The goal of recruitment is to find the best fit for an open position. Finding the right candidate for the role depends on the level of effort recruitment is willing to make in their search.
Comparing one candidate’s resume to another won’t give you the high-resolution perspective you need to make your choice. Leveraging rigorous talent assessment methods provides human resources professionals with the insights they need to find the perfect new hire.
Learn more about talent assessments. what they are, and how to implement them in your organization below.
The importance of talent assessments in the hiring process
Every new hire is a long-term investment. The goal of recruitment is to find candidates to stay with the organization over an extended period and excel in their roles.
Recruitment has the potential to fail these objectives in two ways:
- The candidate quits or is fired a short time after they are hired
- The candidate is not the ideal fit for the role
In either case, the consequences of poor recruitment choices are costly in time and resources.
Recruitment is a draining endeavor; the longer a position sits vacant, the longer the organization operates below peak performance. However, hiring the wrong person only exacerbates this costly process. The organization is worse off because they’ve wasted their time and resources just to end up back at square one.
Talent assessment methods are proactive, data-driven measures that prevent these recruitment pitfalls. By applying qualifying metrics to evaluate candidate fitness, recruiters reduce the likelihood of bringing on the wrong person.
Talent assessment benefits
Talent assessment methods are added measures to the recruitment process. Hiring managers often fill a position without them. However, the quality of hire will be severely diminished in their absence.
To understand why talent assessment methods are so essential, it is important to be familiar with their benefits. Let’s examine some of the strongest benefits recruiters gain when they leverage talent assessments in their hiring process.
Have the best possible highly skilled team
By going the extra mile to find the ideal fit for the role, recruiters provide the organization with a new hire that is far more likely to excel. Proactive assessments in recruitment are the building blocks to the best possible team—they find you top talent in the candidate pool.
Remove biases you may encounter during the hiring process
The unfortunate reality is that biases affect the quality of our decisions. Despite our best efforts to be compliant with EEO standards, unconscious bias sometimes prevents the best fit for the role from getting the position.
Talent assessment methods don’t just reveal the best candidate; they reveal the potential biases that hinder our decision-making ability. Employing better talent assessments reveals more about the best candidate and reduces the effects of unconscious bias in your hiring team.
Reduce hiring costs due to employee match
Hiring is a costly endeavor. The more opportunities recruitment has to streamline the hiring process, the more effective their usage of time and resources. Talent assessments provide high-quality insights that promote improved decision-making and thereby facilitate a more effective and cost-efficient recruitment program.
Improve employee experience
Recruitment is the first stage of the employee experience. The quality of the recruitment process is a strong indication of how new employees often expect to be treated if they are brought on board. Recruitment showcases the strength of the organization’s values.
Strong talent assessments reflect the organization’s care, consideration, and dedication to high quality—therefore, a high-quality recruitment process speaks volumes.
Reduce employee turnover
Employee turnover will hinder an organization’s peak productivity and its budget. Between filling the new position and the investments made into the employee walking out the door, turnover is a severe loss for the organization. Talent assessments shore up turnover by finding stronger hires before they are onboarded. By finding the best fit at the beginning, organizations improve retention.
Types of talent assessment methods
Talent assessments refer to a wide number of tests. The methods your organization use depend on the kind of insights your recruiting team members want to gather. Familiarizing yourself with a diverse selection of talent assessment methods equips you with the know-how to tailor your recruitment process for the best results. Here are a few types of talent assessment tools to consider.
Work samples
Work samples determine a candidate’s talent by showcasing the quality of their past work. With a work sample, recruiters get a comprehensive indication of a candidate’s experience and capability in previous roles. They provide a fast and effective way to assess a candidate’s suitability for a specific role.
Psychometric test
Psychometric tests refer to assessments that measure several valuable attributes. Founded on scientifically sound theories, these tests can reveal information ranging from personality traits, critical thinking abilities, and general skill sets to intangibles like personal motivations, ambitions, or interests.
The information psychometric tests gather provides a high-resolution view of the candidates as workers and as people. These tests determine a candidate’s fitness for the role and whether they are a good cultural fit with the organization.
Behavioral assessment
Behavioral assessments reveal crucial, personalized information on the job candidate. While other methods might focus on the candidate’s abilities based on the specifics of the role, personality assessments like these give insight into how they get things done as an individual.
