Pre-hiring assessments have taken recruitment by storm globally. According to the Talent Assembly Study, assessment usage grew by 114%, and 132% in the IT/ES sector alone FROM 2016 to 2017.
According to the Candidate Experience Research report, 82% of companies are using some form of pre-employment assessment tests in 2020.
The wrong hire can lead to a negative impact on the employees’ morale and can waste training and development time and money. Pre-hiring tools especially for tech roles helps in finding the most qualified individual with problem-solving and analytical among other required skills.
These assessments must be legal, valid and reliable, and updated with the developing trends.
Here we discuss what is a pre-hire assessment, its purpose, and how to use it.
What are pre-hire assessments?
Pre-hiring or pre-employment tests are assessments designed to measure skills, intelligence, and other characteristics, and based on them the candidates are given scores and ratings. They provide an insight into their strengths and weakness, which can help in predicting candidates ’ on-the-job performance.
It helps in reducing the time spent at every level of the recruitment process, while also minimizing the clash between job requirements and hiring decisions.
What is the purpose of these assessments in hiring tech talent?
Some of the benefits of using pre-hiring assessments are:
- Saves time
The helps in finding out the applicants who send out their resumes but were not qualified for the job roles. The applicants who complete the tests and do well in them can be chosen for the next rounds of recruitment processes.
- Helps in finding the most suitable candidate
Well-validated pre-employment tests help in predicting employee productivity. These assessments can objectively determine the extent to which a applies the knowledge, skills, and abilities to perform well at any given job.
- Improves the efficiency of hiring
It helps in introducing objectivity to the process. Pre-employment assessment contributes to reducing the time to hire by making sure only the relevant candidates get shortlisted, thus demonstrating to be an efficient filtering option.
- Provides data-driven selection criteria
By analyzing the results, employers can determine which candidates meet the industry standards. Thus, allowing the employers to shortlist the most relevant candidates.
How to use assessment for tech hiring?
To get the best of the pre-hiring assessments for tech hiring you must:
- Find out which tests are necessary
Every job role requires some specific kind of skills and qualification, and in the case of tech-based roles, programming knowledge and problem-solving skills become very important.
For example, in the case of a data analyst, the test must have Quantitative ability, Reasoning ability, and SQL & Oracle Programming. You can look at Xobin’s Data Analyst Test.
- Create a Competency Matrix that lists the technical and soft skills needed for the role
By making a competency matrix, the questionnaire requirements for the assessments and evaluation goals can be set up, which makes the hiring process easier and efficient.
- Develop or select a test that appropriately evaluates the knowledge, skills, and other characteristics needed.
The tests that evaluate the required skills and abilities for a job role helps in analyzing the candidates accurately and hence, improving the efficiency of the assessments. For example, group exercises will assess if the candidates can work together as a team.
- Use Pre-hire Coding Tests to gauge the coding and problem-solving ability of applicants
Coding skills are difficult to be tested, but by using pre-hiring coding tests every applicant can be asked the same set of questions and consistency can be maintained evaluated procedure.
It can also help in disqualifying the resume spammers from initial rounds.
For different tech-based roles, specific programming languages are required, and for every role, the assessments must have a fair set of questions that analyzes the candidates based on every required skill.
- Keep track of the usage of the tests
By regularly tracking the latest trends and candidates’ experiences of giving these tests, you can make sure to make a well-versed pre-hiring assessment. Regular upgrading of the questions, the assessments become more helpful in evaluating the candidates better and if they fit every standard or not.
- Commercially available tests used in the recruitment process should be researched using a reliable guide.
If your organization uses commercially available pre-hiring assessments for hiring, the product should be done based on the requirements and highest standard set by your organization.
A list can be made of the legal requirements and company’s standards needed for the assessments and decisions can be made accordingly.
- Understand candidate motivation, preference of tech stack using Recorded Video Interviews
The control of technology for a tech-based job role is very important and by recorded interviews, the same can be tested in qualified candidates.
- Use two way Pair Programming video interviews during the Interview stage
By using pair programming video interviews the test of coding skills of the candidate can be done remotely, and the evaluation on the live assessment can help in finding a suitable candidate easily.
Pre-hiring assessments are changing the standard of evaluation globally. As the world becomes tech-savvy it is important that processes like hiring also make sure to set standards for every organization using them.
