The Role of Pre-Hire Assessments in Building a Skilled and Engaged Team

Your business’s success and survival depend on your ability to develop and penetrate new markets, increase market share, and meet growth goals. According to the Harvard Business Review, top companies are over 40% more productive than their nearest competitors and have operating margins 30% to 50% higher than their peers.

A strong and engaged team is essential to your success because having top people in the right jobs ensures operational efficiency. Unfortunately, hiring top people has become difficult due to a worldwide talent shortage. The problem has become so serious that 71% of CEOs say a skills shortage will be their biggest business challenge for the foreseeable future.

In this challenging recruiting environment, business leaders need a sound strategy to hire and retain top talent. Many have implemented a leading pre-hire assessment solution like the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM.

What Is a Pre-Hire Assessment?

Pre-hire assessments help HR teams evaluate job applicants, as well as current staff. The two most popular types are skills tests and behavioral assessments.

Skills tests assess candidates’ ability to perform job-related tasks. They are administered online and include questions in various formats, such as multiple-choice and true-false. You simply invite applicants to complete the assessment, and you and your team sort and review the results.

While skills tests measure applicants’ abilities and experience, behavioral assessments provide insight into a candidate’s personality so you can determine if their work style is compatible with your corporate culture and a good fit for a job.

Use Pre-Hire Assessments to Build a Strong and Engaged Team

Skills tests and behavioral assessments work in synergy to help you identify top candidates. Skills tests show whether candidates can do a job, and behavioral assessments tell you whether their personality and work habits are compatible with your corporate culture. These are some ways pre-hiring assessments help you improve recruiting:

• Simplify Applicant Screening: You probably receive hundreds of responses for each job posting. If you and your team review them manually, you know how long it takes and how much time you spend weeding out unqualified applicants. Pre-hire assessments allow you to screen applicants at a glance by sorting completed assessments and ranking them by score. A task that took hours takes minutes, and you can focus your time and efforts on the top applicants.

• Reduce Turnover: When managers onboard a new employee, they wonder, “Will this person be an asset to our company?” and “Will they stay with us long enough to positively impact productivity?” Both are valid concerns because many new employees do not work out. According to a BambooHR survey, almost 70% of new hires leave within the first three months, and 90% of employees continue to explore new opportunities after they are hired. Using pre-hire assessments reduces turnover by helping you recruit employees who are likely to stay with your organization.

• Minimize Unconscious Bias: Hiring teams are supposed to judge candidates fairly and impartially. However, unconscious bias can taint even well-managed hiring processes. According to a recent Bright Talk survey, 79% of HR professionals said unconscious bias exists in recruitment and succession planning decisions. Employment testing minimizes the risk of unconscious bias influencing hiring decisions because it emphasizes candidates’ skills and abilities, not their resumes and what was said during interviews. This enables HR teams to make hiring decisions based on hard data.

Pre-Hire Assessments Provide a Comprehensive View of Candidates

Skills tests and behavioral assessments help you improve hiring outcomes when used alone. However, research shows that using skills tests and behavioral assessments together can increase the likelihood of placing the right person in the proper position by up to 80%. The following scenario illustrates why this is important.

A fast-growing software company was recruiting candidates to hire a lead engineer to lead a team of four developers. The firm had a work-hard-play-hard culture and a very casual environment. Employees wore jeans, t-shirts, and shorts in the office and could work flexible hours.

The hiring team identified Jayden as a top candidate because he had excellent scores on advanced Java programming and IT skills tests. He had experience leading software development teams, and his cognitive test results showed outstanding leadership and decision-making skills.

Unfortunately, it soon became apparent that Jayden was a poor fit for the job. His experience was with large companies with a conservative culture. His leadership and management style were direct, and he demanded that his team follow orders without question. 

This worked well in a large company with a structured work environment but not in a small company with a laid-back culture. After three months, the four developers on Jayden’s team met with the Vice-President of Engineering and the President/CEO and threatened to quit if Jayden were not replaced.

Jayden’s skills test results showed he was the perfect hire. If he had also completed a behavioral assessment, the hiring manager would have seen that Jayden was not a good fit for the company culture, regardless of how good his skills were.

Get Started with Pre-Hire Assessments

Many businesses are revamping their recruiting to improve their agility in making hiring decisions. For many, this has included implementing a pre-hire assessment solution.

Do you want to learn how pre-hire assessments can help you build a skilled and engaged team? Contact us to request a demo.