Hiring highly qualified candidates is always a challenge for employers, but it is particularly difficult now due to the historically low unemployment rate. And simply relying on the review of candidates’ educational background, employment history, references, and performance during an interview is not enough to know if they are the right fit for a position.
Finding the right people is key. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the cost of a bad hire is at least 30% of the employee’s first-year earnings. Therefore, identifying candidates who have the right skill set and personality traits for a position is important to reduce employee turnover.
Behavior-based assessments seek to give employers a glimpse into a candidate’s personality to predict the candidate’s likelihood of succeeding in a role. eSkill is an industry leader in pre-employment assessments and has helped thousands of companies administer valid and reliable behavior-based assessments that accurately predict job performance. eSkill’s systematic approach to assessments provides organizations with quantifiable data-driven insights that improve employee retention rates, productivity, and morale while decreasing average time-to-hire.
Develop a Well-Constructed Assessment Process
It is important to remember that any assessment used for candidate selection must adhere to certain professional and legal requirements. Therefore, employers must follow these five steps to ensure behavioral assessments and skills tests accurately predict job performance while complying with employment testing guidelines.
The purpose of a job analysis is to uncover the behavioral characteristics and professional competencies required for successful performance in a specific role and work setting. A job analysis typically includes two or more methods of compiling information about the job requirements. Common methods include soliciting information from incumbents, supervisors, and other subject matter experts in the form of behavioral observations, standardized questionnaires, and job shadowing. The results of the job analysis determine the exact skills, knowledge, aptitude, and behavioral characteristics that the corresponding behavioral assessment and skills test must assess.
eSkill’s dedicated U.S.-based Client Success Managers assist employers in creating behavioral style assessments and skills tests that are customized to align with the results of job analyses. With over a thousand customizable job-based and subject-based assessments, eSkill’s user-friendly platform enables employers to easily configure effective behavioral style assessments.
When developing behavior based assessments and skills tests for personnel selection, employers must complete a validation study to ensure legal compliance. The purpose of the validity study is to provide empirical support for a solid correlation between test results and job performance. The most common and straightforward method of validating employment assessments relies on testing existing employees. These validity studies generally compare employees’ test scores with job performance criteria. Performance criteria may include sales quota achievement, supervisor ratings, or similar measures. Validity is established when high-performing employees rank at the top of test-takers and the opposite is true for low-performing employees.
In 1978, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission adopted the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures (UGESP) under Title VII. The UGESP states that “selection procedures should be administered and scored under standardized conditions.” Simply put, all candidates must receive the same assessment at the same point in the hiring process, and employers must weigh test scores in the same manner for all candidates.
Organizations should periodically perform predictive studies based on the behavioral assessment and skills test beginning 6 to 12 months after hiring candidates. Predictive studies compare objective job performance measurements such as performance reviews to assessment scores. The purpose of predictive studies is to demonstrate that the assessments used for candidate selection are predictive of work performance.
By following these steps, organizations can make behavior-based assessments and skills tests a valuable part of a legally-sound and effective hiring process. Partnering with an experienced employment testing provider is essential to using employment assessments successfully. eSkill’s expert staff and consultants can either complete the entire job-analysis and statistical validation study from start to finish or assist employers in doing so.
Finding applicants with the “right” behavioral characteristics is extremely important when hiring. Unlike job-specific skills, work behavior is not easy to teach. In a time when hiring the best talent possible is important to sustained success, eSkill’s behavioral style assessments mitigate the risk of bad hires.
Learn more about the benefits of using eSkill’s behavior based assessments and customizable skills tests to find qualified candidates quickly.
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