Assessments tools used in the hiring process can provide valuable information about an applicant to support your decision making process. You can learn about an applicant’s skill level, critical thinking ability, and behaviors that impact job fit and job satisfaction.
There are five important points to consider when choosing a pre-employment assessment partner:
- Quality: Do they offer proven content that has a sound theoretical basis and data to show it works?
- Variety: Do they offer a suite of complimentary assessments or do they offer only one type?
- Flexibility: Can the content be modified, customized, adapted?
- Usability: Is the content user friendly, and engaging?
- Relevance: Do they offer content that leverages specific industry experience, knowledge?
For a pre-hire assessment to be effective, it needs to be part of a strategic process that is used throughout the entire Talent Life Cycle of the employee.
Using assessments throughout the employee life cycle will:
- Facilitate the collecting of meaningful data to assist you in your hiring decisions.
- Provide a backbone to which other talent assessment functions can be linked.
- Provide insight into the ROI and value of talent and the hiring process.
- Gage the new hires against the company’s culture, values, and strategic drivers.
- Aid in the legal defensibility of the hiring process.
Using pre-hire assessments can help you to improve the quality of hires and reduce turnover. By better understanding an applicant’s skill level, critical thinking ability, values and behaviors, you will be equipped to make better hiring decisions.
Katherine Graham-Leviss is the founder and president of XBInsight, a state-of-the-art talent assessment company that gives executives the actionable information they need to make smart people-decisions. She is the author of The Perfect Hire: A Tactical Guide To Hiring, Developing and Retaining Top Sales Talent and High-Maintenance Employees: Why Your Best People Will Also Be Your Most Difficult…and What You Can Do About It.