How Pre-Employment Assessment Tests Can Help Improve Employee Retention

Pre-Employment Assessment Tests offer employers an objective way to assess a candidate’s skills, abilities, and personality traits. They also help ensure that hiring decisions are lawfully defensible.

It’s no secret that employee retention is a critical issue. Increasing employee retention can reduce the costs of recruiting and training new employees and the cost associated with replacing poor-performing employees.

Identifying the Right Person for the Job

Using assessment test for pre-employment can help employers find people fitting into the company’s culture. It is also a great way to understand an applicant’s capabilities clearly. While a resume and CV may indicate a person’s skills, this must be revised. Many people tend to exaggerate their abilities on paper. This can lead to companies needing to pay more attention to excellent candidates.

A pre-employment test is a scientifically proven indicator of an applicant’s capability. This can be in cognitive ability tests like IQ or aptitude tests that measure spatial awareness, numeracy, and problem-solving abilities. Other tests include personality tests, such as these online DiSC profile assessments, and career aptitude tests that gauge an applicant’s work style and natural inclinations. Putting a person in a role that doesn’t align with their aptitude and work style can lead to disengagement, lack of performance, and even premature departures.

Aside from reducing the time it takes for new hires to become fully productive, assessment tests can also reduce training costs. This is because applicants who pass the tests can quickly pick up on company systems without requiring lengthy training sessions. This can save a lot of time and money for the employer. Additionally, a well-matched employee will be more efficient and effective, which can also improve the bottom line.

Predicting Job Performance

A well-designed and scientifically validated assessment test is one of the best predictors of future job performance. This is especially true of cognitive tests measuring a candidate’s mental ability. These tests assess how someone thinks and how they problem-solve. They are also good indicators of a person’s motivation and attitude toward work. These tests are better able to predict performance than references and experience.

A pre-employment test can improve employee retention by reducing the number of poor performers a company has to replace. This is because assessments provide objective data that can be compared between candidates. This allows managers to eliminate candidates who would not be a good fit for a role before they hire them. This helps reduce the cost of replacing a bad hire and the associated training costs.

Psychological tests, structured interviews, and work samples are all helpful in assessing a potential employee’s abilities. However, they only sometimes predict how an individual will perform on the job. Cognitive tests better indicate job performance than previous experience or references.

Personality and behavioral tests are less predictive than cognitive assessments but can still be helpful. They are generally based on a theoretical construct, like honesty or dependability, rather than a series of questions. This makes them harder to trick than structured interviews or a work sample test.

Predicting Retention Rates

Pre-employment assessment tests are valuable for screening candidates during the hiring process. They can help to identify a candidate’s cognitive ability, personality traits, and work style. They can also predict job performance, allowing employers to select the best candidates for their organization.

Using assessments can also save time and resources during the recruitment process by reducing the number of candidates that need to be interviewed. This can be especially helpful for organizations that receive large numbers of applications for each role. Applicants who have yet to be selected can then be discarded, saving the company from the hassle of reviewing and interviewing them.

Assessments can also predict a candidate’s job-related characteristics and personality traits linked to employee retention. For example, if candidates are not a good fit for a role due to their personality or work style, they are likely to underperform and may be more inclined to quit prematurely. Using an assessment to screen out candidates unlikely to succeed in the role can save companies from the expense and hassle of recruiting, training, and replacing them.

When selecting a pre-employment assessment, choosing one validated against job performance measures is essential. Validation ensures that the test does what it claims to do and is free from bias or unfairness. Using only reputable, professional tests developed by established and recognized international standards is also advisable.

Predicting Success

Using pre-employment assessment tests means hiring managers can better understand whether candidates are a good fit for the role and if they’ll enjoy it. This will make them more likely to stay and reduce employee turnover rates. Having employees who want their job and are a good match for the company will also mean less need to train them on internal systems, which can save time and money.

One of the problems with traditional screening processes is that they’re often designed to eliminate candidates as efficiently as possible, which can miss some hidden gems. For example, resume screening software programmed only to progress applicants with a certain tertiary education level may miss self-taught product designers with excellent skills. Pre-employment assessments help ensure that no candidates are eliminated due to a lack of qualifications.

Using pre-employment assessments won’t stop companies from making bad hires. That’s because no test is a crystal ball, and a few who don’t do well on reviews can still be exemplary employees. But, it will significantly decrease the number of bad hires made by organizations that use them. And that’s a big win for all small- and medium-sized enterprises.