HR professionals are always looking for ways to improve the hiring process. Whether it is cutting the average time to hire or enhancing the chances of bringing the right person on board, companies need to be aware of all available tools to make hiring more efficient and effective.
Some of the most valuable tools you should be using in your hiring process are behavioral assessments and skills testing. According to Gallup, companies that use validated testing to hire the most highly skilled employees are not only 21% more profitable on average, but they also enjoy 59% less employee turnover.
In other words, their hiring searches are more effective. If you use the same technologies, you are more likely to find the person with the right Job Fit—the perfect suitability for the role.
While hard skill tests are useful, it is important to not overlook the value of pre-employment behavioral assessments. With behavioral assessments, you can dig deeper into a candidate’s personality to predict how they will behave and perform on the job. These assessments focus more on a candidate’s soft skills, providing insight into how they think and communicate.
So how can you use behavioral assessments to improve your hiring process? Let’s dive in!
What Is a Behavioral Assessment?
There are several misconceptions about behavioral assessments, most of which stem from a lack of clarity. A behavioral assessment is more than a personality test and can possibly indicate which candidates are most likely to succeed in a position. Furthermore, behavioral assessments are not one-size-fits-all surveys that are appropriate for every job that you are seeking to fill.
Behavioral assessments offer employers several benefits. In addition to predicting a candidate’s performance, pre-employment behavioral assessments can help you determine whether a new hire will be a good fit in your company’s culture.
So what is a behavioral assessment? Simply put, a behavioral assessment is a validated and reliable survey designed to measure how an employee behaves in workplace situations.
Behavioral assessments measure behavioral tendencies and interests. These scales measure a person’s ability, aptitude, and interest in performing in the role. The measures are sometimes called soft skills.
For example, eSkill’s behavioral assessment measures a person’s:
| Agreeableness | Tendency to be cooperative and accommodating to others. |
| Conscientiousness | Tendency to be thorough, organized, and dependable. |
| Extroversion | Tendency to be assertive with a preference for working in a social environment. |
| Grit | Tendency to persist toward goals despite obstacles. |
| Integrity | Tendency to follow rules and professional principles. |
| Openness | Tendency to appreciate and seek out new ideas and activities. |
| Resilience | Tendency to recover from difficult situations quickly. |
| Stability | Tendency to display a calm and steady presence. |
| Tenacity | Tendency to be determined and perseverant. |
| Work Ethic | Tendency to do what is expected of you with enthusiasm for the work. |
| People | Interpersonal interests concerning society, communications, psychology, and more. |
| Data | Investigative interests concerning mathematics, programming, science, and more. |
| Things | Practical interests concerning manufacturing, engineering, athletics, and more. |
Pre-Employment Behavioral Assessments Make Your Hiring Process More Effective
According to the American Psychological Association, behavioral assessments have long been considered excellent predictors of a person’s ability to perform.
eSkill helps you compare candidates more quickly. You will not have to spend hours sorting through individual applications. Instead, you will have an effective way to measure notoriously hard to quantify behaviors. Because the assessments are the same for everyone, you will also eliminate potential unconscious bias that can otherwise exclude candidates with a good Job Fit.
If you have a fast-paced, high-pressure environment, you want to avoid hiring someone who prefers to take their time with a task. Likewise, a hard-driven professional might not thrive in a slower-paced workplace. By avoiding bad hires, behavioral assessments also help you improve your employee retention rates.
Our assessment experts can help you perform a job analysis to ensure you are looking for the right skills with your assessments.
With a clear understanding of your expectations from the open position, you can make sure that you hire the person best suited to meet those expectations.
eSkill Makes Administering Assessments Easy
Making behavioral assessments a part of your hiring process is easy with eSkill’s Talent Assessment PlatformTM. The platform integrates with most ATS software systems, which allows you to add behavioral assessments to your application process.
You can either manually email test links to candidates or automate the process to send links to all applicants as they complete their applications.
With eSkill’s user-friendly dashboard, you have all of your assessments information at your fingertips. Results are automatically reported once tests are complete, and you can easily sort candidates by their results.
You can also dive more deeply into each candidate’s assessment results, getting a glimpse at how they performed on each scale.
When it comes to hiring the person with the best Job Fit, or job compatibility, you need the best picture of the candidate’s aptitude, personality and skills. With behavioral assessments and the eSkill platform, you can combine behavioral assessments with skills tests to give you the information you need, before you hire.
Ready to Incorporate Behavioral Assessments into Your Hiring Process?
Learn how eSkill’s behavioral assessments help you make the right hiring decisions for all of your open positions. Request a demo today.