Quick and Effective Hiring through Candidate Assessment Tools

Companies are at war to acquire and retain top talent. Fuelling this war further is the paucity of skilled and competent candidates in the market and poor adoption of candidate assessment tools in the hiring process. Candidate assessment software simplifies the hiring process and renders it more effective through holistic evaluation of candidate skills and competencies. Evaluating a candidate only on job-related skills is not enough to find the right for the role. Along with skill evaluation, personality traits and aptitude also need to be evaluated during the screening process. Pre-employment skill assessment software holds the key to comprehensive candidate evaluation.

Challenges in Hiring and Retaining Talent

The human resource department and hiring managers in industries like IT, BFSI, Pharma, Consulting, and Manufacturing are finding it challenging to hire skilled and competent candidates for various roles in their industry. Another challenge is the dependence on conventional hiring methods that are inadequate for the evolving market needs.

The talent acquisition process needs to evolve to become more engaging, faster, productive, and affordable. The current hiring process is inadequate due to lack of understanding of the competency required for each role and poor adoption of technology backed hiring tools like pre-employment skills tests. The challenges faced by the HR department doesn’t end here, an even bigger challenge is rising attrition rates and lack of effective employee retention strategies. Interestingly, the issue of rising attrition rates is connected with inefficient hiring processes. Hiring a candidate by evaluating job skills alone often leads to poor employee engagement and dissatisfaction at work. Poor employee engagement is the leading cause of high attrition rates.

In order to attract top talent and transform their people strategy, it is imperative that HR teams adopt technology backed hiring methods like online skill assessment software and simulations.

What are SaaS Candidate Assessment Tools?

Software as a Service (SaaS) candidate assessment tools are skill assessment software that evaluate job skills, cognitive ability, behavioural traits, and logical aptitude of candidates. Specialized tests are included in employment skill tests to evaluate skills required for the job and soft skills required to perform well in the role. The skill library in the skill assessment software can be customized according to the role for which the candidate is being evaluated.

Candidate assessment software enables standardized, formal, and scientific methods for evaluating the skills of candidates and employees. They yield a clear score, description, and category, derived from the candidate’s performance. Details that are not provided in the resume can be acquired through skill assessment tests. Job simulations are one type of pre-employment assessments that help evaluate a candidate’s ability to handle job situations and whether they fit well into the work culture of the organization.

Advantages of Candidate Assessment Tools

Online assessment software has an edge over traditional assessment methods like interviews by being more intuitive, interesting, and engaging. Here are some notable advantages offered by pre-employment skill assessment tests:

Accurate talent measurement: Pre-employment assessments adopt innovative evaluation methods like simulations, hackathons, big data, AI, gamification, and assessment centres that are highly accurate in measuring candidate skill. The accuracy level of these tools can be exponentially increased.
Superior candidate experience: Conventional hiring processes are too lengthy, unstructured, and uninteresting. New age skill assessment techniques use simulations or gamification methods that are engaging and interactive, which provide a meaningful experience for candidates.
Reduced cost and time for hiring: In high demand industries, the number of candidates applying for a single job posting varies from 50 to 100. The HR team and hiring managers spend way too much time, effort, and money to screen candidate profiles manually. Online talent assessments provide a faster, cheaper and more effective way to screen several profiles to find the right fit.
Fraud and cheating prevention: Candidate’s resumes often contain unverified details on the candidate’s skill and capabilities. Skill assessment tests enable accurate evaluation of candidate’s skills and competencies. Remote proctoring software is equipped with fraud and cheating prevention features that help maintain the integrity of the assessment process.

When online pre-hire assessments are used effectively, they have a major influence on key performance indicators in hiring like time to hire, employee retention, employee engagement, and hiring manager’s satisfaction.

Skill assessment software is used in various stages of employee lifecycle, from hiring to identifying training needs to employee engagement. Most common skill assessment tools are Cognitive, Psychometric, Simulators, technical MCQs, and domain tests.

Inhouse Recruitment versus SaaS Candidate Assessment Tools

Hiring skilled and competent employees is a challenge without the right recruitment strategy. Some companies rely on the efforts of their in-house recruitment team for hunting skilled and competent candidates. The table below compares in-house recruitment software with SaaS candidate tools.

In House recruitment software	SaaS Recruitment software tools
The scope of in-house software is limited to current skills and competencies required by the business	The skill library of SaaS recruitment tools can be customized to any type of job requirement
Upgrading features of in-house recruitment software is a cumbersome process	Features of SaaS candidate assessment tools can be upgraded as per customer requirements
In-house recruitment software cannot be upgraded as per new job requirements of evolving markets	SaaS candidate assessment tools can be upgraded according to evolving market requirements
Software skills required for job roles are not evaluated by in-house software	SaaS assessment tools ensure that soft skills are completely evaluated

SkillRobo is an SaaS online assessment software that can be used for hiring varied skills across industries. The skill library can be fully-customized to evaluate the skills and behavioural attributes required for the particular role. Candidates can take up the test in a safe browser environment. Instant reports and analytics based on the candidate’s test performance are provided to the hiring team to make informed hiring decisions.

Conclusion

The tussle for attracting and retaining top talent gets fiercer by the minute. HR teams and hiring managers are going all out to hire the best candidates for job openings. Technology backed hiring methods like skill assessment software make hiring more effective and faster.