Maximize the potential of hiring assessments and related tools to transform your high-volume recruitment process and secure remarkable talent.
Why High Volume Recruitment Requires a Different Approach
Efficiency in recruitment and hiring can mean a few things. We can -
- Reduce the time (i.e., hours of our time) invested per hire, often by finding automated solutions to manual and often tedious tasks.
- Cut costs by evaluating tools and solutions.
- Review the process overall to reduce time-to-hire.
- Improve quality of hire: reduce churn, turnover, time and investment in training, and other key metrics.
High-volume recruitment and hiring force us to scrupulously evaluate every opportunity for efficiency. An intentional approach is the only way to effectively manage our large influx of candidates. The upside is that by leveraging hiring technology and standardized processes, we can drive effectiveness by quickly uncovering the most promising candidates and improve the effectiveness of hour hiring decisions along the way.
The Power of Hiring Assessment Tests in Enhancing Candidate Screening
What is quality when it comes to hiring?
Both sides recognize that hiring success falls short. Two-thirds of us have been hired only to realize it was a bad fit. Similarly, hiring managers share that nearly half of hires fall short of expectations at 18 months. If we're talking about expectations, what does success look like for recruiting and hiring?
While your definition probably differs from your industry peers, we can probably agree on three components. Three success metrics for hiring are -
- Performance: reaching established standards for contribution and results
- Retention: staying at the company for at least a predetermined time
- Culture: contributing and working within your organization in ways that support and strengthen your values, vision, and culture
Now, there's considerable variability in how we could define each of these. Retention metrics vary significantly depending on the role and industry. What defines performance flexes wildly as well. In sales, performance metrics might include the number of deals closed, revenue generated, or client acquisition rates, and vary based on the nature of the industry and business. In customer service, metrics could encompass the number of support tickets handled, customer satisfaction scores, or ticket or resolution times.
The takeaway is to determine what metrics for these three big criteria look like for your high-volume roles. With greater volume magnifies the number of decisions made often by a larger number of people (often geographically dispersed!). Taking that first step of building agreement on the core metrics you're shooting for with performance, retention, and culture starts to earn buy-in for consistent hiring. Also, once this is in place, you can confidently begin selecting assessments, or other methods of screening, to match the specific requirements of each role (e.g., precise questions on the job application), ensuring a better fit between candidate skills and the job demands. By aligning assessments with set metrics, organizations can more accurately gauge a candidate's potential for success in a specific role, leading to better hiring decisions and improved job performance.
It's people that make the difference, specifically how people come together to become a high-performance team. Each new hire influences the momentum of performance towards either success or failure. Consider that -
- 37 percent of employees share that working with a great team is their primary reason for staying, even if they weren't happy with the job overall.
- Just slightly more than a third of workers feel they have someone who genuinely supports their best interests despite feelings of connection being among the strongest performance drivers.
Now that we've clarified what success looks like, we can determine what competencies and other characteristics will get us there. While the look and feel of an assessment or recruiting tool absolutely matter, the ultimate goal is the information and results using it provides.
Instead, begin by determining the competencies and skills relevant to culture, performance, and retention, and choosing hiring assessment and related tools that measure them. Then you power both efficiency and effectiveness gains by identifying and filtering out candidates with a low probability of success early in the process. Knowing where strengths and vulnerabilities may exist saves time and resources, allowing hiring managers and recruiters to have richer interviews and conversations with candidates. In this way, hiring assessments are a tool to build a stronger and more engaging candidate experience as well as drive effectiveness and efficiency.
Selecting the best assessment tools for recruiting
Investing in well-designed assessment tests (i.e. ones that are validated and deliver a positive candidate and hiring manager experience) significantly increases your odds of making great hiring decisions, driving better business outcomes, and fostering a more engaged workforce. Well-designed, validated, and appropriately chosen assessments can identify candidates with the right mix of skills, experience, and cultural fit, which are essential for long-term success. Moreover, these assessments provide valuable data-driven insights and recommendations into a candidate's potential path for growth in their first few months on the job.
Consistently applying information from assessments in hiring and recruiting builds consistency in screening for the interpersonal, cultural, and technical skills and abilities required by the job. By maximizing the information and recommendations gained from the assessment, companies can improve their hiring outcomes and drive connection and mutually beneficial relationships with others around a shared culture and vision.
