Assessment Tools: The Competitive Advantage You Need in 2020

Prehire assessments give hiring teams a better idea of a candidate’s skills and traits.

It would be nice to have a crystal ball that could tell you which candidate will be the best fit for a given job before you hire. Instead of trying desperately to read between the lines and see past all the attempts to impress the hiring team, you could just look into the crystal ball and see how a candidate will perform six months, a year, or even five years into the future.

While nobody can see the future before it happens, there is a way to predict a candidate’s success in a given position more accurately. Using behavioral and cognitive assessment tools gives hiring staff a look into the mind of candidates and shows them which candidates are most likely to succeed.

Using Assessments in Hiring

Cognitive assessments measure the speed at which candidates can learn new tasks and information. Companies can then match the candidates’ level of knowledge acquisition with the level needed for the job they are trying to fill. While prehire assessments are most commonly used, these tools can also be used to evaluate existing employees when advancement is a possibility.

Behavioral assessments measure traits that are often considered soft skills, like patience, people skills, and leadership ability. These traits are then matched with the traits needed for the job under consideration.

Using both types of assessments together will yield the best results in predicting the best possible job performance. Getting the most information possible gives the most accurate information and a complete picture of a given candidate.

Hiring teams will have an easier job with prehire assessments.

Competitiveness with Assessments

It has become much more challenging to find highly qualified candidates since unemployment rates have plummeted. Any competitive advantage a company can get could be the difference between securing the right talent and having to settle for a mediocre candidate after other companies have taken the best for themselves.

The quality of a company’s talent has a direct impact on its bottom line, with better employees being more productive and bringing in more business. The impact of higher quality talent also ripples outward and multiplies over time so that the business can be more successful.

Finding a better match between candidates and jobs can also have positive effects on employee retention. The costs of replacing good employees can be steep, so the longer you can hold on to valuable employees, the better off your company will be. In addition, you will avoid the problem of growing talent shortages that are causing significant problems for companies who do need to hire or replace employees.

Better hiring practices also earn dividends in a company’s reputation as the candidates that were hired share their higher than average job satisfaction with others outside the company. Everyone wants to work for a company that makes work enjoyable, and behavioral and cognitive assessments can help put that goal within your grasp.

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