Assessment is an important pre-hiring step, but if not done correctly you could be in a world of legal hurt.

Today’s employers must shoulder the burden of responsibility when it comes to knowing and complying with relevant anti-discrimination laws. According to a recent study, 42 percent of TA professionals felt that negligent hiring practices were the top concern for companies in 2018. “Ban the box” legislation, GDPR compliance, and other legal restrictions mean that companies need to be hyper-vigilant about their hiring practices.

Aware of these sensitive legal issues, a diverse team of scientists, business executives, and HR professionals came together in March of 2011 with the goal of building legally-defensible pre-employment assessments for any job. This team sought to create a cost-effective and time-saving solution that would empower organizations of all sizes to hire better quality candidates without sacrificing candidate experience.

The result? RightHire, an internet-based pre-hire assessment solution that is the only one of its kind to leverage a powerful innovative feature known as Synthetic Validity (patent-pending).

Using the RightHire platform, employers can build assessments that are legally defensible, highly predictive, offer a more positive candidate experience, and are 20 times faster than traditional methods of building assessments. Additionally, customers can build assessments for all types of positions, even low volume roles that aren’t typically covered by other solutions.

To learn more, we talk to Dave Mayers, RightHire’s VP of Business Development.

Briefly, on the back of a cocktail napkin, how does your product work?

Our assessment system evaluates applicants for any job. Administrators on the SmartRecruiters applicant tracking system (ATS) create customized job evaluations for each particular role within a company. Recruiters can then access this template library, and invite candidates to complete the relevant assessment. Once the candidate finishes, the hiring team receives a score for the applicant’s likelihood of success.

Why is your product a necessary tool for any SmartRecruiters customer?

Our pre-hire assessment system saves time while increasing the quality of hire, which means more productive workers who stick around longer.

What does your product do that can’t be replicated?

Our system is based on a novel technology called Synthetic Validity, exclusively licensed from the University of Calgary, Canada, which allows our customers to build legally-defensible job assessments that save companies precious resources.

How does your product help make the hiring process as easy as possible?

Customers can use our assessment system at the top of the recruiting funnel to assess all job applicants and screen-out poor-performing candidates. Alternatively, customers can use our assessments on applicants that pass the resume/phone screening, so interviewers can spend more time with vetted candidates.

How long would it take for the average existing SR user to implement and take full advantage of your product?

Implementation and startup take less than two hours, allowing hiring teams to augment their recruiting function the same day they sign up for RightHire.

What do you see as the future of Talent Acquisition and how do you fit into it?

We believe that innovation is key to the future of TA. RightHire is the first assessment to enable customers to quickly and cost-effectively build assessments for any of their jobs in a legally defensible way.

June 26 marked another successful SmartUp here at SmartRecruiters HQ in San Francisco, this time on the topic “The Art and Science of Talent Assessment.”  For the uninitiated, SmartUp is our monthly meetup focused on elevating innovation in hiring.  There’s always an engaging panel or keynote, preceded and followed by food, drink and networking.

We’ve had big turnouts for all 13 of our SmartUps to date, and this last one was no exception. As usual, there was a good mix of recruiters, HR pros and startup people of all stripes.  We especially like seeing startup neighbors of ours doing innovative things in other fields/industries.  After all, your company doesn’t have to be in the HR space to benefit from expert advice on hiring.

This month’s panel featured Michael Tanenbaum , CEO of ConnectCubed; Michael Gladden, Head of Technology at Chequed; and Scott Marsho, Director of Assessments Distribution at Findly.  Also on hand was SmartRecruiters Founder and CEO Jerome Ternynck (Oh yeah, and the famous reuben rolls from Morty’s made a brief appearance.)

In an amazing coincidence, all three of the companies represented on the panel are launch partners for SmartRecruiters’ Assessment Center, a one-stop shop for scientifically assessing the candidates in your SmartRecruiters candidate pool.  That said, each panelist brought a unique perspective stemming from their respective areas of expertise: reference check, skills testing and behavioral evaluations.

Some top tweets from the day:

79% of companies considered as best in class use talent assessments. #smartup

— Laura Hong (@laura2hong) June 27, 2013

“If you’re not using an assessment you’re just not optimizing your workforce,” says @GetFindly‘s Scott Marsho. #Smartup

— SmartRecruiters (@SmartRecruiters) June 27, 2013

 

So far, the NSA, guys with pony tails, Ferraris, and economic workshops all made it into tonight’s #SmartUp @SmartRecruiters . Love it!