Everyone has different learning styles or emotional intelligence levels. While behavioral attributes might be specifically related to the role, personality tests present highly useful context about the kind of person the candidate is.
Job simulation
Job simulators are mock run-throughs of the role wherein the candidate’s fitness will be tested in real time. Job simulations provide a controlled environment where candidates showcase their capabilities. While they are highly specific to the role, job simulations will make clear whether a candidate is able to do the job or not.
Video interviews
There are some things you can’t learn without sitting down to talk with a person. Recruiters employ video interviews to conduct personalized assessments of the candidate’s abilities and character.
Video interviews might be based on several goals, from in-depth questions about the candidate’s work experience to friendly exchanges that reveal their personality in action. A video interview reveals a great deal about the candidate, which helps recruiters make better decisions.
Communication skills assessment
Communication skills are central to being part of a team, and sometimes, interview questions aren’t enough to gauge whether a candidate has the hard or soft skills necessary for the specific job at hand. That’s where skills tests come in.
Recruiters leverage aptitude tests to determine how well candidates express themselves in several areas. These talent assessment tests might test the candidate’s skills in grammar, language fluency, vocabulary, listening skills, or tone. Finding capable communicators is always a plus for the organization; communication skills assessments help find them.
Cognitive abilities
A candidate’s cognitive abilities are a reliable metric for later job performance. Cognitive ability tests are general assessments that measure the candidate’s competencies in critical thinking, problem-solving, numerical skills, verbal reasoning, and logic or determine their IQ. Cognitive assessments provide a massive leg up when making final hiring decisions on the most qualified candidate for the role.
Types of offline talent assessment methods
Talent assessments are conducted in both online and offline settings. Typically, online methods do not require additional participation beyond the candidate. For that reason, online methods are better leveraged earlier in the recruitment process because they are easier to conduct.
However, as candidates progress through the hiring process, they will likely meet with HR representatives in a more intimate, in-person setting. An offline talent assessment process presents a great opportunity to get a high-resolution perspective on the candidate.
Here are a few types of offline talent assessment methods to consider including in later phases of the hiring process.
Discussion groups
Discussion groups present a unique opportunity that helps recruiters assess the candidate’s ability to interact in a team setting.
Conducting group discussions with the candidate invites other stakeholders in the hiring process to participate. Recruiters determine the fitness of the candidates’ communication skills in real-time, and they leverage multiple perspectives of the candidate’s capability for a more comprehensive assessment.
In-person behavioral assessments
In-person behavioral assessments provide a richer insight into the candidate’s character. Nuances in a candidate’s personality are hard to detect outside of an in-person format. By sitting down with a candidate and getting to know them better, recruiters get an intimate, informative perspective.
Case presentations
Case presentations are an opportunity to see the candidate’s ability to convey role-specific information to a group of peers and their depth of knowledge on a given subject. Confidently and successfully presenting to a room full of people is an effective assessment of a candidate’s ability.
Role-plays
Role plays allow recruiters to see how a candidate might handle specific details of the role through in-person engagement. During a role-play, the candidate will be required to go through a mock scenario they might experience in their future role. Their performance in role-play is often an effective predictor of their fitness.
How talent assessments are implemented in an organization
With so many talent assessment methods to choose from, it is often difficult to determine which an organization ought to implement and how. Every organization is different; that’s why the first step to implementing talent assessment methods is to:
- Evaluate the specific needs of your organization: In doing so, you’ll know which objectives to choose going forward.
- Set clear goals for your recruitment: Your methods serve clear goals: minimizing turnover, producing stronger talent, reducing hiring costs, etc. By determining recruitment objectives, managers are more selective with the methods that best suit their mission.
- Select assessments and monitor results: When you’ve selected a suite of talent assessment methods to start with, monitor their results as the recruitment process develops. As things change, make adjustments when necessary.
- Review your assessments: After a long enough period, your recruiters will be able to see the long-term effects of your talent assessment methods. With a full view of their outcome, you make more informed decisions to make your recruitment efforts stronger than ever.
Talent assessments: Pivotal tools to find the right talent
Talent acquisition is a core pillar of an organization’s capability. Your people are what keep your organization functioning; your workforce is the driving force behind virtually every part of the organization. Leveraging the insights of talent assessments helps you build a stronger organization.
