Has Your Workforce Changed? Use Pre-Employment Tests to Hire in 2021

Even before the pandemic’s onset, new technologies and ways of working were disrupting jobs and the skills needed to do them. The half-life of job skills, or the amount of time before a job skill is about half as valuable as it was initially, was getting exponentially shorter. In 2017, the World Economic Forum estimated the average half-life of job skills was five years. In 2019, nearly 90% of executives surveyed reported skills gaps in their workforce or anticipated gaps developing within a few years.

The COVID-19 crisis has only exacerbated these growing skills gaps. The pandemic upended standard operations and forced organizations to leverage technology at a greater level, transforming the business landscape indefinitely. As a result, organizations must begin to adopt strategies to support rapidly changing conditions. Human resources (HR) leaders must figure out how to accurately match workers with new roles.

As the dust begins to settle from the initial shockwaves of the pandemic, take the time to craft talent strategies that will support your organization’s new business models. eSkill’s online pre-employment testing platform provides HR professionals with the tools to effectively and efficiently identify candidates with the right skills.

Why Use Pre-Employment Skills Tests?

With the most extensive collection of pre-employment tests in the HR industry, eSkill’s user-friendly platform enables HR professionals and recruiters to select and customize tests that measure the exact skills, knowledge, and aptitude required for any position across industries.

eSkill’s pre-employment testing platform enables organizations to:

• Select candidates with the right skills: With the half-life of skills at or below five years, education credentials and previous work history do not hold the weight they once did. In fact, industry giants like Google, Bank of America, IBM, and Apple have dropped degree requirements for positions in their organizations. Instead, the nation’s leading companies have adopted a skills-based hiring approach. Using job-specific pre-employment testing, these organizations can identify talent with the exact skills needed. Skills tests enable hiring teams to accurately compare candidates based on job-relevant skills and knowledge rather than subjective criteria.

• Automate the shortlisting of candidates: eSkill’s user-friendly platform allows hiring teams to set minimum cutoff scores for each skills test. Setting a cutoff score creates a shortlist of applicants automatically.

• Accelerate onboarding: eSkill automatically creates detailed yet easy-to-understand score reports. Organizations can use this information to provide targeted training during onboarding. Training designed only to cover an individual’s job-specific skills and knowledge deficits saves time and increases the likelihood new hires will succeed in their new role. Organizations with onboarding processes that ensure newly hired employees are equipped with the skills critical to their position improve new hire retention by 82% and productivity by more than 70%.

When organizations use pre-employment tests, they can fill skills gaps with highly qualified workers.

Optimize Hiring Efficiency

If 2020 has taught us anything, it is that technology is our friend. Tech-driven hiring tools that work seamlessly together support agile and efficient processes. eSkill’s cloud-based suite of pre-employment testing tools integrates with your Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) and Learning Management Systems (LMS) so HR professionals can streamline processes and automate workflows.

In addition to pre-employment tests, eSkill offers an on-demand video interviewing solution explicitly designed for hiring purposes. eSkill’s on-demand video interviewing solution leverages advanced automation to reduce the amount of human power needed to conduct interviews. Instead of a member of the hiring team participating in each interview, candidates self-record responses to a set of prerecorded questions.

Developed to work synchronously with eSkill’s pre-employment tests, hiring teams can select to automatically send on-demand video interviews to candidates that score within a chosen threshold or send the interview invitations to top-ranking candidates. And given that eSkill is a cloud-based platform, the hiring team can view and score responses at any time and from anywhere.

For a robust scoring process, eSkill’s Interview Reviewer tool enables a selected administrator to oversee team scoring. Team scoring is essentially the virtual version of an interview panel. The administrator can assign multiple “reviewers” to evaluate candidates’ responses. Reviewers are automatically notified by eSkill when a new set of interview responses are available to evaluate. Using a set of predetermined scoring criteria, reviewers independently score the interviews. Administrators must approve the reviewers’ scores. Once approved, eSkill automatically averages the reviewers’ scores to create a final interview score.

The benefits of eSkill’s Team Scoring feature include:

• Hiring teams can use multiple sets of scoring criteria per response. For instance, when interviewing candidates for a Website Developer position, an administrator may choose to rate answers based on technical knowledge and critical thinking skills. Did the candidate demonstrate knowledge of the computer programming language Java (technical knowledge)? Did the candidate identify a solution to the hypothetical problem presented (critical thinking skills)?
• Averaging multiple reviewers’ scores reduces the impact of unconscious bias, creating a more objective and fair evaluation of candidate responses.

Scoring interview responses does not have to be complex. For maximum efficiency, eSkill also offers a Simple Scoring feature that only requires one reviewer to rate interview responses on a scale of 1 to 10 stars. Reviewers also have the option to add a comment for context, but it is not mandatory. Unlike team scoring, any hiring team member with scoring access can rate interview responses as they become available.

If your workforce has changed, now is the time to consider including eSkill’s pre-employment testing platform in your hiring process. eSkill’s pre-employment tests and on-demand video interviews identify talent with the skills your organization needs quickly and effectively.

Interested in Pre-Employment Skills Tests for Hiring?

Learn more about the benefits of using eSkill’s customizable skills tests and on-demand video interviewing solution to find qualified candidates quickly.

Request a demo today.