The cost of a bad hire is enormous for any business. According to the U.S. Department of Labor, a bad hire can end up costing your company 30% of the employee’s earnings, which 41% of HR managers say could equal thousands of dollars. Beyond the economic impact, the lasting effect on employee morale can be even more damaging.
For small businesses, the risk of a bad hire is even higher. With smaller margins and more responsibilities placed on each employee, one bad hire can create a gaping hole in your organization, which leads to missed deadlines and opportunities, as well as additional work being forced onto other team members. For some businesses, a single bad hire can torpedo the entire company.
The key to small business hiring is to balance casting a wide net with the careful evaluation of applicants. Small businesses employ more than 47% of all workers in the U.S., which translates to roughly 60.6 million people. To hire the best people, you need a deep talent pool, but not so deep that you are unable to navigate it.
With skills tests, you can significantly streamline small business hiring as well as save time and money. When you partner with eSkill, you can use skills tests to find candidates that are qualified for your open positions and ensure that they have the best possible Job Fit.
Use Skills Tests to Narrow Your Search
For any small business hiring employees, the first step is to write a job posting that attracts the right candidates. This means being as clear as possible about the tasks that the job entails, the expected level of experience, and areas of expertise required for the position. Clarity is the most important aspect of your job descriptions so you do not waste time attracting unqualified candidates. While you want to broaden the range of applicants, you can easily sabotage your efforts by making them too broad.
Even with a good job post, you are likely to receive hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of job applications, and that number is overwhelming for a small business–especially one without a dedicated HR team. Rather than trying to review every application you receive, you should attempt to eliminate unqualified candidates.
Many ATS systems eliminate candidates who do not mention certain keywords in their application or on their resume. However other problems may persist, including exaggerations and misstatements on resumes. With eSkill’s assessments, you can instantly determine whether a candidate possesses the skills they claim to have.
As candidates complete and submit tests, you promptly move highly qualified applicants to the next step of your hiring process, eliminate those who are unqualified, and evaluate borderline candidates.
If you generate a report that shows which questions a candidate missed by difficulty level, you may
find that although a potential hire scored lower overall than you would like, they have a good grasp of more complicated concepts. This means they are a viable candidate because they will simply need some training in other areas.
Identify Top Candidates with eSkill’s Talent Assessment PlatformTM
Using skills tests as part of your small business hiring process offers an easy, straightforward method for narrowing your search and building your talent pool. eSkill has a library of more than 800 pre-written job-based and subject-based tests. You can use eSkill Author to create your custom tests to tailor assessments directly with specific job roles.
For example, if you have a small company with 15 employees and you need someone who can handle accounting but also needs sales ability to cover any shortfalls, you can find candidates with both skillsets by combining questions from the Accounting and Bookkeeping Principles Test with those from the Sales Concepts Test, and add questions to find out more about candidates’ soft skills like written and verbal communication, relationship building, and integrity.
eSkill’s simulations are another popular option because you can create job-related scenarios that replicate tasks candidates would perform if hired. This enables you to evaluate how they respond and react in various situations and how they approach and solve problems.
Interested in Learning More About the Ways that eSkill Can Help Your Small Business Hiring Employees?
eSkill’s Talent Assessment PlatformTM is the solution you need to find candidates with the skills and knowledge to succeed at your company. Request a demo today.