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.

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.