Recruitment is changing or should we say evolving to keep up with evolving consumer demands, advancements in technology, and employer expectations. Talent is what businesses need to gain a competitive edge. Hiring the right talent impacts organizational growth positively and ensures optimal use of skills and capabilities. Assessment of candidate talent using various recruitment tools enables recruiters to sift through thousands of profiles and shortlist the right fit.
Importance of Making the Right Hire
Your business is as good as your employees. As automation enters into every industry, jobs are getting less repetitive and more creative. This not only means more interesting job profiles but also means that talent will make a bigger business impact than ever before. As job profiles become more complex and innovative, it is not enough to choose “good” candidate profiles but to choose “great” candidate profiles.
Recruiting the right hires becomes the key business differentiator that the leadership will pay close attention to. The recruitment function must rethink and redefine its recruitment strategy to make the right hire against every open job requirement. From online candidate assessment tools to social media handles, the recruitment team has several tools that will help them hire the right candidate.
Here is why it is important to make the right hire:
Time-saving:
Managing team members takes up a substantial amount of time for the management. However, managing a poor performer takes much more time than managing a good performer. Moreover, the learning curve for the right hire is much steeper than for a poor performer or a wrong hire. You can save valuable time for the team and management by hiring the right candidate against the job profile. Time saved equals revenue generation.
Customer service:
By making the right hiring decision, you are not only inducting a capable co-worker but also improving the customer experience in the market. Candidate assessment tools help you evaluate the technical and interpersonal skills of the candidate. Psychometric tests and cognitive ability tests help in assessing the mental ability and personality traits of candidates, which in turn sheds light on how they interact with co-workers and customers. Hiring a candidate with superior interpersonal skills ensures that interaction with the customer is top-notch.
Business growth:
The requirement for skilled candidates will increase in proportion to business growth. Hiring the right candidates today will reduce the number of people you might need in the future or postpone the need for new hires. Candidates with the right skills would be willing to grow and diversify their roles to cater to growing business needs. Such candidates will not only foster business growth but also help stabilize the business at all levels of growth.
Resource utilization:
Hiring candidates with the right technical and soft skills required for the job ensures optimal resource utilization. The time taken by the candidate to grasp the working method and training period (if any) will be very little and he/she will start contributing to the business almost immediately.
Building team morale:
Businesses thrive when teams work together. Recruiting strong team players will help build team morale and contribute to the company’s culture. Using a pre-employment candidate talent assessment tool helps recruit a technically skilled candidate who fits into the cultural fabric of the company.
Top 5 Priorities of the Recruitment Function
Priorities of the recruitment function have changed over the years. A simple hiring as per requirement process is now considered a strategic business decision that directly impacts the business bottom line. Here are the top 5 priorities for the recruitment team:
1. Considering recruitment as a critical business decision:
The recruitment team must consider every recruitment decision as mission-critical for the business. Technical skills, personality, and culture fit – all these aspects need to be evaluated by the recruitment team during the recruitment process. A candidate talent assessment tool helps the recruitment team evaluate the candidate on all these aspects.
2. Adopting technical tools:
The best way to boost the recruitment process is to adopt modern pre-employment assessment tools that enable quick and complete evaluation of the candidate profile. Online candidate assessment tools like SkillRobo help the recruitment team filter thousands of profiles to shortlist the ones that match the job requirements.
3. Adopt diversity, inclusion, and belonging strategy:
Recruiters need to include diversity, inclusion, and belonging in their recruitment efforts.
4. Make data-driven hiring decisions:
In recent years, data analysis has become a necessary skill for recruiting professionals. Data analysis can be used to drive improvement in multiple areas of recruitment.
5. Use of metrics to track outcomes:
Recruitment metrics like quality of hire, time to hire, etc. must be used to guide the recruitment process.
The use of a pre-employment candidate talent assessment tool helps the recruitment team achieve all the above priorities with ease.
Importance of Candidate Talent Assessment Tools
Recruitment assessment is the set of exams or tests that candidates are given as part of the recruitment process. It is the screening process undertaken to evaluate thousands of candidates’ skills, personalities, and perspectives according to the job requirements. Recruitment assessment tools can save the recruitment team from making bad recruitment decisions. Candidate talent assessment tools help in identifying candidates with high mental aptitudes, innovative thinking abilities, and good behavioral traits.
Here is why it is important to have candidate talent assessment tools:
- Improve the quality of hires: The recruitment team can increase the likelihood of hiring quality candidates by using pre-employment candidate talent assessment tools. These tools are effective in providing an accurate overview of an applicant’s performance and potential and a swifter shortlisting of suitable candidates.
- Assessment tests are based on hiring and retention case studies: These tests are capable of showing how closely a candidate will match requirements. These tests are also informative, which enables recruiters to make comparative evaluations of candidates to find the best fit for the role.
- Saves recruitment resources: the right recruitment assessment tool is capable of reducing the time to hire by streamlining the candidate screening process. Efficient candidate evaluation enables the company to reduce the time and costs associated with candidate hiring.
