Using Talent Assessments to Hire the Cream of the Crop

We live in a data-driven time. Personally, we love data. It’s reliable. It’s objective. It’s accurate.

Data analytics can improve the effectiveness of practically any division of any company, and talent acquisition is no exception.

In a perfect world, a professional in a recruiting function would know job competencies and potential for performance prior to offering a job every single time. Making a poor hiring decision can damage an organization in several ways:

• Expensive training and re-training
• Ineffective results from the employee
• Higher potential for turnover
• Potential reputation damage to the company

The good news is, with talent assessments the perfect world is becoming a reality! Not only does talent data create a first-level sifting of best fit candidates, but using algorithms to match competencies to positions actually can increase the accuracy of finding your best employees by over 50%!

So what is the right assessment type for your organization? We recommend having positions benchmarked and then gauging assessment answers against the following areas relative to the position:

• Ability to perform the task or skill. Bear in mind that this excludes physical tests, but matching general personality traits to the position in question is a great place to start. (i.e. outgoing and persuasive for sales, analytical and focused for accounting, etc…)
• Likelihood to engage in different kinds of behaviors. Scoring algorithms are incredibly effective in this realm, as it becomes more difficult to “fake” it with each question. You want someone who actually is who they say they are, and who will be steady in their role.
• How they fit with company culture. The advantage of having positions and organizations benchmarked prior to employing assessments is that it’s very effective way to make sure everyone is focused in the same direction, as well as finding new talent who mesh with that direction.
• Finding leadership potential. In addition to just being a personality test, more sophisticated assessments can also gauge emotional intelligence and ask situational questions. Employees who have growth potential tend to be stronger assets, so why wait until they’ve done the job for X amount of time to this quality in them? Talent assessments find it before the point of hire, so you know exactly who to nurture as future leadership!

Has your organization explored the potential for talent assessments?