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1019 How To Increase Hiring Success

Hiring highly qualified candidates is always a challenge for employers, but it is particularly challenging now due to the historically low unemployment rates in the United States. Merely relying on the review of candidates’ educational background, employment history, and references, as well as an interview, is not enough to know if they are the right fit for long term success in a position.

Finding the right people for your company’s roles is key to your success. According to the U.S. Labor Department, the cost of a bad hire is at least 30 percent of the employee’s first-year earnings. Identifying candidates who bring the right skill set and personality traits for a position are critical to reinforcing company culture, improving productivity, and reducing employee turnover.

Behavior-based assessments give recruiters a glimpse into each candidate’s personality, motivations, and temperament. According to SHRM, behavioral assessments help you make better hires. Used in conjunction with pre-employment skills tests, they help recruiters and hiring managers to identify the candidate’s likelihood of succeeding in a role.

eSkill is an industry leader in pre-employment assessment. eSkill helps thousands of companies administer pre-hire tests during the hiring process. eSkill’s systematic approach to assessment provides businesses with quantifiable data that will improve decrease the time-to-hire, and reduce costs associated with the hiring process.

Develop a Systematic Approach to Assessing Candidates

When considering a behavioral style assessment, it is critical to make sure the assessment offers a reliable correlation between the assessment results and job performance.

  1. Baseline the Role’s Success Metrics. Identify the behavior-based traits and competencies that are essential to a new employee performing their job.
  2. Customize the Assessment for the Role. eSkill’s experts will assist you in customizing an assessment for the particular position, often combining the behavioral assessment questions with a job-based skills assessment.
  3. Validate the Assessment. Validate that the assessment is predictive by having current employees take the tests.
  4. Use the Assessment. Begin using the assessment during the hiring process, ensuring all candidates receive the same assessment at the same point in the hiring process.
  5. Monitor the Results. If you have a good candidate flow, the assessments can be compared to identify those who score well above the average. Use this information in combination with results from the video interviews and in-person interviews, resumes, and references to make informed hiring decisions.

A word of caution, whenever an assessment is implemented as a part of an employer’s hiring process, it is critical to determine that the assessment is both valid and reliable to be Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) compliant. Therefore, it is wise to allow eSkill to assist your organization in the creation and administration of any pre-employment assessments administered. eSkill has a fifteen-year record of perfect EEOC compliance without any litigation, the best in the hiring assessment industry.

Create an Enjoyable Candidate Experience

Creating a positive candidate experience is critical now more than ever, due to the scarcity of available talent. Administering behavioral assessments may improve candidates’ view of your hiring practices.

According to a recent report by SHL, 62% of candidates identified behavioral assessments as the most preferred type of pre-hire evaluation, ranking it at the top of the list.

Maintaining transparency throughout the hiring process is another way to facilitate an enjoyable candidate experience. Notify candidates that behavioral assessments will be used, when they will be administered, how the results will be used, and when the candidate will see the results. This open communication will result in candidates feeling valued.

More Applications of Behavioral Assessments After Hiring

  • Customize coaching: Since eSkill’s behavior-based assessments are designed to identify candidates’ workplace behaviors and preferred style of interaction, the results can be used to help management maximize employee effectiveness. Businesses should use the results to implement customized coaching, as the employer will be able to identify skills that need nurturing and where the candidate excels.
  • Identify future leadership: The results can also be used to identify candidates who have the potential to do well in a leadership role in the future. Hiring candidates with leadership potential can help employers improve their retention rates and it could even help businesses in sourcing harder-to-fill positions in the future.
  • Reduce turnover: Behavioral assessments not only identify applicants that are best suited for a particular position, but they also offer the best way to understand how an applicant will behave once they are placed in a role.

Behavioral Assessments As a Part of a Complete Hiring and Training Process

Behavioral assessments used in conjunction with skills tests and video interviews give a complete picture of a candidate before you hire them. Unlike job-specific skills, personality traits are not typically something that can be taught. These assessments measure core behavioral characteristics that can be matched to a role’s requirements to determine a successful fit.

When used properly, behavioral style assessments are a fair and objective way to uncover candidates’ assets and shortcomings. eSkill makes the implementation of pre-employment behavioral assessments easy, allowing you to streamline the pre-employment process and mitigate the risk of bad hires.

Interested in Behavioral Style Assessments?

Learn more about the benefits of using eSkill’s behavioral-based assessments, job-specific skill assessments, and video interviews to find qualified candidates quickly.

Request a demo today.

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