Campus recruitment is an important part of the recruitment process. Hiring from campus lends organizations access to a diverse talent pool with varied interests and expertise. Recruiting fresh graduates is guided by a long-term vision of the company and pays rich dividends for the effort invested. Campus recruitment assesses the cognitive abilities, communication skills, and personality traits of freshers.

Aptitude and communication skills play an important role in the screening stage of shortlisting fresh talent. Pre-employment assessment tools help evaluate communication skills effectively. Recruiters can evaluate the language proficiencies, behavioral traits, and aptitude of freshers by combining technology and pre-employment assessment tools.

Campus Hiring Best Practices

The important steps in the campus hiring process are:

• Building campus intelligence to shortlist campuses for visiting
• Building brand visibility via pre-placement engagement
• Using pre-employment talent assessment tools to shortlist students for interviews
• Conducting interviews for shortlisted candidates and rolling out offers
• Engaging students after rolling out offers

A recent study by Mercer-Mettl on standard practices, trends, and challenges in campus recruitment on a group of 400+ industry leaders, revealed that more than 60% of organizations found it difficult to choose the right level of screening tests for freshers. 44% of the organizations reported that grading the assessments was a major challenge in terms of time and resource requirements.

Let us look at the best practices in campus hiring

1) Using modern-age talent assessment tools for a higher onboarding rate
Campus hiring aims at accessing and onboarding top-notch candidates at scale with ease through efficient methods. Organizations that employ modern-day tools have seen high onboarding rates when compared to those using archaic methods. Technology tools include interviewing tools, screening tools, student engagement tools, and campus shortlisting intelligence tools.

2) Creating a competency heat map for mapping the campus’s overall student capabilities to competencies prevalent in the industry
The campuses thus identified need to be engaged actively through pre-placement engagement programs like hackathons, ideations, and quizzes

3) Using online screening assessments that are secured with proctoring technologies
The challenge in using screening assessments is two-fold – one is the content of these assessments and the second is the coordination required in their execution. Choosing online talent assessment tools with strong proctoring features helps organizations conduct effective assessments.

4) Using structured interview platforms
Implementing a standardized and structured interview process enables recruiters to allocate ample time for each candidate and find all the relevant information. Successful hiring decisions are made possible when high-end technology is used for conducting structured interviews.

New-age campus recruitment requires a complete revamping of the recruitment strategy that leverages technology and innovation. Emerging technologies like the use of online skill assessment tools help assess the communication, behavioral traits, and aptitude of fresh talent.

Challenges in Assessing Communication Skills

Assessment of communication skills is a primary step to filter suitable candidates from campus recruitment drives. Candidate assessment is usually done based on their work experience/skills, communication, and cognitive abilities. Since fresh graduates cannot be assessed based on their work experience or skills, communication assessment becomes more important.

Impressive and unambiguous communication skills are critical for building a robust workforce that adds great value to the organization. The main aim of online communication skill assessment tools is to identify candidates for job roles that involve direct and indirect communication with clients and customers. Communication tests evaluate the verbal ability, knowledge of the English language, listening skills, and reading skills of the candidate.

Recruiters rely heavily on the results of the communication assessment tests to select the candidates with the right talent for the job. Communication skill assessment tools are scientific evaluations that ensure that the hiring process yields the best available candidates. The communication assessment is based on an automated grading process that provides objective test scores free from human bias and errors.

Challenges in Assessing Communication Skills

When pressed for time to complete campus hiring at scale, recruiters choose to skip or conduct communication tests leniently. The challenges recruiters face in conducting communication assessments are:

1. Assessment through phone calls:

Long-standing communication assessment does not yield the right results. Communication assessment through phone is prone to loopholes and results in biased judgment and human errors. When there is a need to recruit at a large scale, phone-based assessments can be exhausting and costly.

2. Bypassing communication assessment:

Communication skill assessment when done without any shortcuts helps in identifying candidates that are a good fit for the job and organizational culture. Bypassing or shortening the communication assessment results in inefficient candidate screening.

3. Interview-based assessment:

In some campus recruitment drives, communication skills are assessed only during personal interviews. When an initial screening is not done, identifying a good fit can be challenging and also take away time from the interviewer.

Scientifically Backed Communication Assessments

The employees need to bear in mind the organization’s essence while interacting with internal and external stakeholders. Good communication skills are not just about having excellent command over the English language, the ability to listen and respond with clarity and understand written content is a measure of communication skills.

Online communication assessment tools are designed to test several layers of interpersonal communication skills, which include verbal and non-verbal communication, listening, and comprehension ability.

The importance of having an online communication assessment as the first step in campus hiring is reiterated by the following reasons:

• Communication assessments are based on scientific concepts, hence, these tests help identify the most suitable candidate for the job
• Online candidate assessment tests help manage campus recruitment remotely with limited resources and time
• The cost of campus hiring is significantly reduced by conducting online communication assessment tests
• Online assessment tools generate automated reports with complete details on candidate performance based on pre-defined evaluation criteria
• Strengths and weaknesses of candidates can be identified from the test reports, which in turn identify the trainable and non-trainable areas in the job.

