Hiring skilled, well-qualified individuals who are motivated to work hard on a daily basis is understandably a top goal. Your employees influence everything from your company's reputation and customer satisfaction to productivity, profitability and more. You simply cannot afford to hire the wrong individuals to join your team. However, many business owners struggle to attain
1. Screen Candidates Efficiently
When you initially post a job opening, you may receive dozens or even hundreds of resumes for a position. Your primary goal initially is to screen each resume to find the most well-qualified applicants. As part of a pre-employment assessment, the resumes may quickly be reviewed to determine how relevant the applicant’s qualifications are to the job description. Screening may continue as each applicant completes a series of pre-employment assessment tests.
2. Learn About Your Employees Before the Interview
Before you schedule interviews with individual applicants and take the time to meet with each person who you are thinking about hiring, you may conduct an impromptu phone interview or complete a job fit assessment on each person. This can provide you with an opportunity to determine their professionalism, their ability to respond to high-pressure situations and their ability to think on their feet. At this time, you can determine if you want to pursue the remainder of the pre-employment assessment process with each applicant.
3. Test for Skills
There are various pre-employment assessment tests that can be completed based on your needs and preferences. For example, the ideal candidate for a specific position may be detail-oriented or have great customer service skills. Any applicant may add these skills to his or her resume, but this does not necessarily mean that an applicant possesses those skills. Pre-assessment skills tests may be used to measure these and other skills that are relevant to the position, such as leadership skills, management skills and more.
4. Review Personality Traits
Rather than relying solely on live interviews to gauge personality types, consider using a pre-assessment skills test to accurately determine a person’s personality. Through this type of test, you may determine how well each applicant responds to stress, deals with new situations, remains optimistic in the face of adversity and more. You understandably want to hire individuals that have specific personality traits to join your team and that will be true assets to your organization, and this type of pre-employment assessment test provides you with firm facts to base your hiring decision on.
5. Test for Aptitude
An aptitude test essentially determines an applicant’s overall intelligence level. This goes beyond their knowledge in the position that they are applying for. It may include problem-solving abilities, the ability to quickly and easily learn new things and more. There are things that may be difficult to gauge in an interview or by reading a resume, but they are essential if you want to make a thoughtful, informed hiring decision.
A live interview or a series of interviews are also essential steps in the hiring process. When you conduct a phone interview and ask applicants to take a serious a pre-employment assessment tests as part of the hiring process, you may be able to learn much more about applicants than you otherwise would be able to. These tests take a considerable amount of guesswork out of the hiring process and provides you with firm, accurate information to base your hiring decision on.
Latest posts by Chris Crawford (see all)
- 5 Ways to Hire Better Employees - November 13, 2018