- Insightful and unbiased evaluation: when hiring managers evaluate candidates their decisions are usually influenced by favorable interactions, peer approval, or shared interests. A candidate talent assessment tool enables unbiased and insightful evaluation of candidates. Accurate and objective insights of the test results are readily available for the hiring team.
- Improves brand image: candidate selection tests are fairer and swifter, hence, attracting positive responses from candidates. This improves the brand image in the job market.
Types of Candidate Talent Assessment Tools
Several talent assessment methods can be used to evaluate the skills and personality traits of the candidate. These tests evaluate whether the candidate can do the job for which he/she is being hired and if they would fit into the company culture and team. Candidate talent assessment tools help reduce the number of candidates to a smaller and more qualified group. These tests provide insights into candidate’s skills and streamline the recruitment process.
Here are different types of talent assessment tests that can prove useful in screening candidates:
1. Work samples:
Asking candidates to provide work samples is a simple and effective way of evaluating their skills. The work sample is related to the work that the candidate has applied for, for example, a candidate applying for the post of a content writer would be asked to submit content work samples; an accountant would be asked to solve a few accounting problems using formulae; and a developer may be asked to write a piece of code in the relevant technology.
Candidate assessment through work samples is one of the most effective ways of predicting a candidate’s job performance. Successful evaluation through work samples is possible when the expectations are set right. The objective of the sample work should be made clear to the candidate, and assurance must be provided to the candidate that the sample will not be used for business purposes.
2. Job simulations:
Creating a job simulation helps assess the candidates on job performance. It can be done during the interview or through online pre-employment assessment tools. For example: to assess a customer care executive’s skill you can ask them to handle a disgruntled customer over chat or sell things to customers over a phone call.
Situational interview questions are one type of job simulation. Candidates can be asked to explain their reaction to a hypothetical scenario at work. Responses from each candidate sheds light on their way of thinking and how they’d handle a tricky situation.
3. Cognitive ability tests:
These tests are also called intelligence or general aptitude tests. Verbal and numerical reasoning and logical exercises are part of cognitive ability tests. More detailed cognitive ability tests include evaluation of memory, attention to detail, and problem-solving capabilities.
General intelligence of candidates and their ability to comprehend various concepts and solve basic problems. Reliable and well-validated cognitive ability tests are available on popular recruitment platforms.
4. Psychometric tests:
A psychometric assessment is a standard and scientific assessment that analyzes the candidate’s mental abilities and personality traits. The ability of the candidate to perform a task effectively and efficiently can be assessed through these tests.
4 key aspects of human personality are assessed through these tests, they are Positive personality traits, dark personality traits, motivation and value preferences, and cognitive ability. At the end of the test, recruiters will have deep insights into the candidate’s behavioral traits and be able to decide if he/she would be a good fit for the company’s culture.
Depending on the form of these assessments, their effectiveness and applicability may vary. The recruitment team needs to first take a look at their hiring process before choosing the candidate talent assessment test that suits the business.
Features of Candidate Assessment Tools
A skilled and talented workforce is the biggest asset for an organization. Companies invest their financial and human resources in onboarding the best workforce. Talent acquisition teams are revamping their recruitment strategies to hire skilled candidates. The demand for talent assessment tools by businesses of various sizes and types is increasing rapidly.
Choosing the right candidate talent assessment tool is important. Here are some of the must-have features of pre-employment assessment tools:
- Should make the recruitment process easy and more productive. The tests must help companies to focus on candidates with the required skills and temperaments.
- The candidate assessment tools must help recruiters obtain accurate and evidence-based information about the candidates. Apart from assessing the technical skills of candidates, the tests must provide an overview of the candidate’s personality.
- Predictive talent assessment tests eliminate candidate bias that may happen in traditional recruitment processes.
- Online talent assessment tests help smaller organizations with a vast scope of work. Assessments can be conducted in an easy, quick, and organized manner.
- Narrowing down on candidates whose values and objectives are aligned with the company’s vision and mission is effective through talent assessment tests.
- Pre-employment tests comprise the right combination of technical and aptitude tests that give a complete picture of the candidate’s profile.
The pre-employment skills assessment tools must be chosen in close alignment with business requirements and hiring strategy. SkillRobo is an online pre-employment candidate talent assessment tool that improves the outcomes of the hiring process. The test covers a wide range of technical skills and also evaluates the cognitive ability and personality traits of candidates. You can create customized tests and get instant reports on candidate’s performance using this tool. Recruiters can send the test through email, and candidates can easily take it up from anywhere.
Conclusion
The workforce of an organization is its competitive advantage. A team of skilled and competent employees can deliver exponential value to the organization. At the same time, a wrong hiring decision can be detrimental to the company’s success. Candidate talent assessment tools like SkillRobo empower the recruitment team to make informed hiring decisions.
Filtering from a large pool of candidates, creating customized tests, and analyzing candidate’s capabilities accurately – all this and much more with our online candidate talent assessment tool. Streamlining and optimizing the recruitment process has never been this easy.
Sign up for the free trial of SkillRobo to screen easily and effectively.