Online communication skill assessment tools are designed to test

• Writing skills: Writing skills test the candidate’s grammar, spelling, and punctuation abilities. The candidate is asked to write content using a writing simulator.
• Reading skills: The ability of the candidate to read and understand given content and provide appropriate answers is a test of their reading skills.
• Listening skills: A listening simulator provides the candidate with audio content, which he/she must listen attentively and answer related questions.
• Speaking skills: The candidate’s ability to speak fluently and confidently on any given topic is a test of the speaking skills. This test helps find the critical trainable and non-trainable errors.

Modern Communication Tools and Technologies

Seamless workplace communication is a must for all types of jobs. However, professions like advertising, journalism, human resources management, and BPOs, demand strong verbal and communication skills. A well-structured communication assessment test evaluates all the parameters of verbal and non-verbal communication. Industries and organizations that require top-notch workplace communication can leverage communication assessments that evaluate the proficiency and comfort level of the candidate in a particular language.

Scientific and technological advancements in communication assessment tests have made them more adaptable, scalable, and accurate. The reach and scalability of communication skill tests are considerably increased by combining them with technology. Modern communication tools and technologies provide predictive insights into candidate performance that guide strategic and tactical hiring decisions. Here is what technology can do to the candidate assessment tests:

• Bring in advanced analytics into communication assessments to provide deeper insights into candidate performance
• Make communication assessments more objective, quick, accurate, and scalable
• Create a fool-proof anti-cheating environment for remote communication tests
• Make assessments more immersive by including industry-specific simulations
• Provide timely, interactive, and retrievable feedback for users.

Using smart communication skills assessment tests ensures higher accuracy in evaluations. The test content is scientifically made by experts to help recruiters screen candidates faster and more accurately. Using technology in skill assessment tests helps recruiters screen a large pool of candidates. Online tests can be shared with any number of candidates at the click of a button. Cloud-based mobile-ready assessment tools can be accessed by candidates from anywhere, anytime.

Technologically advanced communication tests are essential for saving time and improving the efficiency of the assessment process.

Conducting Online Communication Assessments Securely

Online pre-employment screening tests are used in the filtering process of a campus hiring process to shortlist candidates for further rounds of interviews. The main challenge in large-scale recruitment drives is to prevent identifying threats and cheating. Such challenges are a threat to the credibility of the tests and result in hiring poor-quality candidates. A study by Mercer-Mettl reveals that 22% of organizations face challenges of rampant identity theft and cheating during screening assessments.

Cheating and fraud prevention can be greatly improved by using technology to provide remote proctoring services. Merging human and AI-based invigilation services enables remote proctoring services that enable recruiters to conduct online pre-employment assessments from anywhere. Conducting online assessments saves the recruitment team resources and time and enables candidates to take the tests from preferred locations. Remote online tests also eliminate the need for large-scale interview venues.

Choosing the Best Communication Assessment Tool

The online pre-employment candidate assessment tools provide a wide variety of tests for specific roles across industries. Recruiters can choose the type of assessment or a combination of tests that is/are best suited for the job. Here are some points to bear in mind while choosing the communication assessment tool:

• Candidate talent assessment tools must be able to analyze the facial expressions and body language of the candidate to gauge their confidence levels
• Communication assessment tools must be able to gauge the candidate’s communication style: aggressive, passive, assertive or
  passive-aggressive
• The tool must be able to effectively evaluate basic verbal communication to ascertain job readiness and trainability
• Detailed assessments of the vocabulary, reasoning, critical thinking, and reading comprehension
• The communication assessment tool must evaluate the comfort, fluency, and command of the language.

The communication tool must be chosen based on the purpose, audience, scalability, and adaptability. Choosing the right pre-employment candidate assessment tool helps businesses conduct effective screening of candidates. SkillRobo is a pre-employment candidate assessment tool that can create customized tests for varied skill sets across industries. It is an effective online assessment tool that is time-saving and easily customizable. The assessment software can screen large applicant pools through custom-made, ready-to-use skill tests to recruit highly skilled employees.

Key takeaways

Modern technology could be the game changer in campus recruitment. Communication skills assessment is a very important part of campus hiring. Automated communication assessment tests are developed by subject matter experts to include all the facets of communication skills. Communication assessment as part of the campus selection process tests candidates for pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and fluency.

A thorough assessment of the communication skills of fresh talent can reduce the time on redundant face-to-face interviews by focusing only on candidates with the right skills. Investing in intuitive online candidate assessment tools like SkillRobo gives your organization and the recruitment team a competitive edge. Hire the best talent in the campus hiring process through effective communication assessment tests with SkillRobo.

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