Written by Danielle Desko, Marketing Manager
Hiring the right employee is not an easy task.
The hiring process can be a long and cumbersome task, and all of your hard work might not even yield a good job candidate – If you utilize standard talent management approaches.
In order to ensure you have enough information – and the right information – before making your decision, you should be utilizing employee assessments for hiring and behavioral interviews as part of your candidate data collection process.
We all know that different positions require different pre-employment assessments. For example, you wouldn’t utilize the same hiring assessments for a leadership position as you would a front-line manufacturing position.
But which types of sophisticated employee assessment tools should you consider using in your hiring process? Remember that every position deserves a customized, thoughtful approach and has different hiring process needs. With that principle in mind, here are the top three pre-employment assessments you should consider including in your organization’s hiring process:
1. Structured, Behavioral-Based Interviews
The days of an informal, unstructured interview are over. The jury is in, and data has proven that simply talking to someone is not a valid predictor of future behavior.
Structured interviews aren’t often considered employee assessments, but they are. If you ask specific, competency-related questions and evaluate the responses with a structured rating system, then your interviews are more accurate, consistent and effective.
Be sure to ask open-ended questions that explore candidates’ actual past behavior, citing real-life examples – as opposed to hypothetical, vague questions. Structure your behavioral-based interviews by posing the same questions to all candidates and focusing on relevant competencies.
Example questions:
- Describe a situation when you led positive change in your last position.
- Tell me about a time when you had to give constructive feedback to a fellow employee.
2. Personality Tests
Underlying personality traits and characteristics have been shown to be predictive of job performance across jobs and industries. Typically, personality is measured through a series of personal belief statements and candidates are asked to rate their agreement with a series of statements.
These types of hiring assessments measure the candidate’s skills and abilities and are sometimes referred to as the “soft skills” or “functional competencies.”
Example questions:
- Rate your agreement to the following: I enjoy being the leader of a group
- Rate your agreement to the following: I like working with others to accomplish goals
3. Work Samples and In-Basket Exercises
Adding a work sample or in-basket exercise to your hiring process can be one of the most powerful tools for evaluating candidates. These hiring assessments allow you to use real world work scenarios and present them to the candidate.
These employee assessments are face valid too, meaning the candidate believes the test is measuring what it purports to measure. Work samples are typically viewed as highly face valid because the candidate is essentially being tasked with doing a portion of the job.
Example exercises:
- A candidate for a sales position may be tasked with preparing and delivering a sales presentation, similar to what they would be expected to do in the target position for which they are applying.
- A candidate for a production assembly position may be tasked with completing portions of the production assembly process that they would be doing on the job.
Although this list is far from all-inclusive of hiring assessments and every position requires a customized hiring process, employing at least one of these hiring assessments ensures not only that you weed out unsuitable candidates but that you attract and retain the highest performing talent.
Looking for more information on employee assessments for hiring at any level of your organization? Click below to contact PSI and learn more about optimizing your hiring process with the right employee assessment tools at every stage.
