following features to get a comprehensive view of candidates.

• Behavioral Assessments: Candidates may have the skills to do the job but be a poor fit for an organization’s corporate culture. Using behavioral assessments in conjunction with pre-employment assessment tests helps hiring teams evaluate cultural compatibility along with abilities and experience.

• Simulations: Hiring team can include simulation questions that replicate their job environment and evaluate candidates’ performance to determine which candidates are best qualified. For instance, if a retail company is hiring customer service representatives who will manage multiple customer inquiries simultaneously, they can include Chat and Multitasking simulations in their pre-employment test and evaluate how quickly and accurately applicants respond to customers.

• Video Response Questions: Some attributes, such as verbal communication and foreign language skills, cannot be measured effectively using written assessments. So, many HR and hiring teams include video response questions so they can measure these abilities thoroughly and get a comprehensive view of candidates.

• Team Scoring: As the expression goes, two heads are better than one. With the Team Scoring feature, you can set up group interviews that include team subject matter experts from across your company. You set the criteria, and hiring team members “blindly” grade candidates’ responses by designating point levels for each item. There is no direct contact with candidates, which minimizes the possibility of subjective bias. Once you have received responses from everyone, you can easily manage and administer all the candidates’ scores.

Pre-Employment Assessment Tests Minimize Hiring Mistakes

Businesses worldwide experience fewer hiring mistakes once they deploy pre-employment tests. Many also significantly lower hiring costs and reduce time-to-hire. Organizations that use the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM have reduced hiring costs by 70% and decreased time-to-hire by 60%.

Are you ready to learn how pre-employment assessment tests can help you minimize the risk of hiring mistakes? Contact us to request a demo.