Judgment call

When deciding to use assessments, organisations will find numerous assessment products and vendors on the market. Ideally, organisations should use tools that will increase the likelihood of hiring candidates who will perform well on the job – thus leading to demonstrable economic returns. The impact of poor hiring decisions can have expensive and far-reaching outcomes, such as increased employee replacement and training costs, or increased legal liability. Organisations that carefully choose assessments and related services that best meet their business needs will have a clear competitive advantage.

“The use of IT assessments in our internal and external hiring practice ensures we are hiring the right people with the right abilities for growing and supporting our business. It also provides an accurate skills inventory for our technology group which allows us to determine necessary gaps in skill sets where employee training is required.”  Claire Rawlins, Director of Operational Integrity, British Telecom plc

Return on investment
Using assessments to make better hiring and promotion decisions will lead to improvement in relevant business outcomes. This is accomplished by preserving the people who are proven to increase revenue and productivity for the organisation. Effective use of selection assessments will also provide broader cost savings due to increased process efficiency, higher retention rates of top performers and decreased time-to-hire in the internal and external recruitment process. Furthermore, economic benefits will result when properly developed candidate assessment procedures enhance legal defensibility of the hiring process.

 “Our technology group has realised clear links between skills assessments and the quality of work performed by its employees. We are showing a direct correlation between consistently assessing our current employees and new recruits and an increase in shareholder value.”  Claire Rawlins, Director of Operational Integrity, British Telecom plc

The following points are general recommendations and best practices for designing an assessment program as part of a hiring process. Organisations who wish to incorporate assessments into their hiring process should obtain the guidance of legal counsel, consult with sources such as their human resources department or external experts, review laws regarding testing, and consider best practice guidelines from reputable professional organisations.

Understand and document job requirements
The first key component in designing an effective hiring process involves clearly understanding and documenting the requirements of a job by conducting a job analysis. A job analysis will permit the employer to identify and document the primary work activities, competencies, knowledge, skills, abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) required for successful job performance. Based on the job analysis results, the next step is to identify or tailor one or more well-developed assessments that measure the competencies and/or work behaviours.

Establish assessment validity for the job
A key component in developing a sound assessment program is to formally establish the job relatedness or validity of any assessments chosen. There are several accepted methods of establishing validity evidence. These validation strategies are designed to provide data-driven evidence that the assessment is related to job performance and/or established job requirements, thereby enhancing the legal defensibility of the hiring process. Validity generally falls into three main categories: Content Validity, Criterion Related Validity and Validity Transportability.

Implement assessments effectively
While job analysis and validation are critical components to an effective and defensible selection system, consistent and appropriate implementation of the assessment process is also important.

Effective and consistent implementation includes training administrators to follow specific assessment guidelines. Procedures should be put in place to ensure security of the assessment so that no candidate has an unfair advantage. There are multiple strategies for using assessment scores in making hiring decisions. These strategies include setting appropriate passing scores on specific assessments or a combination of assessments, using a top-down selection approach based on a rank-ordered list of applicant assessment scores, and/or implementing multiple decision points in the selection process.

Evaluate and optimise the effectiveness of the assessments
Many organisations find that as their business environment changes, some procedures no longer enable them to successfully meet hiring objectives (e.g., they screen out too many candidates), and therefore must be modified to reflect these changes. Similarly, as jobs and job requirements change, assessments may need to be modified, typically based on an updated job analysis procedure. Also, evaluating the entire assessment program helps identify areas where administrators are not consistently following established guidelines so that additional training or education can occur. Ultimately, evaluation and refinement after a selection solution is implemented enables an organisation to optimise its hiring process and will have positive affect on desired business results