What to do when a promising candidate fails a pre-hire assessment

Wouldn’t it be great if every candidate that we expect to pass our established hiring hurdles did and went on to be a stellar employee? While ideal, this ideology is a bit far-fetched, and in reality, many times those we expect to cruise through the selection process don’t. We are then left scratching our heads on how our intuition could have been so wrong and potentially having some awkward conversations in the aftermath.

These are not isolated instances – every organisation has experienced them. It’s how you respond to them that matters in the end.

When pre-employment assessments screen out THE candidate

Pre-hire, or pre-employment, behavioural assessment implementations across organisations often go something like this:

Client: “We are raising the bar! We’ve identified what we are looking for in our future employees. Between the application, pre-employment assessments, a structured behavioural interview, and reference-checking tool, we will significantly increase our ability to make the right hire more often. We love the more objective approach. If a candidate scores below X on the assessment or the interview, we will NOT hire them. We’ll never again rely on subjective, unreliable, and inconsistent ways to evaluate candidates!”

Then we get the call…

Client: “Oh no – we have a candidate who… (insert any of these scenarios here: a) looks good on paper, b) worked with so and so before and they swear that they are really good, or c) is the niece of the director of such and such) and they failed the assessment!”

Talogy: “Well, we did a job analysis – the competencies that we’re measuring are critical to success, right? We also did a validation study. We decided that for certain positions, if someone fails the assessment, they won’t move forward because the data shows they don’t meet the minimum requirements and aren’t likely to succeed, right?”

Client: “But the hiring manager (or former coworker or the aunt) isn’t happy!”

Clients sometimes want to give the aforementioned candidate another chance due to the reference or how great they look on paper. This is when it’s particularly important for the client to have a refresher on the ins and outs of using a pre-employment assessment in the hiring process and learn best practices for talent selection to ensure they make the right call.

5 key tips to remember about pre-employment assessments

When it comes to pre-employment assessments, they are a valuable tool but not an end-all solution. The best organisations keep the following things in mind when a promising candidate fails their pre-hire assessment: 

1. It takes a lot to fail the assessment.

The candidate likely scored really low in some crucial attributes that would impact their ability to meet the basic qualifications of the job. For example, a frontline healthcare worker scoring below your pre-determined standards for compassion and patient-focus. Is that someone you would want to risk putting in a role with patient interaction – someone who may not subscribe to the same care standards of the organisation?

2. Although we may have a preconceived notion about a candidate, the candidate still may not be a high performer in this particular job.

Pre-hire assessments measure key behavioural competencies and tendencies that are hard to observe in casual interactions. No source of information is as predictive or well-developed as an objective talent assessment.

3. Basing experience solely on the CV or the opinions of former coworkers is not the best bet.

How often do those candidates turn out to not be what you were looking for? Are you saying you’d let your niece through if she didn’t interview well? It sounds like in the past an informal reference from a former coworker, an outstanding CV, or being someone’s relative trumped the sort of objective data that predicts performance. How likely is that approach to help you build a high-performing culture where the performance bar is being consistently raised, not lowered?

4. Sometimes it is okay to leave a position open.

Recognise that there will be the occasional situation where keeping the position open a bit longer rather than taking a mediocre candidate is a better option.

5. Consistency is key.

From a legal defensibility perspective, there is much benefit to remaining consistent in your hiring practices. Exceptions to objective decision-making processes can lead to flawed hiring processes.

Pre-hiring recommendations and considerations

Pre-employment assessments prove to be useful, but they require an efficient system around them. When designing hiring processes, they should be viewed as pieces within the full story of a candidate. Keep these tips in mind when implementing a pre-hire assessment into your organisation’s hiring process:

1. Use pass/fail methodology only when it makes sense.

When you have a large candidate pool, and you need to narrow your focus on those most likely to succeed, a pass/fail methodology has a lot of utility. Otherwise, think about using the candidate’s pre-employment assessment results as information considered as part of the overall decision-making process (rather than a hard cut).

2. Do not use the assessment as the only data point.

You should have clear application requirements, CV requirements, phone screening requirements, interviewing requirements, and reference requirements – all of these make up an effective selection system.

3. Do not underestimate the importance of coordination.

A structured talent selection solution utilises the invaluable resources of manager-level training and senior team buy-in. The organisation needs to know that you are establishing a new bar for hiring quality and that it will be different than what they’ve done traditionally. They’ll understand the idea of ‘evidence-based’ hiring – i.e., putting tools and processes in place that statistically increase the likelihood of making better, more informed hiring decisions – decisions that support the organisation’s goals. Know that you’ll likely need to re-do the training soon after someone’s niece (or best friend or former coworker) fails the test. Constant education and reinforcement are essential to sustained implementation to make sure a promising candidate failing a pre-employment assessment doesn’t derail your whole hiring process.

4. Establish clear programme performance metrics.

Nothing gets everyone over these concerns faster than data showing that hiring managers are saving time. By interviewing fewer, better-qualified candidates, that time-to-fill rate decreases, turnover is reduced, and selection system data correlates with positive job performance.

Making assessment-based hiring work with Talogy

Using pre-hire assessments as a hard cut point in the hiring process can be a great approach. Many companies do it, but you need an experienced assessment vendor and consulting team who knows how to do this in an effective, legally defensible manner and in a way that’s likely to ‘stick’ in your organisation.

That’s where Talogy comes in. Once you’ve determined what that process looks like and secured a trusted vendor, educating the stakeholders and maintaining consistency in the process will ensure you are securing the best hires for the role – even if it’s not who you originally thought that would be.