Using Psychometric and Other Assessments in the Recruitment Process

Whether you have a tiny shortlist of applicants, or you’ve been absolutely drowning in resumes and are feeling completely overwhelmed, making the right hiring decision is critical to your businesses success.

When we find ourselves with only a limited list to select from, we can often start to flex the boundaries and parameters that we were hiring within. Sure, they don’t have the experience, but it’s better than nothing. Or you have a gut feel that they won’t really be a great fit but you’re so desperate to fill the role you ignore your gut and push forward based on skills and experience.

Conversely, when you are absolutely overwhelmed with the sheer volume of applications you have received for any one role, it can be incredibly hard to get clear about who is really the stand out applicant, and what to focus on when shortlisting, or how to choose when interviewing.

In small to medium sized businesses, when you are growing your organisation, one or more ‘wrong’ hires can be extremely detrimental and have a negative impact on your team, your company culture and your overall productivity.

That’s why getting it right is so important. The good news is there are tools, strategies and resources to assist us with making great hiring decisions, and it’s not all about reading resumes and conducting interviews.

There are a slew of pre-employment tests, assessments and processes we can follow and use to increase the probability of hiring staff with the appropriate skills, attitudes, work styles, behaviours and interests to fit our business, and the specific roles we are hiring for.

When we think pre-employment strategies, things like medicals, reference checks and where appropriate criminal history checks might come to mind, but there are so many more options out there that we can sometimes fail to tap into.

Firstly, there are skills-based assessments available that will help you asses an applicants core skills for the role. this may include software and computer skills, customer service skills, industry knowledge and alike.

Then there is the pre-employment work test style assessment or task, where we ask applicants to submit a piece of work, sometimes even a presentation (for a role of an appropriate level o seniority or speciality), or take part in a short on the job assessment to allow us to assess their suitability for the role and understand their style and approach to work.

Of course we have Work Trials, which are governed by the Fair Work Act, but can be a great way to assess someone’s on the job skills before offering them a position.

And finally, we have possibly one of the most powerful pre-employment strategies – psychometric assessments. Psychometric tests or assessments are designed to assess an applicants suitability for any role or any organisation based on personality and characteristics. Essentially these assessments are looking to understand the potential new employees behaviour or work style, their default preferences in how they work, and they highlight the types of work that someone may thrive or conversely struggle in.

There are literally hundreds (of not thousands) of psychometric assessments available in the market, and they really shouldn’t be used as a decision making tool, but rather as a strategy that you layer into your recruitment process that will help you better understand individual applicants, which in turn will assist you in making more informed hiring decisions.

As a bonus, the results of these assessments used in the recruitment process can double as an excellent onboarding and management tool, as it cuts down the time in getting to know how this person approaches work, and you can start communicating with employees and leveraging their natural work tendencies much more quickly.

So, what’s the best approach to support you make the best hiring choices for your business? Use a layered approach of multiple strategies throughout your recruitment process to support you in creating the fullest possible picture of the potential new employee and this will assist in making the right hiring decisions more of the time.

An Invitation
If you have questions about pre employment testing and assessments, I’d love for you to join us inside our free Facebook Group where you can connect with other like minded business owners, leaders and managers to discuss all things HR:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/hrsupportaustralia