Measuring Success:
Psychometric Assessments Mean Better Placements
Candidate "Fit" Within A Customer's Environment Is A Key Determinant Of Job Performance
Article originally published in the Jan/Feb 2007 issue of StaffDigest
With overall unemployment near record lows, staffing firms are again finding themselves in "talent wars" for skilled workers to fill open orders and positions. At the same time, staffing and recruiting customers have become even more sophisticated and demanding in the resources they want on the job. You can no longer send out an average candidate to a job and expect to win and keep a customer's business.
While hard skills testing and interviews have long been a part of staffing firms' value-add proposition, they alone are no longer enough to assure your customers that the candidate will fit in the position or the work environment. In fact, how a candidate "fits" within a customer's environment is often a key determinant of job performance -- which reflects back to you, the staffing provider, and affects your own business's performance.
So how do you get a better fit between a candidate and your customer's job order and work environment? How do you measure fitness for a particular position and turn it into a more profitable assignment or placement?
The solution is through the implementation of a more viable candidate assessment that can be made through psychometric testing.
What is Psychometrics and Why Does It Work?
Psychometrics is the field of study concerned with the theory and technique of psychological measurement, which includes the measurement of knowledge, abilities, attitudes and personality traits. Extensive research over the last twenty years has proven these elements to be critical in determining an individual's job performance, training potential, learning abilities, response to management initiatives and more.
The use of psychometric assessments has become an accepted tool in many companies with the numbers of new users increasing rapidly. It is clear that within the next few years, any company that wants to remain competitive must adopt some form of assessment technology if it wishes to select the right person for the right job and optimize the performance of those people.
Many psychometrics assessments are specifically designed for business use, and today, many assessments are available online and can be integrated with your staffing software to increase the effectiveness and productivity of your recruiters and staffing coordinators.
Naturally, psychometric testing tools are also built according to strict EEOC guidelines and industry standards staffing firms know they are following proper interviewing procedure. Because psychometric assessments measure a person's core cognitive and personality traits -- things that don't change over time staffing coordinators can use them with confidence when placing a candidate in one assignment after another.
Control Costs and Improve Margins
While assisting recruiters with candidate qualification, psychometric testing also delivers significant benefits to the staffing firm. Psychometric testing acts as a "success predictor" that assesses general intellectual, emotional, ethical and personality suitability or "fitness" for a job or position. By finding the right candidate quicker, psychometric testing reduces the overall recruiting and hiring cost, by lessening the number of candidates considered for a position.
Psychometric testing also improves the profitability of candidate placements and employee assignments. With more successful matches, customers not only return to your staffing firm again and again for future placements, but often at higher margins and candidate pay rates.
What Types of Assessments are Out There?
So now that you know how psychometric testing can benefit your recruiting efforts, what's the best way to get started? Psychometric testing is offered in different formats manual and online. If you prefer to give your candidates hard copy tests, you will have to enter the results into your system manually.
If you currently use a staffing software package, find out if the online psychometric testing can integrate with your solution. If you have this functionality, candidates can go online to your Web site and take the psychometric test while applying to your staffing firm reducing time-consuming administrative tasks for your staff.
In the dynamic and competitive staffing industry, psychometric testing offers staffing firms a competitive edge -- helping them improve the quality of the candidates that they place on assignments. Candidates are happier because they are placed in the right jobs, and both customers and staffing firms are more successful.
Benefits of Psychometric Testing:
- Reduces overall recruiting and hiring costs
- Reduces workers' comp claims
- Reduces employee turnover
- Reduces the potential for illegal activity
- Controls cost by reducing the number of candidates
- Helps to improve the profitably of candidate placement
About VCG
VCG provides comprehensive staffing and recruiting solutions that power success. Since 1976, VCG has helped hundreds of companies and more than 14,000 professionals worldwide achieve operational excellence by streamlining their unique business processes and accelerating finding and placing the people most likely to thrive. VCG, C-PAS, StaffSuite, TempWare-V, WebPAS, StaffSuite WorldLink and WebPAS WorldLink are registered trademarks of VCG, Inc. For more information visit: www.vcgsoftware.com or call 1.800.318.4983.
For more information regarding VCG or our solutions, visit our website or call 800-318-4983. VCG, C-PAS, StaffSuite, TempWare-V, WebPAS, StaffSuite WorldLink, and WebPAS WorldLink are registered trademarks of VCG Inc.