The true cost of a poor hire—or the extraordinary value of a standout new team member—extends far beyond spreadsheets and budgets. The effects spiral across your team, your culture, and the future you’re working to build. Consider that—
- When calculated, frontline/entry-level employees cost upwards of $8,000 to replace, with the average clocking in around $12,000. Replacement costs for the average individual contributor role cost one half to two times their salary.
- On the flip side, a high performing leader can bring in financial returns three times that of an average performer.
Simultaneously, organizations are working to advance fairness by rigorously evaluating each phase of the hiring process to ensure it fosters inclusivity and effectively supports critical business outcomes. Leaders and the workforce are rightfully questioning how “culture fit” is judged—and whether it’s creating a level playing field. After all, if culture-fit decisions start to sound suspiciously like curating your ideal crew for happy hour or picking a layover companion for your next flight delay, it might be time to re-examine the criteria.
We can't, however, put pre-employment assessments in the same category (or universe, even) as these misguided criteria. Validated hiring assessments offer organizations a rigorous, evidence-based approach to consistently evaluate alignment with your core values and definition of success—while proactively reducing bias. Organizations leverage assessments every day for hiring and development to understand and evaluate candidates for entry-level roles through senior executive level positions. In fact, the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology found that nearly 70 percent of companies are using some form of assessment. This number has only grown in recent years.
When are hiring assessments useful for culture-fit?
Assessments are used widely not only for senior level roles, but also for the start of talent pipelines: entry level (and even hourly) roles. One of the biggest challenges with hourly and frontline roles is evaluating candidates to consistent standards across locations, regions, or even countries. Applicants at the beginning of our talent pipelines are valuable as they come to us with a broad range of backgrounds and experiences. But how do we compare such an eclectic and wide-ranging pool accurately and fairly? Assessments increase time-to-hire and equip leaders with evidence-based information on tens of data points and questions before an interview. In this way, recruiters and hiring managers can make the most of time spent interviewing providing a candidate and interview experience that is more meaningful, resonant, and useful.
Assessments also provide information on how to best support candidates in the critical first few months of their tenure. Assessment results highlight where to direct coaching efforts and where you can maximize strengths early on. In this way with assessments you're prepared to maximize what you've invested in this new person on day one.
Is the culture you have what you think it is? Take our quick CultureMap diagnostic.
With that in mind, let's go back to our question of culture and bias. Let's define fit as a candidate’s potential to be successful on the job by matching the unique knowledge, skills, abilities, interests, and mindsets that drive performance. We can assess how their values support the core beliefs and definition of success we’re seeking to achieve: culture-fit. Coupled with other pre-screening activities (i.e., interviews, resume reviews, etc.), recruiters and hiring managers can use this information to make data driven hiring decisions.
In most cases, the candidate’s assessment data is synthesized and decision makers receive an assessment result or report. These reports review the candidate’s strengths as well as their potential developmental gaps and vulnerabilities that might help or hinder their success on the job. Corvirtus reports also include questions to probe deeper into the potential vulnerabilities discovered by the assessment.
In addition, if desired, our assessments aggregate insights to show potential, and an overall recommendation, across your own unique values.
So, what goes into these recommendations? Calculations of fit, or connection and the ability to live your culture. On a numerical scale, the algorithms driving the assessment calculate the candidate’s alignment with the competencies and/or skill sets related to being successful on the job. Candidate performance on the assessment is evaluated consistently and with fit scores determining the assessment recommendation. While this is helpful in almost any hiring context there are a few areas where assessment for the potential to connect with, fit, and live your culture is particularly valuable. 
Hiring Assessments: Save Resources + Ensuring Consistent Standards
Consistently evaluating each and every candidate in a large applicant pool is tough. Assessments deliver an evidence-based means to prioritize candidates and decrease the burden of trying to evaluate dozens of candidates in a meaningful and consistent way. They allow you to easily select candidates for further review based on traits linked to their ability to perform. As you keep using assessments, you may find that you’re confident in not considering candidates that score below a set threshold.
Well, we collaborate and actively check in with you to understand both applicant flow and performance so we can set an effective benchmark for each fit score. For high volume roles, the earlier you can administer the assessment to candidates the more time savings – and performance dividends – you will achieve.
What about measuring fit with hiring assessments for high level roles?
Often, for higher level positions (i.e., Senior Leadership/Executive roles), candidates have more than proven their competence. In this case, you may want to seek to understand how each candidate will support the core values that ground your culture. Culture is both a shared definition of success and expectations for how that result is achieved. For example, we work with companies that emphasize success within the organization as a meritocracy, while others place a stronger emphasis on the success of the team. When selecting or promoting for these roles, fit scores and assessments focus on highlighting potential vulnerabilities and understanding the candidate. This information can be particularly valuable for guiding interviews. Indeed, our assessments come equipped with probing questions and the opportunity to couple the assessment with a structured, position-specific interview guide.
What are your goals? Building strong tools for employee development.
Assessments driven by measures of fit (with job demands or your culture) are most powerful when used in conjunction with other data sources such as interviews, situational judgment exercises, and even an evaluation of their previous experience. It might go without saying, but a hiring assessment should be used for that purpose alone. New hires are affected by their experience and respond differently than candidates to a hiring assessment.
A common joke within management consulting is that our favorite answer is, “it depends.” With hiring, and developmental assessments, seeking to understand potential and ‘fit’ those two words could not be truer. Fit indices and assessments provide exceptional value to understanding and evaluating candidates but starting with your ultimate end goals and objectives gives you the greatest probability of success.
Do you have a detailed understanding of your culture and how to hire and develop people at all levels to strengthen it? Our culture e-book, and CultureMap process, is especially helpful with defining your unique definition of success and the means through which it should be achieved – and building commitment to that vision throughout your team.
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