A common misconception I come across about incorporating testing into the recruitment process is that it represents additional workload for the hiring manager’s already busy schedule.
The truth is that while it may take additional time initially to get everything set up, in the long run, it saves you a whole lot of time that can be spent on more important tasks, such as focusing on shortlisted applicants and managing your staff.
In this article, I will discuss ways in which applicant testing actually makes your life easier, while making the recruitment process more accurate and objective.
Let’s start with job advertisements. The majority you come across on Seek will have an overview of the company, a generic list of tasks/responsibilities, a bad joke, and a point of contact to apply. Writing a broad or generic advertisement may attract a large number of job applicants, but it doesn’t necessarily attract quality. Would you rather be sifting through 200 applications of average candidates or 50 applications of high-quality candidates?
Incorporating Psychometric testing into the recruitment process can assist you to write more engaging and targeted job advertisements. You can identify the core behaviours and cognitive abilities required for the role, and based on this, generate a job advertisement that appeals to jobseekers with these traits. This will make it more likely your ideal candidates will apply and deter less suitable applicants.
The next step is to sift through the applicants and identify who you want to move to the shortlist stage. However, before you spend a whole day reviewing 50 or more resumes, have you considered making life easier for yourself and implementing skills testing?
Skills testing identifies applicants who have the basic skills and knowledge required to do the job. It is an efficient, cost-effective way of separating those who can from those who can’t, and it is the applicants who invest the time to complete the test rather than yourself. The ability to customise each test according to role requirements means it is directly relevant to each open job role. Features such as MSOffice simulations and video tests enhance the candidate experience.
By implementing targeted job advertisements and skills testing, you have already reduced your applicant pool from potentially hundreds (with many being unsuitable for the position) to a much more manageable number of qualified applicants. You can now invest your time reading over the remaining resumes and draw up a shortlist of candidates for initial interviews.
You can now look to implement further testing to boost the accuracy and ease of your recruitment process. I rarely come across a hiring manager who has a clear standout candidate after the initial interview phase. Many in this situation will go with who they get along with the most, assuming they will ‘fit in’ with the company culture. This method is inherently biased and will not necessarily result in selecting the highest performing applicant.
Implementing psychometric testing at your shortlist stage will accurately and reliably identify the applicant who would be the best fit for the role and therefore, the top performer. It will highlight their respective strengths and areas of concern. It will also save you time by generating behavioural based interview questions, to provide structure and boost the validity of your interview process. Once you decide on who to hire, you can then generate management reports to streamline the onboarding process at no additional cost.
The overall result of implementing skills and Psychometric testing into your recruitment process is the removal of large amounts of unnecessary work, and more free time to focus on interviewing and onboarding new candidates. It also ensures you end up with a better performing team.
You can even go one step further and implement psychometric testing at the screening stage of recruitment using our JobFit unlimited package. By testing all job applicants at the screening stage, you can generate a candidate comparison report which orders all job applicants in order of their role fit within 5 minutes. The only step from there is to select the top three, conduct structured interviews, and identify the best applicant. This is incredibly helpful for removing conscious and unconscious bias, promoting a more diverse and higher-performing workplace.
If you would like to spend less time reading resumes and dealing with applicants that aren’t suitable for the position and ensure you consistently place top-performing, high-quality applicants, please contact Michael at Michael@peoplogica.com
Written by Michael Mancinone