— Nik Hristov (@nikhristov) June 27, 2013

Don’t wait with reference checks to the end @Chequedmktg says. Reference check early to speed up hiring. #smartup

— Jason Hegyessy (@hegyessy) June 27, 2013

@tbaums @DavidSmooke Great job tonight. It’s now a “renaissance” of testing and assessment. A whole new ballgame, with DaVinci at bat. — AndrewKarpie (@andrewkarpie) June 27, 2013 

The newest and greatest innovations in hiring. That’s what @BizDevBen is talking about. #Smartup

— David Smooke (@DavidSmooke) June 27, 2013

Don’t miss our next Smartup (August 14): The War for Startup Talent.

It’s such a direct question that I felt compelled to attempt answering it with a direct response.  A great pre-employment assessment is a job-related, and statistically valid predictor of future success (definitions of which are another topic).  But while that might be a direct answer, the truth is really much more complex.

First I’ll frame the question around the current market climate…

The use of pre-employment psychological and behavioral assessments is a red-hot topic right now, and the market is estimated to be at about one billion dollars.  Last year’s M&A activity is further evidence of this booming.  Global data solutions giant IBM acquired RPO, ATS and assessments company Kenexa.  Leading member-based advisory company Corporate Executive Board acquired global talent assessment company SHL.  And management consultancy Korn-Ferry’s acquisition of the successful leadership assessment and development solutions firm PDI Ninth House tops off the year.  It’s safe to say, “Something big is definitely going on.”

Still, having all of this knowledge does not answer the original question. It just puts perspective into possible reasons why it might be asked in the first place, such as those trying to buy or sell these assessments, those trying to use these ubiquitous products, or perhaps those in a position to take assessments.  Being from the camp where all of this activity directly stems, i.e., as an I/O psychologist working for an assessment solutions provider – it’s a very exciting time to say the least!

And that’s exactly the reason we need to be asking such a question in the first place. With so much activity, and the sheer ease of technological integration, it makes sense to harness whatever tools we have to make hiring easier and more efficient for recruiters, while also more engaging for applicants. Additionally, the joys of Big Data have reached HR’s doorstep as well, and organizations that see the value added from harnessing workforce analytics will likely be the fiercest competitors in their industry’s labor market.

So what about that question again?

Well there are also so many different areas to assess job applicants that it really needs to be handled in an informed and strategic manner.  Pre-employment assessment covers everything from cognitive ability and/or personality dimensions, to organizational culture fit.  Those who are implementing pre-employment assessments need to be informed in the sense that they understand the legal ramifications of noncompliance with the likes of the EEOC.  And assessments should be deployed strategically, such that they actually provide insights that are tied to real business outcomes.  It might be enough for an organization to simply lower turnover, or reduce absenteeism and withdrawal behaviors from successfully screening out applicants who aren’t motivated enough to take an assessment in the first place.  Others may be satisfied with tying assessment scores to subjective manager performance ratings, while others might be more inclined to see a predictive relationship to objective performance criteria (e.g., sales per customer contact).

So the answer to the question really is “it depends.”

No one pre-employment assessment is the end-all be-all solution for guaranteeing the perfect hire.

What makes a great pre-employment assessment is the thoughtfulness and planning that goes into how any (well some) assessments are selected and implemented.  Decision-makers need to carefully think about what psychological and behavioral constructs they intend to assess, the vendors of the assessment they choose, the consultants they may hire to implement it, and the criteria they will use to evaluate its utility.

Michael Cilla, M.S. is an Assessment Implementation Manager at talent acquisition company, Global HR Research.  He also teaches Intro to I/O Psychology and Psychological Tests & Measurement at Florida Gulf Coast University.  Image Credit Ely Tran.

SmartRecruiters is the hiring platform with everything you need to source talent, manage candidates and make the right hires.

In an age where every decision needs to be justified, backed up and informed by data, psychometric testing contributes a key element of science in an industry that has often relied on gut feel and synergies between the recruiter and jobseeker when making important hiring decisions. In fact, more than 75% of Fortune 500 companies utilize psychometric profiling in recruitment.

Here are the top 5 reasons leading HR artisans rely on psychometric tests in recruitment

1.    Testing beats gut feel

Human instinct is little better than rolling dice and having the stakeholders absorb the cost of a bad hire. To replace a skilled position, research indicates it can cost up to 150% of an employee’s salary in lost productivity; making bad hires is a cost every business should strive to reduce. Psychometric testing adds a level of standardization and objectivity to the traditional art of recruitment by helping to remove the unconscious bias that comes along with many selection decisions. Meta-analyses have shown that including psychometric assessments can improve recruitment outcomes by 24% over traditional selection methods, such as resume screening and unstructured interviews.