For high-volume hiring, an assessment could be as short as five to ten minutes. However, in that time you're gathering data-driven information linked to the qualities foundational to retention, culture, and performance. These moments also provide a unique opportunity to engage and educate candidates. Scenarios and content, ranging from cognitive to personality tests, can be resurfaced to match your brand, operations, and key steps of service. Realistic job previews (RJPs) also play a key role in recruiting reinforcing expectations, educating candidates on your culture, and providing them with candid feedback in a way that doesn't affect their candidacy (we usually build RJPs to not reveal individual-level results to hiring managers and recruiters).
The results of these assessments are uniquely helpful for high-volume hiring as they allow you to narrow your applicant pool efficiently. Because they are validated and connected to your competencies and culture they dually improve the quality of hire and reduce the administrative burden placed on recruiting, HR, or your hiring managers.
In hospitality and restaurants, we support high-volume hiring for frontline staff, while hourly roles are often the responsibility of the location/restaurant's management team. Selecting assessments that support the competencies (i.e., core skills, values, and qualities) required for performance, culture, and retention not only builds shared standards and reduces painful turnover but also saves operational leaders valuable time.
Some practical examples of how assessing for a core competency can drive results -
- Positive Mindset and Resilience for Front-of-House Team Members
- Quality Orientation and Back-of-House Team Members
- Drive for Results and Healthcare
- Safety Orientation for Airlines and Aviation
Balancing the candidate experience and rigor
Think about it: if you sought to improve the quality of hire by adding ten distinct assessment tests to your selection process, you’ll probably end up with a high drop-off rate and vocal, disgruntled candidates. An overly complex assessment process will drive candidates to discontinue the hiring process altogether and frustrate recruiters, hiring managers, and leadership. Therefore, it is crucial to integrate an assessment tool that is comprehensive while seen as engaging and fair, ensuring that it effectively evaluates candidates without being seen as a barrier to staying fully staffed by end users.
Driving success with an assessment cannot happen without a positive candidate experience. This means selecting assessments that are relevant to the job role and quick and easy to administer. What does this mean in practice? For high-volume roles, we'll frequently include a mix of problem-solving and cognitive ability tests, and measures of personality and values. These tests use a mix of methods to gauge potential meaning candidates are doing something different every couple of minutes. In addition, this provides a well-rounded view of a candidate's potential while keeping the process manageable. Corvirtus tools always include a progress bar at the top of the assessment, the ability to save and exit, and a clear button to access help and support.
Finding the right balance in length and crafting a winning candidate experience is key to maximizing the benefits of pre-hire assessments without overwhelming candidates or the hiring team.
How to Implement Assessment Tests for Maximum Impact
People make the difference. Not only in how we build our teams but in how we build the processes and procedures through which we accomplish great things together.
The key to maximizing the impact of assessment tools lies in their thoughtful implementation into how we hire and recruit, and the accuracy of their predictive capabilities. This means that organizations must not only select assessments that are valid for the positions in which they are used but also make sure these tools are integrated seamlessly into the hiring process.
You've started with defining success, the competencies that drive that vision, and the traits you need to measure. That's worth restating because this intentional methodology builds buy-in (and maybe even enthusiasm!) for using the assessments. Sharing the how and why behind evaluating and selecting any new recruiting and assessment tools is key.
When implementing a new or updated hiring or recruiting workflow, it's helpful to think through each of your stakeholders. In this case, our hiring managers and those involved in the hiring process (like recruiters, or even other employees involved in recruiting and hiring), and our candidates and the candidate experience. We may also have leaders and key decision-makers in other areas of the organization who will want to understand the solution at a big-picture level.
When we collaborate and support organizations with an assessment or hiring solution, training for hiring managers on how to interpret and utilize assessment results is crucial. The insights and information from the assessment can't have an impact if those using it don't know how to apply it. Key questions we tackle in implementation and training include (but certainly aren't limited to!) -
- Communication - how will candidates learn about the assessment? Will it be sent through email and text messages? How can we best inform candidates of the trajectory of the entire hiring process so they know how the assessment fits in with other pieces and the timeline for receiving a final decision? At what timeframes will assessment reminders be sent to candidates who haven't finished? What will the content of those reminders look like?
- How will candidates who do not take the assessment be handled? Are they allowed to interview? Will we track implementation rates (the percentage of candidates taking the assessment and managers using the information from the report)?
- How are the different elements in the assessment report supposed to be leveraged during the hiring process? How could information about potential strengths and vulnerabilities be shared and applied during the new hire's first months on the job?
