The How and Why of Assessments in Staffing
By Julie Moreland
Managing Partner, PeopleClues
www.peopleclues.com
Organizations typically survive or fail based on the performance of their employees. The company may have the best product in their market but, for many reasons, fail to hire, coach and motivate the right employees to make that product a success. Companies spend enormous amounts of time and money on R&D, marketing, publicity, market analysis, etc. and then short cut funds and energy when it comes to investing in finding the right talent and securing it for the long term.
Most analysts now agree that we are in a labor shortage and that it will only get worse with each year going forward.
About Julie Moreland
Julie Moreland is Managing Partner of PeopleClues.
During the past 15 years, Julie has become a nationally respected authority on practical business applications of assessment technologies. She is the co-developer of several employment assessment products used for pre-employment screening, career development, team development as well as training and development.
This article is not intended to discuss this particular subject in detail only to point out that attracting, capturing and motivating the right talent for your company has never been more competitive or critical. While technology allows us to continue to improve our products and services, we must focus on the “people” side of our businesses to survive. Even a mediocre product or service can be highly successful if you have the right people to drive and manage your business.
A major question that is on the minds of many Human Resource and other Senior Management is whether or not to use employment assessments and if so, which ones. Our intent is to very briefly layout the basics of employment assessments. Assessments now come in all shapes and sizes, and the employment assessment industry continues to grow at a rapid pace. The good news is that there is greater information available now regarding these assessments. The bad news is that there can be so many to choose from that it is difficult to determine which ones are best for your business.
There are hundreds if not thousands of different employment assessments available today. So many of them are developed by small companies and only sold locally that it is impossible to know exactly how many there are. So let’s break down the basics:
Employment assessments generally fall into 4 categories:
1. Behavioral Assessments (Personality Characteristics and Traits)
2. Cognitive Assessments (Speed of learning and Problem Solving)
3. Skills Assessments (Measure hard/learned skills and capabilities)
4. Attitude Assessments (Measures attitudes and self-admissions to certain behaviors such as honesty)
Some of the basic ways that employment assessments are used are:
1. Pre-employment screening
2. Coaching
3. Team Building
4. Training
5. Succession Planning
6. Outplacement
Information gained from using these assessments falls into 3 general categories:
1. Does the person know how to do a particular task?
2. Does the person fit the job by having the underlying traits or core behaviors to do the task?
3. Does the person want to perform the task?
Steps to take “prior” to choosing employment assessment(s:
1. Outline or review your corporate human resource strategy. Where is the business or your business unit growing or changing, and what people resources are you going to need to fulfill the overall strategy?
2. Then, it is critical to “clearly” understand the tasks that must be performed within each job. Performing a job analysis is a critical step prior to using employment assessments. If you don’t know what the job requires, it is very difficult to know if you’re hiring people who can be successful in the job. It is also critical that you are documenting “why” you are looking for particular traits or skills within a job. Regardless of whether you use assessments, this step is the cornerstone to creating a solid and legally defensible selection system. To say that “I need to hire people with good math skills” should be “documented” as a skill that is actually important for success in the job versus just being a skill that you “think” is important.
3. Now that you understand what each job requires, you can begin to determine which employment assessment(s) can help you get the information on “Fit”, “Skills” and “Attitudes” within your selection process for each job. Please see the section below on what you should look for in choosing assessments.
Items of importance when choosing employment assessment(s):
1. The most important thing in choosing an assessment is making sure that it is valid and reliable for the purposes in which you intend to use it. For example, there are “behavioral/personality” assessments that are completely valid for training and development and not for hiring. Be sure you are comparing apples to apples when considering various assessments.
2. Choose assessment(s) that have current validation studies and technical manuals that have been updated within the last couple of years.
3. Unless you are prepared to spend a lot of money on training and professional interpretation, choose assessments that are easy to use and understand. This will allow you to build an automated process that utilizes technology rather than labor. Your managers should be able to use the assessments and information without expecting them to become experts in assessments.
How assessments can fit within a selection process:
There are many factors that go into designing a selection process such as whether or not you have plenty of applicants applying for the position versus a position where you are working hard to find any qualified applicants. In scenario one, you’re “screening” and in scenario two, you’re “sourcing”. Given the overall labor shortage, a selection process should be as painless and as quick as possible to avoid turning off qualified candidates.
There has to be a balance between making sure you’re screening people who clearly are not suited for the position requirements but at the same time quickly capturing information on those who are suited. For that reason, many companies will use a “funnel” approach to their selection process so that the applicants are only doing very quick steps one at a time rather than being expected to spend an hour filling out resume info, completing pre-screening surveys and then taking assessments. If you build your process well, you can streamline these steps and only have people completing each step as necessary and very quickly.
In an ideal world, we could get “all” the information we need from the applicant at one time and get the “total picture” before we choose to spend time interviewing them. In today’s environment with a labor shortage, we may not have the luxury of asking applicants to spend that much time before they move on to another prospective employer.
The good news is that many of the applicant tracking systems do allow for a “stepped” approach to happen electronically. The applicants come into the ATS and they complete various steps along the way with the system actually sorting and communicating with them to take additional steps “if” they are qualified at each point in the process.
You will notice that there are many “critical” steps shown in the above example. Assessments are NOT intended to replace other critical steps such as background checks and interviews. Assessments are “in addition” to other very important screening steps. Interviews and particularly background checks are critical to making sure you are verifying information that applicants are giving you, so therefore, they should also be a major component of any screening process.
Some other things to consider in regard to employment assessments:
1. Should I choose assessments that allow me to utilize the information throughout the lifecycle of the employee? For example, if you choose a valid “behavioral/personality” assessment for screening, you could also use that information to coach the new employee as well as assist with their succession plan.
2. Should I choose an online system that allows you to get most if not all of your assessment information from within one place? If you can source with an applicant tracking system, then screen with attitudinal assessments, behavioral assessments, skills assessments and then conduct background checks from within one application, wouldn’t that make your process more efficient and easy?
3. Choose a vendor that can grow with your company over time. Particularly if you have divisions or departments that are in other countries, choose a vendor that can support international assessment requirements.
4. Choose a vendor that is committed to providing you the highest quality possible at the lowest price possible. With gains in technology, it is no longer necessary to pay high prices for assessments.
As technology becomes more affordable, it will be easier than ever for smaller companies to compete in the global market. As competition grows more intense for the same products and services, the true competitive advantage for any company is their people. Hiring, coaching and motivating employees who “fit” their respective jobs is the competitive advantage that can make or break the business! Today there are high-quality, affordable tools that make the selection process easier and help ensure that you are indeed making great “people” decisions!
Other aspects to consider regarding employment assessments include: when to use, how to use, creating success profiles and utilizing assessments within training and development. The information above is provided in order to give a starting point for considering the use of employment assessments.
About VCG
VCG provides comprehensive staffing and recruiting solutions that power success. Since 1976, VCG has helped hundreds of companies and more than 12,000 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.