Creating a strategy and putting a process in place for your recruitment will help prioritize candidates, get the most qualified through the recruiting funnel, eliminate the ones that aren’t and fill positions faster. The most successful businesses today use assessments to make recruiting easy, effortless and efficient.
The most efficient way to do this is through pre-screening. Pre-screening is a process of using tools or resources to filter out candidates that are not a right fit for a position. According to (Society of Human Resources Management) SHRM, 82 percent of companies use some form of pre-screening in their recruiting process. This helps to prevent wasting time going through the interview process only to later determine that they’re not a right match for the position or the company. You’ll get a better understanding of their career goals, expectations, job preferences and more.
Some things that pre-screening helps to address are
- Salary expectations
- Personality traits
- Confirmation of skills
- Knowledge of tools
It’s not surprising to know most people exaggerate on their resumes just to get their foot in the door. It’s frustrating, but common and we’ve all embellished our resume or cover letter at least once. I’d be lying if I said I haven’t hired someone who lacked the skills but made up for it in their character, but that’s a topic for another day.
Here are 4 ways assessments to filter out candidates that aren’t a right fit and narrow down the pool of those who are:
SKILL BASED ASSESSMENTS
These measure the level of a specific skill. If the position you’re hiring for is heavy in excel, you would most likely use this assessment to gauge their proficiency.
Marriott, the international hotel chain, uses a job qualification test to assess the skills specific to the position the application is applying to. Some of the tests you can expect to see are accounting, Microsoft office, verbal reasoning, and situational judgment just to name a few before leading into the personality test.
PERSONALITY ASSESSMENTS
If your position is less independent and more team and people focused you would want an assessment that determines whether or not their personality is good fit for your culture. You can determine how they work on teams and with others as well as what their behavior style is.
Here are the most popular personality assessments:
- Myers-Briggs Type Indicator
- Gallup Strengthsfinder
- The Caliper Profile
- Sixteen Personalities Questionnaire
CUSTOMIZED ASSESSMENTS
Super niche positions can be a bit more difficult to test for because you need to measure a few different areas and skills that are unique to your business. Supermarket chains have become well known for creating customized assessments to quickly filter out mass applicants and only receive applications that meet their criteria.
Aldi requires applicants to complete their customized test before their application is submitted to the hiring managers. According to GraduatesFirst, a job assessment experts website, 60 percent of applicants get rejected from the 5 part test.
PHONE ASSESSMENTS
Sometimes you want to get a feel for their skills, expectations and character with just a few simple questions. Phone assessments are a quick and easy way to do just this.
The key with these assessments is setting a time limit to keep it brief since this is just meant to filter out those who will be invited for an interview.
Via of the Lehigh Valley conducts a 10-15 minute phone screening that helps weed out applicants that don’t meet salary requirements as well as get a better idea of their background from their resume.
Pre-screening is meant to save you time so you don’t spend hours doing in-depth interviews to only realize 27 people in that nobody is a fit. Pick the best type of assessment that works best for your business and position and tweak as needed.
Not having a strategy for your recruiting process will end up costing you more time and money in the end. That’s why it’s essential to have someone who can easily and effortlessly create a strategy so you can find the best employee as quickly as possible without the added the stress and frustration.
Originally published at www.heidilynneco.com