The sad truth is, in the pursuit of money, needing a job and fear of failure, people create false resumes and falsify information when they go to an interview. To help ensure candidates are who they say they are, many companies do pre-employment testing before even doing an interview, let alone making an offer.
Questions to consider when choosing a testing or assessment program include:
Let’s take a look at these.
Why should we do pre-employment testing in the first place?
The point of testing is to make sure that you hire the best possible applicants. In general, if the benefits from the information gathered from the interview process outweigh the cost.
What Type of Testing Should We Administer?
While the laws detailing what types of testing should be administered, common pre-employment testing and assessments include:
But remember to put the human in human resources. Starting or changing jobs is ranked in the top 40 of life’s most stressful events (Spurgeon, Jackson & Beach, 2001), and the process of getting the right job can be very stressful.
Ensuring that candidates have a positive experience when completing assessments is not only an ethical issue; it can influence individuals’ perceptions of your organization and the job.
Studies have shown that perceptions of fairness influence attractiveness of the position and intention to accept the job offer. What can we do to ensure candidates not only actually go through a fair recruitment process, but they feel that they have been through a fair process too?
Here are five tips for how you can increase candidate perceptions of justice and fairness in the selection process:
Not only should you choose a fair selection process, but it pays to take this a step further by conveying this to the candidates to ensure your future employees have a great start in your business.
You could be interviewing your future boss, reference, or client when you go through any part of the interview process. Dr. Charles Handler put it best when he wrote:
“If companies are actually serious about treating candidates as customers, they need to give serious consideration to extending the following rights to their job applicants.” —A Pre-Employment Assessment Candidate Bill of Rights.”
Right #1: Candidates have the right to a proper introduction to the assessment and why they are being asked to take it.
Right #2: Candidates have the right to an assessment experience that is of a reasonable length.
Right #3: Candidates have the right to know where the assessment fits within the overall hiring process, and what they can expect next.
Right #4: Candidates have the right to a good user experience.
Right #5: Candidates have the right to technical support, no matter when they are applying.
Right #6: Candidates have the right to assessment content that appears job related.
Right #7: Candidates have the right to an enjoyable assessment experience.
Right #8: Candidates have the right to know what to expect in terms of feedback from the assessment
It is not enough to rely in “gut instinct” or hire people you simply click with. On the opposite end of the spectrum, you don’t want to be so dependent on tests that you scare away the candidate. If you want to recruit hire and retain the right people every time, decide on the necessary job skills and educational level. Outline the soft skills and traits would boost employee performance. Once you know what you want, implement consistent, telling, and fair pre-employment testing to make smarter employment hiring decisions.