How Different Types of Hiring Assessments Can Improve Your Talent Management
HR leaders are tasked with finding candidates who not only fit a job description but are also a match for the hard and soft skills needed, the personality traits to thrive, and the ability to succeed. How can you determine all of this information through resumes and brief interviews?
You don’t have to — this is where hiring assessment tests come in. They can help you fully assess candidates quickly and accurately so your talent management process is faster and more effective. And that accuracy is sorely needed, as a stunning 30% of new hires leave their jobs within 90 days. Here’s what you need to know about different kinds of hiring assessments and the recruiting metrics they can help you improve.
Different Types of Hiring Assessment Tests
1. Aptitude Testing
Aptitude test can help you determine what a candidate’s natural abilities and skills are so you can assess if they’re suited for your open role. They’re especially effective for measuring cognitive capabilities that are relevant to the job, and they’re structured so they provide objective results.
2. Skills Assessment Testing
Skills assessment tests measure — of course — the skills a candidate possesses. These tests can help you measure if a candidate has hard skills like knowledge of a certain software or writing ability. A good skills assessment test will also let you measure a candidate’s soft skills, like problem-solving, communication, and creative thinking.
3. Personality Assessments
Personality tests including Myers-Briggs and the DISC model help assess whether a candidate will fit in with your company culture and your team. There are some roles where having a certain type of personality is important to the candidate’s success, like a customer service or sales role, and these assessments can help you form a clearer picture of their suitability.
When To Use Each Kind of Hiring Assessment Test
Knowing exactly when to use skills assessment tests in the hiring process is critical to getting the results you want. Test applicants too early, and you’ll miss out on great candidates. Test them too late, and your recruiting team will have to deal with too many candidates who aren’t a good match which slows down your process.
While there’s no one perfect formula for when to use assessment tests, there are some guidelines. It’s helpful to conduct skills assessments at the beginning of the process so you can immediately narrow your pool of applicants to people who can actually do the job.
Then you may want to conduct aptitude testing and/or personality testing after an initial phone screen. You can take the assessment results plus your interview feedback and use it to make a well-informed hiring decision.
Metrics To Measure Success
1. Retention
If your new hire retention rate goes up after using hiring assessment tests, it shows your testing is helping you hire candidates who are very well-suited for the role, both in skills and in personality.
2. Hiring Time
Hiring time should also ideally decrease with a solid assessment plan in place, because you’ll be able to identify great candidates faster. If your hiring time stays the same or even increases, that indicates your assessments are taking too much time or aren’t measuring what you need to make decisions.
3. Costs
With decreased hiring time should come decreased costs. However, when you begin an assessment program there will initially be a higher cost as you create and implement your tests, or onboard a platform that allows you to run sophisticated assessment tests.
4. Candidate Quality
Candidate quality should absolutely increase with the use of assessment testing — if it doesn’t, something has gone awry and you should take a hard look at how you’re testing candidates. Perhaps you’re testing for the wrong skills or abilities, or at the wrong stage in the process, or need to use a different testing platform.
5. Skill Gaps
Assessment testing should help you close skills gaps in your organization by identifying candidates with those needed skills and prioritizing them in the hiring process. Of course, you need to identify those gaps before you can begin a strategic hiring drive to fill them.
6. DE&I
Your assessment testing should improve, not hurt, your efforts to create a more diverse and inclusive organization. That’s why choosing a platform with certified bias-free testing, like Cangrade, is essential — because otherwise, you may be introducing even more bias into your hiring process without meaning to.
See how Cangrade can help you hire the right people for the right jobs with our 14-minute Pre-Hire Assessments.