FAQ Categories

Using Assessments For Hiring

What are the key benefits of using assessments for hiring?
Does using assessments increase my risk of legal action against my company?
How can I estimate the value of adding an assessment to my selection process?
Assessments are never 100% accurate, so why should I use them?

What are the key benefits of using assessments for hiring?

There are three main benefits of using assessments:

1. Increased performance of new hires
2. Reduced turnover
3. Increased efficiency of the hiring process

Every organization depends on the performance of all of its employees. By selecting new hires that are more likely to perform, the performance of the organization increases over time. Additionally, people who perform well are likely to enjoy their work and remain on the job longer, which reduces turnover. Finally, when dealing with large volumes of candidates, using assessments for pre-screening can eliminate candidates that do not fit without taking up valuable time. For HR departments with limited staffs and budgets, this can help you do more with less, without sacrificing quality.

Does using assessments increase my risk of legal action against my company?

Used properly, assessments actually reduce the risk of successful legal action. First, assessments are objective and not subject to human prejudice and bias. Where is an employee likely to get a basis for complaint: from a poorly conducted interview or from a clearly job-related assessment? Which scores will appear more objective: assessment results or interview notes? Additionally, responsible third party assessment vendors have documented the processes used to build and validate the assessment, and usually have information available regarding adverse impact and the best way to use the assessment.

To learn more about reducing legal risk, please refer to the Legal Compliance FAQ.

How can I estimate the value of adding an assessment to my selection process?

Since there are multiple benefits, this is not always easy. However, we find that one benefit often stands out in every situation, and this one benefit is usually more than enough to justify the program. For example, if you're hiring salespeople, you can multiply the expected increase in average sales production per salesperson by the number of salespeople you are hiring. If it's turnover that you're trying to reduce, you can multiply the expected reduction in turnover by the cost to your organization of a voluntary turnover. If you're hiring IT staff for an important project, you can estimate the reduction in training time you'll get by hiring candidates who can hit the ground running.

Brainbench client services staff can help you in evaluating your situation and developing a value estimate. Please contact us, so we can help you.

Assessments are never 100% accurate, so why should I use them?

Every employee selection process you use, assessments included, have some amount of error associated with it. The field of Industrial/Organizational Psychology is dedicated to understanding and minimizing these errors. For example, unstructured job interviews have been shown to have a fairly high error rate, in which poor performers are hired and potentially high performers are not hired.

The idea behind using assessments in your hiring process is to reduce the overall error rate and reduce the number of poorly performing new hires or new hires that leave as soon as training is completed on an overall basis. A common analogy is the weather. Everyone knows that the weather report on any given day is not completely accurate, but farmers pay a great deal of attention to the weather, because it reduces costly mistakes on an overall basis.