Top 5 Reasons You Need to Conduct a Pre-Employment Skills Testing

In the high-stakes world of hiring, every decision is crucial. But have you ever stopped to ponder the real cost of a wrong hire?

A SHRM report highlights a jaw-dropping expense of $4,129 and an average wait of 42 days to fill a single position. The answer would immediately be pre-employment skills testing. But, the idea of conducting skill tests can be debilitating. Especially since it will make the recruitment process outrageously longer. Therefore, you might avoid them altogether and miss out on the benefits of conducting skill tests, especially when you have to hire at a large scale.

Yet, the landscape of recruitment is evolving, thanks to AI technology. Advanced video interviewing platforms like EVA-SSESS have revolutionized pre-employment skills testing, making it both swift and efficient. It’s essential to remember that the core objective of recruitment is to secure the most qualified individuals for the job – those who can master the tasks at hand effectively. But how can this be achieved more seamlessly?

This article explores why adding skills testing to your hiring process is key. Let’s see how this can totally transform your approach to hiring.

The Power of Pre-Employment Skills Testing: How to Maximize Your Hiring Potential

Pre-employment skills testing is the process of evaluating a candidate’s abilities and competencies in a specific area. This can include technical skills, soft skills, and even physical abilities.

In today’s competitive job market, pre-employment skills testing has emerged as a cornerstone of a successful hiring strategy, especially when scaling your team. This methodical approach not only streamlines the recruitment process but ensures that you’re bringing on board individuals whose skills align perfectly with your organizational needs. 

Let’s dive into how pre-employment skills testing can be transformative for your hiring process.

Break the Recruitment Loop: Hire Smarter, Not Harder

Removing or skipping pre-employment skills testing in your recruitment process might cost you time, effort, and money, especially when you make the wrong hire. On the other hand, when hiring at scale, soft skills assessment in your pre-employment process enables you to hire high-quality employees.

Imagine fulfilling the necessary steps of a recruitment process without assessing the skill sets of your candidate. A few weeks after the candidate gets onboard, you discover that they lack the actual skills, knowledge, and experience for the job role. This discovery can be frustrating and heartbreaking for any hiring manager or HR professional! 

To keep this as an imaginative thought and to avoid the reality of repeating a recruitment process, it is vital to have pre-employment skills testing as part of the requirement in the pre-employment process.

Avoid ‘Good Interviewees’ And Hire The Right Candidates

With skills assessment in place, you have a higher chance of recruiting the right candidate needed for a job role. Throughout the assessment, you can single out candidates who are well suited for a job with tests that are tailored to individual job roles. 

One way to achieve this is by evaluating candidates according to your model answer. For example, our video interviewing software enables you to compare the candidate’s answer to your model answer. A model answer works as a guideline for the assessor and is usually made during the formulation of the assessment questions. It contains keywords and answers that you expect to hear from candidates.

Then, the video interviewing software will generate a relevancy percentage that dictates how closely the candidate’s answer matches your model answer. This will help you seamlessly rank candidates in order of qualification and find top talent at the speed of light.

Spend Less Time When Hiring at Scale

On average, just one job opening receives over 200 applications. This means that when hiring at scale, hiring managers have to deal with many more candidates than they would have anticipated.

At first glance, incorporating pre-employment skills testing into the recruitment process might seem like an additional, daunting task amidst an already overwhelming number of applications. Many are concerned that this step could extend the hiring timeline, causing delays in filling crucial roles.

However, our advanced recruitment software, EVA-REC, makes it easier for you to parse and filter a mass number of resumes in a fraction of the time. By simply dragging and dropping resumes into the resume parser, EVA-REC will parse the information found in the resumes and create a profile for every candidate. This way, hiring managers can significantly reduce 80% of the time spent on manual resume review.

Metric	With EVA-REC	Without EVA-REC
Time to post	4 minutes	20-30 minutes
Time to screen	4 hours	23 hours
Time to interview	1 day	3-6 weeks
Time to fill	7 days	36 days
Time to hire	Up to 1 week	6 weeks
Time to onboard	Before day one!	3-6 months

Can Be Adapted to Different Roles And Job Types

Being able to apply pre-employment skills testing in all situations is one of its biggest advantages. From a startup of 5-50 employees to a multinational company and from a web developer role to one in a warehouse, skills tests can be applied to any job type or role. 

Pre-employment skills testing can be set to assess a general or specific skill level of candidates. It covers the standard skills of communication required to work in a team to the complicated skills of programming. This element has contributed to the rise in the popularity of applying skills assessments for recruitment purposes.

Track the Skill Capacity of Each Employee

Implementing pre-employment skills testing provides insights into the skill levels of potential hires, allowing you to match them with roles they are best suited for from the outset. 

Moreover, tracking the skill development of employees facilitates targeted training and development efforts. This foresight ensures that your workforce remains competitive and capable of growing alongside your business.

Pre-employment skills testing is not just a trend; it’s a strategic approach to modern hiring. By incorporating this into your recruitment process, you’re optimizing your hiring process and investing in your organization’s long-term success. The ability to accurately assess, select, and develop talent is more than just an operational advantage – it’s a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced business environment.

Keeping It Short

Navigating the endless cycle of recruitment? The absence of effective skill assessment tests has left many HR professionals and hiring managers in a loop. Break free with EVA-SSESS—our cutting-edge skills and video interviewing platform designed for seamless, scalable hiring. Dive in now and transform your recruitment journey. Ready to make the leap?

EVA-SSESS is an AI-powered video interviewing software that helps companies identify, hire, and develop top talent fast. EVA-SSESS offers richer insights into the assessment process through AI technology, reliable video-based assessments, and scientifically validated psychometric reports. Companies from all over the world rely on EVA-SSESS to build customizable assessments, detect ideal keywords, rank applicants, filter out correct answers, and effortlessly assess the skills that are tough to measure. Request a free demo today!

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