Employment Screening Tests Improve Talent Acquisition and Retention.

 

The challenge of attracting and retaining the best new talent is tougher than ever. Facing a tight labor market and expanding employment options, today’s banks and credit unions are seeking new strategies to find and keep talented professionals who will excel in today’s rapidly changing financial work environment.

The good news is there are new, easy-to-use screening tests specifically designed for financial institutions that simplify the hiring experience while pinpointing high-caliber candidates. These cost-effective tools expand access to qualified candidates, eliminate delays, and offer an engaging candidate experience.  

These are three key ways banks and credit unions are using new employment screening tests to streamline and improve their HR processes.

RECRUITING:
Attract and Engage the Right People

To compete for the best new talent, today’s financial centers understand the importance of sharing their story and marketing their employer brand. Through engaging screening tools like interactive job previews, banks and credit unions can highlight their vision and values and share why their organization is a great place to work. Basic screening questions to ensure candidates meet the minimum requirements can be added to job previews. These can potentially replace cumbersome, time-consuming job applications that results in high candidate drop rates.  Well-designed previews can boost candidate completion rates to more than 90% – keeping the best candidates in the pipeline.

An additional benefit is creating realistic job expectations. For instance, traditional roles like teller are a thing of the past, but do your job candidates know that? The last thing you want to hear as new hires walk out the door is, “Wow, I didn’t realize how much this job involved,” or “I didn’t know I was going to be expected to sell.”  More and more financial centers are providing their candidates with a clear and realistic preview of the job so there are no surprises down the road.

HIRING:
Pinpoint Tech-Savvy Candidates with Stellar Sales and Service Skills

The most successful financial centers understand the diverse talents needed to succeed. They measure these attributes directly in the hiring process – and aren’t afraid to reject candidates that don’t possess those attributes. Financial centers whose main concern is filling openings with warm bodies, assuming they can train new hires regardless of what they bring to the table, will fail spectacularly. On the other hand, organizations that use employment screening tests to evaluate job-specific skills and attributes have a clear advantage in identifying high-potential candidates who can hit the ground running.

DEVELOPMENT:  
Identify and Develop Future Financial Center Leaders

Another key challenge for any modern financial center is identifying and preparing the next generation of leaders. Since many financial center managers are nearing retirement, it’s more critical than ever to identify and groom your next generation of leaders. While a common practice is simply promoting high-performing employees into management roles, the reality is that many of these employees neither want nor have the attributes to succeed in a leadership role. Successful financial centers recognize this and use job-specific assessments like simulations to assess leadership potential and chart out a clear path for career development.  Effective simulations not only identify readiness, but also provide a tailored developmental path to help employees reach the next level.

By leveraging new technologies for employment screening, financial services organizations will have the tools they need to attract and engage the best new talent while identifying and developing their future leaders.

 

Ask Joe!

Joe LaTorre serves as Director of Innovation for Employment Technologies. As you’d expect with that job title, Joe keeps his finger on what’s next in technology, especially trends that optimize talent prediction. He holds an M.S. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology and has more than 30 years of national and international consulting experience. If you have a question about talent acquisition or retention, you can reach him at 888.332.0648.