Four reasons you need a prehire assessment

Getting the right people in the right seats is a neverending challenge for human resource professionals and hiring managers. And the stakes are high—if you bring in the wrong person, you risk costing your company and yourself time and money, reducing productivity, and possibly hurting the morale of your other staff members who have to clean up the damage caused by bad hires. 

So how do you crack the hiring code? Get smarter about how you select candidates before they even step in the door for an interview. Prehire tools are an excellent way to help narrow your candidate pool.  

Here are four reasons you may need to add a hiring assessment to your screening process. 

When performance is especially important

A resume can only tell you so much. If you are looking to hire a senior-level staff member, there may be many individuals who have the basic skills needed. But you need someone who can perform especially well, and you need them to bring value and show sound judgment right away.  

A resume can only tell you so much, and it definitely can’t tell you how people interact with others on your team. This may be an ideal time to use a prehire assessment to help you measure interpersonal skills that will really set your top candidate apart from the rest.   

When training is intensive

When you onboard a new employee, you are pouring time, effort, and money into that process—no wonder it’s more than disappointing when that new hire who doesn’t work out. And many employers don’t have those resources to spare, as training can be cost and time prohibitive and take your current staff away from their everyday responsibilities. 

A prehire assessment can dramatically increase the likelihood that the individual you select will perform successfully in that role, so you can be sure you are allocating resources into a person who is likely to be a worthwhile investment.    

When you have too many candidates—or too few

When you have a large applicant pool applying for few positions, an assessment can help you narrow the field, determine who may be a better selection, and quickly fill your position. Depending on the unemployment rate and the market conditions, you may need more assistance parsing the candidates who have the highest likelihood of being successful from those who may not be.  

Alternately, if you have had difficulty filling a role, some hiring managers may be tempted to fill the position with the first person who meets the basic requirements. A prehire assessment may be helpful to see if this person is also a good cultural fit for your organization. 

When you are trying to find nontraditional candidates

When you use a prehire assessment, you get objective data to help you determine whether a job applicant has competencies necessary to excel in your role. Sometimes it is easy to overlook individuals who have a lack of applicable work experience or who may have taken a different educational path. This can mean that you are overlooking some high-potential candidates. If you can identify these individuals, you can certainly exert an advantage over competitors who aren’t looking at nontraditional candidates as well as bring new perspectives and faces into your organization. 

Be sure your hiring strategy is focused on finding candidates who will fit with your team, enjoy their work, and stick around long term. These aren’t things you can easily gauge from a resume or even an interview. Think it’s time to add a prehire assessment? Let InVista help.