HR leaders always look for better ways to recruit top talent and minimize hiring mistakes. Although labor markets are stabilizing, organizations are still coping with a talent shortage.
Hiring mistakes are expensive, and they negatively impact productivity. Bad hires cost companies thousands of dollars annually. If a company terminates a manager who earns $62,000, it can cost as much as $840,000, including hiring costs, salary, benefits, lost productivity, severance, and lost business opportunities.
The organization also loses its investment in the new hire. It can cost as much as $240,000 to onboard and train a new employee. If the new hire does not work out, the company loses what it invested and must incur additional costs to hire a replacement.
Thus, a lot of money is at stake, and the problem is especially critical since it has become more difficult to fill critical jobs. So, it is no surprise that organizations are implementing pre-employment assessment testing solutions like the eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM to improve hiring quality and minimize their risk of bad hiring decisions.
What to Look for in a Pre-Employment Assessment Solution
HR leaders often ask what they should look for when evaluating pre-employment assessment solutions. It is difficult to give them an answer because organizations’ needs differ depending on their goals and objectives. The best pre-employment assessment tests for your business depend on the jobs you are trying to fill and the skills they require.
First, you must decide whether you will test hard skills, soft skills, or both. Hard skills are specific abilities candidates need to perform a job, and soft skills are behavioral traits and work habits that determine whether a candidate will fit your company’s culture well.
When HR professionals evaluate products to choose the best pre-employment assessment solution, we tell them to look for these features.
- Comprehensive Assessment Library: A pre-employment assessment solution must include an extensive library of validated skills tests. The eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM has hundreds of validated job- and subject-based skills tests to help you assess applicants for virtually any job. For example, if you are recruiting web developers with strong Java, and Salesforce skills, the Web Developer, Java Developer, and Salesforce Developer skills tests will help you identify top candidates. Tests such as Logical Thinking and Verbal Reasoning can measure essential cognitive skills.
- Skills Test Customization: The skills your company requires for specific jobs differ from those of other companies. Therefore, using off-the-shelf tests may not be a good option, which is why you need the ability to customize tests. With the eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM, you can use pre-prepared tests or create customized pre-employment assessment tests. Choose any job- or subject-based skills test and add or delete questions or build a customized assessment using questions from multiple tests. You can even add your own questions if needed.
- Simulations: An excellent way to verify that applicants can do a job is to watch them complete tasks they would perform if hired. So, your assessment solution must allow you to include simulations in pre-employment assessments. The eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM offers a Chat simulation that helps you confirm applicants know how to use popular chat applications and a Multitasking simulation so you can evaluate applicants’ time management and organizational skills. It also includes Digital Literacy and MS Office® simulations that help you assess candidates’ Internet, social media, and computer proficiency.
- Behavioral Assessments: Pre-employment assessment tests measure hard skills applicants must have to do a job successfully, but they do not tell you whether they are a good fit for your company culture Poor job fit is the cause of 73% of hiring failures, and high turnover is one of the leading causes of decreased productivity. So, many HR teams use behavioral assessments to verify that candidates have soft skills such as communication, problem-solving, and teamwork abilities and that their work style is compatible with their corporate culture.
- Video Response Questions: Some abilities, like verbal communication and foreign language skills, are difficult to measure using written pre-employment assessments. This is why choosing an assessment solution that allows you to include video response questions in skills tests is important. Once candidates record and upload their responses, hiring team members can review and rate them and add their comments. They have no direct contact with candidates, which reduces the chance of unconscious bias influencing hiring decisions.
Choose the Best Pre-Employment Assessments to Improve Hiring Outcomes
Your business operations run smoothly when you hire the best people and place them in the right jobs. Studies have shown that if your organization replaced 20% of its average talent on a project team with top talent, the project would take less than two years to complete if the team was 400% more productive and less than a year if it was 800% more productive. Studies also showed that if a competitor hired talent that was 20% better than yours, that company would beat you to market on the same project, even if you had a year or two head start.
Do you want to learn how pre-employment assessments can help you hire top candidates and avoid hiring mistakes? Contact us to request a demo.