- What's the plan for monitoring completion rates, time to complete, pass rates/score distributions, and the candidate experience? We rigorously track pass rates to start but value having a regular cadence for connecting to share those metrics and determining what if any changes are needed.
- How will new hiring team members (recruiters, hiring managers, leaders) receive training? What materials can we, the assessment partner, provide, or how can we best support live training as needed?
- Last but not least, success! We work with leaders to put a plan in place for evaluating the results achieved by the assessment and any improvements. This way evidence of how the assessments are working is ready on a timeline that's meaningful for all key stakeholders.
Success Stories: Companies That Nailed High Volume Hiring with Assessments
After you’ve implemented your assessments and gotten positive results, it's time for the interesting part. We’re living in an age of data, and deciding not to utilize data means you’re driving blind. This is especially true when the competition does use data to improve their hiring process. Leveraging data analytics allows organizations to gain insights into the effectiveness of their assessments, identify patterns and trends, and make informed decisions to enhance their hiring strategies.
Our name means heart and values in Latin. Building tools that attract and assess is among our team's greatest passions because of the power of how you hire to build remarkable places to work. Teams with thriving and strong cultures that achieve their intended results.
Assessment tool ROI and continuous improvement
How do we know we're driving results and building your intended culture? Largely by evaluating if the assessments are taking us closer to the definition of success established in the beginning. Does the assessment predict what it should predict? This is a fundamental question that underscores the importance of predictive validity. This is established by testing a group of candidates and comparing their results to their performance in the future. If we expect teamwork to be key in retention, customer service, and productivity, higher scores on those tests should equate to measures of performance later.
This means we plan for collecting data over time (e.g., payroll hire and term dates for retention, supervisor ratings at a six-month review, and customer service metrics for performance) and analyzing the correlation between assessment scores and actual job performance metrics. Regularly reviewing this information and updating these assessments based on collected data drives efficiency and effectiveness. It's also critical in providing sound legal defensibility and confidence the assessment delivers equal opportunity and avoids bias.
This continuous improvement cycle refines the assessments to better match the evolving needs of the organization and the dynamic nature of job roles. By doing so, you maintain a high standard of hiring practices that not only identify the best candidates but also contribute to long-term success as your organization and the workforce change.
Across hundreds of clients, we've captured a solid collection of case studies demonstrating the success of assessments that feature a few that highlight the power of assessments to achieve an irresistible candidate experience and make great hiring decisions.
For fast-casual restaurant, PDQ, moving from an already strong performing validated ready-to-implement assessment to an assessment tool built and validated to their unique guest-obsessed culture led to significant gains. The new validated solution led to hired candidates who are 11 times more likely to be ranked in the top 20 percent of performers by frontline leaders.
Another example is Borsheims, a fine jewelry retailer and Berkshire Hathaway company, which uses cognitive and personality assessments for all positions, from frontline roles and sales associates through jewelers. By validating the assessments to job groups and working closely with the centralized recruiting team, we delivered and maintained a solution customized to their way of recruiting.
Even within an industry, our vision, strategy, and goals are wildly unique. Recruiting tools, like assessments, will flourish when they are selected and implemented in ways that flourish within your unique ecosystem.
Assessment Tools for High Volume Recruiting: A Virtuous Cycle
In short, the intentional selection and implementation of hiring assessment tools can transform not just hiring but the strength of the fabric of your culture and operations.
By connecting assessments with your organization's core competencies and what defines success, you can ensure a better fit between candidates and job roles, leading to stronger performance, retention, and culture. These tools streamline the hiring process and provide valuable insights into a candidate's potential for success, and how to support them when hired, ultimately driving everyone's potential to thrive.
As you consider integrating hiring assessments into your recruitment strategy, remember it will be most successful if approached as an ongoing process. Success lies in selecting well-designed, validated tools that deliver a positive experience for both candidates and your stakeholders: recruiters, hiring managers, and leadership. By doing so, you can select people who will flourish while delivering the behaviors and contributions that support your unique definition of success, support one another reduce turnover, and save valuable time and resources.
Ready to transform your hiring process? What impact could the right assessment tools have on your success? Explore our hiring assessment solutions and discover how they can help you discover remarkable talent and drive organizational success. Complete the form below to get started and take the first step towards a more efficient and effective recruitment strategy that takes you closer to your unique vision for success.
