What is more important to organizations than finding exceptional talent?  In today’s world of hyper competition, businesses are using more sophisticated and systematic assessment tools to identify and hire the best candidates. This is strongly reflected in the trend reported by the 2012 study published by the Aberdeen Group which found that 49% of the 186 organizations surveyed had adopted formal assessment strategies.  This represents a rapid and significant increase (22.5%) over the number of companies reported at just 40% only one year earlier.  An improving economic climate and increasing competition for quality talent would account for the fast adoption of advanced assessment tools. Moreover, Aberdeen’s study found that companies they rated “best in class” based on employee engagement, successful succession planning and hiring manager satisfaction were 79% more likely to use pre-hire assessments than companies lacking these key performance indicators.

Where to get started? Begin where the most frequent hiring is required. Positions that are entry points to the organization typically require frequent and continuous hiring. When talented and effective employees are rapidly assimilating into the company culture and advancing to positions of greater contribution and responsibility, it is a positive condition that can yield benefits for years to come. Conversely, if turnover is high among new hires, it represents an avoidable cost of hiring and places heavy resource demands on the recruiting department. Uncorrected, a talent acquisition deficit of this sort can have limiting consequences to the organization in terms of constrained growth, reduced productivity and limited business results.

Fortunately, a well-planned assessment strategy contributes by both reducing turnover and improving employee performance. One of the basic keys to this process is the definition of what drives performance in the target roles. If your organization has already defined the skills, knowledge and competencies required by your job families, then you can proceed to select assessments that can be used to test your candidates. However, well-defined requirements are essential to ensure an effective and defensible assessment process, so if your organization hasn’t clearly defined them, seek help from a qualified specialist to facilitate the process.

To realize the benefits of formal selection assessment processes, you must ensure that the process is correctly and consistently followed for all candidates. If you already have an applicant tracking system in place, incorporate your assessments into the workflow so they are administered for all candidates. However, it is even more important is to make sure that recruiters, hiring managers and leadership are educated about how you are using assessments and why they will improve the quality of your hiring decisions.  By improving the screening and selection of your new employees, you can yield benefits for years to come and move into the “best in class” of hiring organizations.

Tom Macfadden is Director of Assessment Sales for Findly, a SmartRecruiters partner. Findly helps companies instantly hire the right person at the push of a button.

Meet Findly’s Scott Marsho on June 26 at the SmartRecruiters headquarters for The Art & Science of Talent Assessment.

Why Reference Checks Matter

Without reference checks as part of the hiring process, hiring managers may be able to determine if a candidate can do the job, but they’re left in the dark as to whether or not the candidate actually has done the job in the past. If previous employers learned the hard way about a candidate’s poor performance, find out about their experience, take advantage of it and refuse to repeat history!

Unfortunately, traditional hiring methods interject a lot of subjectivity – like plain old gut instinct – into the process. While our perception of a candidate does have its role in hiring, it can’t be the total basis of a hiring decision. In addition to leading to compliance issues, reliance on gut instinct often leads to the hiring of false positives, or those candidates who are able to charm and embellish their way into a position only to later show their true colors as poor performers.

Automated reference checks solve this issue, offering an additional data point to the hiring decision; one that is based on I/O Psychology and sound science practices.  Naturally, the more data points gathered for a candidate, the more sound our performance predictions are. Consequently, we can improve the quality of our hires.

However, automated reference checking not only provides more data to determine the best drivers of business, but does so with less effort and in less time than traditional reference checking! All it takes is the click of a button and the system takes over, contacting the references with a digital questionnaire and instantly generating comprehensive results for the hiring manager. This allows for decision makers to rely on consistent, relevant information which facilitates a positive collaboration experience and optimal hiring results.

When To Reference Check

 Now that you’re determined to become a smarter recruiter by reference checking, the key question becomes when to reference check.  Should every candidate go through the process?

The reality is that reference checking can be done at any point in the hiring process. At the front end, it can be used to quickly weed out candidates who won’t be able to produce. Doing so will whittle down the large initial applicant pool quickly to a few, strong candidates, further reducing time and inserting a job-relevant metric at the very early stage.  As the diagram below shows, as many as 20 percent of finalists will receive reference checking scores that will essentially disqualify them for the position. Why not find out who those candidates are at the earliest possible point?

That said, the costs associated with leveraging reference checks on the front end may be prohibitive for some business owners. If this is the case, hiring managers can weed through candidates manually on the front end to determine if they can do the job and rely on reference checking to distinguish only between final candidates.

Either option is perfectly acceptable and is typically determined by the hiring company’s individual preference and available resources. That said, reference checking finalists is strongly recommended at a minimum. Doing so will, at best, distinguish between finalists or, at worst, prompt hiring managers to go back to the drawing board. Either way, the result is an improved hiring decision.

How ChequedReference Works

Chequed.com’s predictive talent selection tool, ChequedReference, is an innovative software that leverages I/O psychology through a comprehensive questionnaire. Created in partnership with University at Albany, State University of New York, each survey is tailored to specific competency criteria through job-relevant benchmarks.  What’s more, it can be fully branded for a unique experience!

While old-fashioned, phone based reference checking is often characterized by meandering conversations and an unwillingness to share much more than the HR equivalent of name, rank and serial number, automated reference checking cuts through the smoke. The nature of the questions asked, in combination with the requirement of at least 3 completed surveys to maintain reference provider anonymity, prompts references to offer candid responses.

Finally, the Chequed Quality Indicator ensures that references are who they say they are. Eliminate concerns that you’re speaking with a roommate when you expect to speak with a former supervisor! Built-in metrics generate red flags when questions are answered in a suspicious manner.

In the end, hiring managers are provided with a succinct overview of the candidate as well as a list of relevant interview questions to help drive a structured, job-relevant interview.

Get Smart Today

Reference checking doesn’t have to be a joke. If anything, it’s a generally untapped wealth of knowledge! Forgoing the traditional reference check is understandable, but with the ChequedReference solution, hiring managers have a fast, simple way to investigate a candidate’s history in a way that is completely relevant to the position.

Join the smart revolution and start leveraging the benefits of this filter with your next vacancy. The results are clear: better candidate information, less effort and improved hires. Just imagine the positive impacts on your business, let alone your hiring process.