Eric Friedman is the Founder and CEO of eSkill, a global leader in skills testing and behavioral assessment solutions for employers.
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By the time the Great Resignation hit its peak in mid-to-late 2021, millions of workers in the United States had quit their jobs. While some economists, employers and talent agencies chalked up this mass exodus of able employees to a lack of desire to work, others believe that these individuals were simply seeking better opportunities.
Regardless of why these workers resigned, one thing has become starkly apparent: Businesses must revisit their approach to hiring.
When seeking employment, the modern generation of workers looks far beyond the digits that will appear on their paycheck. While competitive wages do weigh heavy in a candidate's decision when considering a job offer, they also consider factors such as work-life balance and company culture.
In light of these trends, organizations across all industries should look beyond assessing candidates based solely on experience and education. Instead, they should modernize their screening processes to effectively gauge an applicant’s values, culture fit and abilities.
Measuring Hard Skills And Cognitive Abilities
Traditionally, businesses have screened prospective employees by reviewing their resumes, contacting references and conducting in-person interviews. While these tactics are by no means without their merits, they provide little to no insight into a candidate’s motivations, job fit or talents. In addition, these strategies often favor the most “experienced” applicants, not necessarily the most talented or skillful.
Fortunately, you can alleviate these pain points by deploying skills tests and job task simulations to measure each applicant’s hard skills and cognitive abilities. A skills test is a specific type of pre-employment assessment that incorporates various question types, such as multiple select, short answer, true/false and select all that apply. You can measure on-the-job knowledge and skills so that you can see the candidates’ performance before you hire them or identify skills gaps before and after training.
Employers can craft and deploy job-specific skills tests to gauge position-specific abilities, such as typing, mechanical aptitude or knowledge of specific software. You can also measure cognitive traits such as attention to detail, listening skills, logical thinking or numerical reasoning.
HR leaders stand to gain more detailed insights with skills assessments than interviews, resume reviews and other traditional screening practices. If a candidate performs well on assigned skills tests, an employer can be confident that said applicant possesses the learned abilities necessary to succeed in their new position. However, skill is only one of the three pillars that make a great hire.
Assessing Intrinsic Values And Motivations
Assessing the underlying motivations and values that drive new hires can be just as important as accurately measuring their job-specific abilities. Even the most skillful staff members will not be successful within your organization unless they are fueled by the attitudes, values and intrinsic motivations that align with your organization—unless they are a culture fit.
Accurately assessing an applicant’s attitudes, values and motivations before bringing them onto your team can be a great way to determine if they're a good fit. As the impacts of the global skills gap and the Great Resignation continue to impact recruitment and hiring, businesses must find a way to identify and retain quality candidates.
By measuring attitudes, behaviors and values, HR leaders can unify staff members with similar motivations, work ethics and other behavioral attributes. In turn, this will create a sense of belonging in the workplace. HR leaders can focus on delivering behavioral assessments that aim to reveal the attitudes, values and motivations of a candidate. Hiring teams can leverage this information to identify and target applicants that align with organizational values, thereby paving the way for smarter hiring.
Focusing On Cultural Fit
The third and final pillar of better hiring is cultural fit. Many behavioral attributes will impact whether a candidate will be a good cultural fit for an organization. It depends on your organization, but such attributes might include integrity, work ethic and “grit.” A candidate who possesses all three of these traits in abundance would likely seamlessly integrate into a similar work environment and become an asset to the organization. On the other hand, a new hire lacking in any one of these areas could be toxic to an otherwise positive and productive workplace culture.
Once again, HR leaders should aim to assess candidates' potential cultural fit in their organizations. This allows human resources personnel to forge and preserve a positive workplace culture through data-driven hiring practices. Culture fit is also important on the employee side too. According to recent research, employees are more prone to quitting a job if they feel they do not belong. They measure for culture fit just as a company does.
Protecting Business Continuity
Testing for necessary skills can be a valuable practice for HR teams as they seek to hire better. However, such efforts are most effective when combined with behavioral assessments, which reveal information about an applicant’s motivations, personality traits and cultural fit.
Cumulatively, these practices can help hiring teams as they strive to protect company culture and create a welcoming working environment. In addition, HR personnel can glean invaluable information about all three pillars of effective hiring: skills, values and cultural attributes. HR can leverage these assessments to identify which applicants are the best fit for the organization, focusing their efforts on guiding those candidates through the remainder of the screening process.
If businesses hope to successfully traverse the scarcity of the talent marketplace of 2022, they must effectively measure skills, values and culture during their vetting and hiring processes.
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