Written by Ted Kinney, Vice President of Research & Development
The assessment industry is evolving quicker than ever before. Based on insight Talogy has gathered from CHROs across the globe, the use of hiring and talent assessments is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels within the next 12 months. There is a flood of new approaches, technology, and content hitting the market. Some of these developments are useful, while others amount to trends that do not really have lasting value for organisations. The proliferation of talent solutions has been driven by two factors:
- With rapid technological advancement in the assessment and talent recruitment space, we’re seeing non-science-based technology companies entering the market with solutions that leverage new tech. But this comes with the risk of a lack of understanding of concepts like validity, fairness, utility, and legal compliance.
- Pervasive challenges across markets with low unemployment rates, dynamic and unpredictable fluctuations of talent, the great resignation/reshuffling, etc., have forced organisations to look for innovative solutions to help navigate a challenging talent landscape.
While these pressures will continue in the foreseeable future, at the heart of the matter is selecting the right assessment provider. They must understand the business challenges and have technology that is backed by science to build solutions for the future of talent acquisition and development.
Talogy’s experts see the industry evolving in a few different areas. Our research and development team pays close attention to emerging capabilities and business and hiring trends in order to future-proof current solutions and build the newest innovations.
To make sure we are prepared to address hiring trends for the evolving talent landscape, here’s where our R&D team is focusing our work:
Data collection and scoring methods
A common observation we’ve seen with our clients is that organisations are looking for shorter assessment experiences in an effort to provide a more engaging candidate experience. But shortening conventional assessments strictly for the sake of time considerations may mean sacrificing useful candidate data – which is when the science component becomes all the more crucial.
Related: Why you shouldn’t remove your hiring assessment
To address this, Talogy is creating innovative approaches for capturing job-related trace data (data that tracks how candidates interact with the assessment technology, not just how they respond to items) and leveraging advanced statistical procedures such as machine learning to create theory-based and predictive scoring for these new methods.
Our approach to capturing trace data on how a candidate interacts with our assessments allows us to collect hundreds of data points while keeping the assessments short.
Additionally, by leveraging advanced data science techniques, we can provide construct relevant scoring for these solutions that is more predictive with less bias and increased fairness to all groups.
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A great example of this approach is our new Mindgage cognitive ability suite. In this assessment, we have created very short measures that are interactive, construct-valid, and cut the subgroup differences observed by typical ability measures in half.
Assessment configuration
Today’s assessment buyers need to make a sacrifice: use off-the-shelf assessments which have a history of supporting psychometric data (but also could be used by a competitor in the local labor market) or build a custom solution that is unique to the organisation but requires a lengthy implementation time and a high price tag. We believe that our unique approach to modular assessment configuration will change the way the industry thinks about assessments while cutting down on implementation time and overall cost to create a unique assessment for our clients.
Our blend of science and technology allows us to build solutions based specifically on the needs of our clients. These assessment solutions use ‘building blocks’ that draw from our portfolio of validated assessment content and include custom scoring and configurable reporting.
As such, our clients will be able to have the benefits of off-the-shelf solutions (an assessment powered by decades of candidate data) and custom solutions (an assessment built specifically for the unique client organisation), while having the advantage of very short implementation times. I’m so excited to work with an R&D team that continues to push the boundaries of what is possible in the assessment science! Talogy’s thought leading R&D scientists really are building the most innovative assessment solutions on the market, which makes my job really fun.
Candidate and administrator experience
Talogy’s product and technology teams pay great attention to experience – not only the ‘in-assessment candidate experience,’ but also the process experience and the reporting experience. We have innovative programs and a roadmap related to enhanced user experience. We are actively redefining the standard for assessment development as it relates to candidate engagement.
Here are a few examples of what we’re prioritising for an improved candidate and administrator experience:
- A focus on mobile-first design and equivalent measurement across devices
- Industry-leading interactive and engaging assessment techniques, like user-friendly interfaces, game-like interaction, advanced technology-enabled job simulations
- Our ‘definable journey’ approach to assessment construction. Our technology not only allows for the configuration of content, but also the configuration of the assessment ‘flow.’ We work carefully with our clients on every detail to make sure assessment sections, content, branding, and progression are tuned to create a unique experience to maximise participant engagement.
We do not stop there, however. We are well aware of the need for efficiency and communication in the hiring process. As such, we have designed every aspect of our assessment platform to allow for interventions to strengthen the relationship between the candidate and the employing organisation, while also creating a path that can carry forward from attraction to selection to onboarding and development.
Finally, we also recognise that the current state of the assessment industry utilises reporting approaches that are not always consistent with how report-users prefer to consume assessment information. The industry standard is to provide static, and mostly off-the-shelf PDF documents. Talogy is innovating a reporting engine that provides interactive digital assessment feedback for hiring managers, assessment participants, recruiters, or any other assessment stakeholder. This reporting approach allows users to see the high-level information they need quickly, but also allows for the user to dig into the details where there is a need for more information.
There are several other areas of innovation where Talogy is actively leading the field, but these three are a good example of how we are responding to the emerging needs of that assessment industry and overall hiring trends. We recognise that to remain the assessment industry leader, we need to always employ a continuous improvement mindset. Our R&D team will never stop pushing the envelope in developing scientifically sound, technology-enabled, assessment solutions.