2.    The results are measurable

Quantifying human behavior and its associated impact on the bottom line is one of the most difficult challenges facing organizations. With the coming age of Big Data, pre-employment assessment is one of the most simple and cost effective ways you can clearly quantify people-related ROI. Correlating assessment and recruitment results with outcome variables such as core job performance, turnover percentage, engagement and commitment is the way for HR departments to transform their image of being a cost center to an accountable, profit driving, business critical function.

3.    You don’t need a psych degree

Gone are the days of complex reports where a psychologist was needed to interpret esoteric psychometric test results. Psychometric test providers are slowly adopting a ‘design first, data second’ principle. Beautifully designed, data rich and easy to read reports can now be instantly accessed online. Simplified real world language and graphics that tell you exactly what you need to know are becoming the norm. Delivering a well designed psychometric test report to a hiring manager is now an empowering moment that helps them to make confident hiring decisions.

4.    It presents a positive company brand

The use of standardized and objective selection processes can create a powerful first impression of an employer’s brand (Sinar, Reynolds, & Paquet, 2003; Richman-Hirsch, Olson-Buchanan, & Drasgow, 2000). Applicants are attracted to modern recruitment and selection processes and they often cite the objective approach to assessing their capability as a key reason behind their satisfaction with the recruitment process. This is especially true for individuals from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds, as psychometric testing provides a level playing field where everyone’s merit is equally judged.

5.    It helps shape your HR strategy

Quality data is essential to shaping a truly effective HR strategy. Remember the old adage “garbage in, garbage out” – you need to be able to measure what actually does and doesn’t work in any business initiative. HR relies on a number of different inputs to make decisions with company-wide effects. Psychometric tools are another important objective data point that can help shape HR strategy. When linked to individual job performance data, psychometric test results can produce lead indicators to help organizations with selection, talent management, assessing workforce capability, employee engagement, understanding organizational culture and succession planning with a high degree of confidence.

The Bottom Line

Psychometric testing is an essential part of modern best practice recruitment. Organizations that are serious about attracting and retaining the best talent should take advantage of these tools rather than rely on subjective selection methods.

Matthew Clarkson is the Chief Marketing Officer, Onetest. You can find Matthew on LinkedIn and Twitter. Onetest’s psychometric assessments, skills tests and employee surveys offer great levels of clarity on issues ranging from current organizational health and performance to job applicant suitability and existing employee potential.

 Assessment possesses a numerical connotation. Webster’s defines assess as “to determine the rate or amount of.” To assess, you need to put numbers to value. That’s it. In the case of recruitment, formulaic assessments will give you battle tested insights on behavioral tendencies, quality of past work, and level of existing skill.

There are thousands of assessments out there, but recruiting innovator Jerome Ternynck believes most can be divided into three categories: behavioral, reference check, and skills test:

• Behavior Assessments measure personality. Yes, personality can be categorized and quantified. We’ve come a long way since Briggs Myers. In an interview you will learn anecdotal details of a candidate’s behavior. Behavioral assessments provide a more comprehension measure for job fit and company fit.  What personalities have thrived in your company culture? You need to know this. What personalities perform best as inside sales reps? Behavior assessments tell you.

• Reference Checks measure the performance of past work. Reference checks should gather more points of view than the three phone numbers candidates have brought to job interviews for the last 50 years. In a phone reference you get the overarching impression by a fan of the candidate; there is conflict of interest. Top reference check assessments gather data from a more encompassing sources to share a 360 degree report of a candidate’s past work.

• Skills Tests measure the level of a specific expertise. Try asking a candidate how good they are at PHP? All answers will range from OK to the best. There is no confirmation of their rank in the range of people with this skill. Skills tests quantify where their skill sits amongst everyone else in the market.  There are assessments for thousands of skills, from French to Python to Excel to Pattern Recognition to etc.; if it’s a skill, it’s quantifiable.

Notice a theme? Assessments measure. Assessments put analytics behind more points of views than just the interviewer to predict the likelihood of succeeding in any job for any company.

The Aberdeen Group found that assessment data – while crucial across many critical company decisions – was most crucial in the decision of “who to hire.” This is the point where you have a candidate’s basic professional information and have met with him or her for a short period of time. You need more reliable information to make such an important decision. The Aberdeen study found that assessment data was a better indicator of who to hire than it was in deeming who is high potential, who to interview, and who is promoted.

While the evaluation of candidates is both an art and science, there are cold hard facts on every candidate’s behavioral preference, reference checks, and skills test.  Candidate assessments, and in turn who to hire, depend upon measurement.  Investing a small amount to measure any of what a candidate is able to do, how a candidate has actually performed, and which tasks a candidate is motivated to perform, will go a long way toward increasing profit per hire.