Beat The Gut Feel In Hiring Superstars!

On-boarding and training a new employee requires considerable thought and deliberation for it to be done right. Assessments are a boon and can be used to simplify the process of hiring the right candidate. Every organization needs to define and articulate its culture in terms of its values, vision, mission, goals, and practices. All these have to be through proper assessment of its employees as it governs the functioning of an organization.

Companies nowadays are flipping their hiring model as opposed to the past where companies used to hire employees, train them using the company's resources and then deploy them. This takes about 8-10 months and the cost borne by the company is quite high. Since the recruitment models are shifting, the assessments are changing too. Without the burden of training employees, companies will now look at using tested and proven assessments to fulfill their hiring needs.

A study by MeritTrac and SHRM revealed that around 30% of companies hire people based on their gut feel and do not use scientific methods to validate the data assessment used. The biggest problem facing the adoption of assessment tools is cost consideration and the inability to justify ROI. Most firms feel that talent assessment tools do not offer any impact on the type of recruits. 

There are various assessment tools available in the market that can help an organization recruit the right candidate for their workforce and improve their productivity, while on the one hand, this reduces the efforts of the talent acquisition team of scrutinizing each individual applicant till they find the appropriate one, on the other hand, these assessment tools ensure the sustainability and productivity of an individual that can be fruitful in the long run. 

The most popular assessment tools are: 

Customized tests

To optimize costs, HR departments are being asked to hire a specific job/assignment as and when required. This demands agile recruitment processes, creative sourcing models and tailored assessments delivered innovatively.  Most companies use an all-encompassing test to check for fitment. What companies should do is customize tests for each and every position as per the job description. Certain job roles do not require highly-customized tests, but there are jobs that require specific skill sets and to assess the same, highly-specialized tests should be used to be able to judge the outcome without any discrepancy. 

Psychometric Tests- Beat the gut feeling and Bias in hiring

Many companies disregard the importance of psychometric tests and overlook its role. However, psychometric tests can help solve a lot of problems if used correctly. They help assess the psyche of an individual along many parameters such as their ability to meet deadlines, their attitude under pressure etc. It also helps beat the gut feeling and bias in hiring. The benefit of using psychometric tests is that the outcome gathered provides an accurate summary of a potential employee’s skills and abilities. The format and scientific outset of this test also strengthens the results from being ‘faked’. 

Social media, simulations and Artificial intelligence

The role of social media in the hiring process has been discussed for a long time. For starters, the availability of prospective employees on different platforms, their level of engagement and the possibility to identify, attract and engage existing and potential employees cannot be debated. This has made social media a definite sourcing channel for a large number of organizations. All of us leave our daily footprint on these channels and the amount of data available about individual candidates cannot be imagined. There are a large number of experiments that are happening on how Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tools can identify patterns and make inferences about one’s abilities, interest levels and fitment potential of the candidates. The study with SHRM also revealed that about 80% of organizations have adopted or is looking to adopt social media profiling tools and online simulations in the near future. 

Validation of Tests

While a variety of tests can be conducted to assess a candidate, these tests must be validated scientifically for them to have any worth. 75% of organizations track and evaluate the impact of assessment tools used in the business, of which only 45% validate this impact through the use of data. About 55% of the organizations do not objectively measure the impact of the assessment tools on business and out of this 25% do not measure the impact at all. These are alarming figures which could influence the possibility of measuring the impact and returns of use of assessments. If validated properly, the worth of assessments can be determined and it would be easier for companies to assess the ROI based on how the quality of hires improves.

For a better hiring model, it is beneficial if a company goes through a proper assessment series keeping the latest technological benefits in mind. The more rigorous the assessment process, the more beneficial it is for the firm. It ensures that a firm gets candidates who are not only the best fit for the organization, but are also very good at their job even as they enjoy their job.

Test for the best and keep winning!

Rohit Goswami

Guest Author Rohit is a brand and communications graduate from MICA, Ahmedabad. He is a sports enthusiast and a passionate foodie. He is passionate about product development and mapping consumer journeys. He comes with over 10 years of experience across sectors like media and entertainment, banking and e learning.