12 Things to Look For When Choosing Your Hiring Assessment.

Only the Best Hiring Assessments Ensure Excellent Job Fit

Let’s face it — we are all comfortable using assessments to try to improve our hiring decision making. Good hiring practice, including assessments, are now considered an essential foundation for organisational success.  We accept that high quality assessments used at the point of hire will have a great impact on performance, productivity and retention. Building a solid workforce, hire by hire, saves money and allows a culture to be built around performance. We accept that the costs involved in poor hires warrant the use of technology to ensure that we only bring on board those people who will complement our organisation and be able to perform well in the job.  As a hiring manager you may be planning to evaluate an assessment tool.  But where do you start? In this article we look at 12 key features that can guide your evaluation.

Check the Facts, Listen to the Data, not the Sales Pitch!

You want to know:

• Is this an integrated applicant tracking system?
• What evidence is there for the claimed accuracy and results of the system under consideration?
• Is it easy for the applicant to use the system?
• Is it easy for our hiring staff to manage the applicants?
• Can we tailor the system to add our exact job requirements?
• Is it accurate in selecting the best candidates for the job?
• What is the cost of the system and the reports?

Keys to Choosing an Assessment

We have put together 12 Evaluation Keys to help you as you consider Hiring Assessment and Applicant Tracking Systems. Please note that this is an abbreviated version of a report that is available for download (see the end of this article for details.)

1. The Ability to Create a Profile of Your Ideal Employee from the Job Requirements and Organisational Values

The best assessments will allow the employing company to create a “formula” for their ideal employee based on the requirements of the job, the organisational expectations, and the behavioural traits required of a person filling the position. The best assessment systems will also provide researched and proven Job Type Templates as a basis for your own formula. It should be easy to adjust these to meet  your requirements.

Let’s call this formula a Job Success Formula.

2. The Ability to Create a Complete Picture of the Ideal Employee by Considering Both Suitability and Eligibility

It is not enough to consider the eligibility of a candidate. Eligibility is important, of course – the skills, qualifications and experience of the applicant. However you also need to know whether the applicant will fit into the organisation:

• Will they be able to work with their manager?
• Will they have the personal traits required by the job?
• Will they fit the culture of the organisation?
• What motivates them?
• What are their expectations of their employer?

This is the suitability of the applicant.

3. The Representation of Job Fit as an Integrated Metric

The best assessments will assess both eligibility and suitability, integrating them into one score that represents the Job Fit of the applicant. This one score must be an accurate representation of Job Fit, allowing the hiring department to rank applicants and easily identify the top 3 or 4 applicants. The Job Fit Metric will streamline applicant screening – the higher the score, the more suited the applicant is to the job and the more likely it is that they will perform well.

4. The Ability to Tweak the Emphasis on Suitability and Eligibility

The best assessments will also recognise that some jobs will prioritise eligibility and some will prioritise suitability. For example, if you are hiring computer programmers you might require a stronger emphasis on eligibility, whereas when you hire customer service staff you will usually require a stronger emphasis on suitability. Therefore the way in which both of the scores are integrated into the Job Fit Metric should be tailorable, depending on the job and the emphasis of the hiring company.

5. The Provision of Interview Assistance

The best assessments will give you material to ease the burden of interviewing. These should include interview support, assessment reports and more.

6. The Ability to Add Additional Elements into the Job Fit Score

The best assessments will also allow you to integrate other scores into the Job Fit Metric. The most common is an Interview Score based on their answers to the interview questions. Other options include the score for a language or skill based test, and the results of subject based qualifications.

7. The Applicant Spends no More than 30 Minutes on the Assessment

Remember the day-long assessment activities of psychological testing centres? It is no longer necessary to spend that time or incur that expense. The best assessments can be done online, in a quiet setting at home or at work, and completed within 30 minutes.

8. The Ability to Upload Resumes and Covering Letters

As well as completing the assessment questions, the best assessments will allow applicants to upload additional material including CVs/Resumes and Covering Letters to personalise the application.

9. The Ability to Determine Whether An Applicant Tried to Fool The System

The best assessments will be able to tell whether an applicant tried to manipulate the assessment answers, or took the assessment without due care.

10. Tracking Applicants Should be Dead Easy

You need never leave the system to interact with an applicant. The best assessment systems recognise that  you need to notify applicants of their status, indicate short-listed applicants, ask for additional information when necessary and schedule interviews easily.

11. The Provision of Support for the Manager of the New Hire

Now that you have made your choice, you want to bring the person on-board as quickly and easily as possible. The best assessment systems will provide the manager with information on

• How to manage the new hire
• How to develop and retain them
• The motivations and expectations of the new hire
• Indications of what might lower job satisfaction for the new hire
• Areas where coaching would benefit the new hire.

This information will guide the on-boarding process for each person, and the development of their career and training plans.

12. The System Should be Inexpensive

We know that budgets are tight and an inexpensive system is much more attractive than more expensive systems. The good news is that there are assessment based hiring systems that meet your requirements. The best assessment systems will not have annual licence requirements or high activation costs. They will also have the flexibility in the way that you can run the system.

The Assessment Based Hiring System that We Use

It is important to us to support our clients in their recruitment exercises. Hiring Right First Time saves costs and brings long-term benefits to an organisation. We have been using the Harrison Assessments Talent Solutions system for over a decade because it meets all of these requirements. We love the system so much we became an Authorised Expert Level Solution Provider and Distributor some 10 years ago. It meets all of the evaluation criteria, and continues to impress us with its accuracy, efficiency and the results that it delivers.

Additional Benefits of Harrison Assessments

Harrison Assessments provides functionality that not only addresses recruitment and selection, but also:

• Development of Staff and Teams
• Career Planning – Managed and/or Self-directed
• Talent Readiness and Succession Planning
• Engagement and Retention Analysis for Individuals
• Engagement and Retention Analysis for Teams/Organisations
• Leadership Profiles
• EQ Profiles

Choose the system type that you prefer – in-house or bureau service, simplified or fully functional systems – there is a type to suit every business, consultant, coach and recruiter.

To find out more about using Harrison Assessments to find the right people for your business contact us here.

Our articles are copyright Indra Process and Performance Consulting.

Detailed article Available for Download

An expanded version of this Guide to Choosing an Assessment-Based Hiring System is available for download in report form. By downloading you will automatically receive periodic updates when new resources are published. Of course you can unsubscribe at any time. But I hope that you will see the value in staying