Three essential tests for your employee candidates
“You need to give essential tests for your employee candidates to prevent bad hires.”
In employee recruitment, the goal is to find the most qualified candidate to fill the role. Recruitment can take time, but a rushed hire can lead to additional staff turnover. With a detailed hiring process, company can make the right decisions and bring in talented professionals who will help the company grow. After the applicant screening process, there are 3 initials test that we usually do:
Phone Interview & Give General Test
Before you meet the candidate in person, a phone interview can be a good way to screening the potential candidate. You can use phone interviews to narrow the pool of applicants who will be invited for in-person interviews. This is also the perfect initial test for a job that requires great telephone communication. In general, a telephone interview should take about 30 minutes. If the candidate manages to hold an engaging conversation longer than 30 minutes, that’s a very good sign.
Another way is through a general test using a simple questionnaire. In RPS general test usually personality test. A personality test can give you insight into candidates’ cultural fit. This test will help you decide if the candidate is the ideal employee for your company based on their personality. The personality test is usually written in such a way that prevents dishonesty. So unlike in an interview, the candidate hardly to manipulate the answers.
The Big Five Personality Model is a great choice to assess a candidate by using OCEAN (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and neuroticism) traits. For example, conscientiousness is the strongest indicator of job performance. Those who score higher in this trait are likely to have higher levels of job-related knowledge as those who are highly conscientious learn more. They’re also likely to be a strong leader, but generally not creative. So if you look for a creative candidate to fit artistic role, you might want to get someone who scores high at openness to experience.
Invite For Interview (In-Person Interview)
In-person interview is the most efficient form of assessment after you’ve done the phone interview or another general test. This kind of interview will allow you to get up close and personal with each candidate. You can ask about the candidate's experience and skills, work history, availability, and assess their commitment to the work. You can also read their body language, which gives you assurance about how much they believe in their own answers and how truthful they are to their words.
In-person interview requires someone who’s comfortable with the interviewing process and a method. You also need to beware of interview fatigue because it may affect your judgement and ability to assess. In-person interview can be more time-consuming than the phone interview, even the pool of candidate is smaller. But it’s definitely worth it when you can dig deeper to the candidate’s mind and heart.
Skill Assessment Test
This test does not focus on knowledge or abstract personality traits, they measure actual skills, either soft skills (e.g. attention to detail) or hard skills (e.g. computer literacy). Skill assessment test is the most chosen way to test the candidate in a smaller candidate pool. The American Management Association (via Criteria Corp) has done a study on pre-employment testing. It found 70% of companies do some sort of job skill testing, 46% of them also use personality or psychological tests, 41% rely on some form of basic literacy and math skill tests to support their decision.
Skill assessments focus on measuring actual skills, either soft skills (ex. attention to detail) or hard skills (ex. computer literacy). These assessments are also usually depending on the job task. For example, if you’re looking for someone to fill a secretarial role, you need to give a typing test to show how fast and accurate they can type. Other examples are include writing assignments, presentation, leadership tests, and data checking tests.
Conclusion
It’s important to give your candidate some tests in the hiring process. These essential tests can minimize the risk of bad hires, reducing turnover, lowering hiring cost, and improving the productivity in your company. But you need to have a realistic goal and expectations to get the ideal employee for your company. The objective approach by using validated testing instruments and well-developed techniques will help you a lot in the long run. You also need to have the hiring strategy that will fit perfectly with your company’s situation, (ex. money, time, and urgency) as well as the company’s culture.
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References
https://www.smartrecruiters.com/resources/glossary/hiring-process-steps/
https://resources.workable.com/tutorial/pre-employment-tests#
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/steps-in-the-job-interview-process-2061363
https://www.coburgbanks.co.uk/blog/assessing-applicants/6-different-types-of-interview/
https://www.floridatechonline.com/blog/business/how-the-big-five-personality-traits-influence-work-behavior/ https://www.criteriacorp.com/resources/definitive_guide_what_are_preemployment_tests.php