Recruitment practices have changed significantly over the years. With time, new pre-employment screening trends have come into play and made it easy to hire the right people. From online skill assessment to the integration of AI, it’s clear that the future of hiring is quite promising.
At times, these trends in recruitment might be overwhelming to keep up with. Plus, it can be challenging to find the right recruitment strategy for your company. So, what exactly does the future of pre-employment screening hold, and how do you prepare for it? Keep reading to discover the answers in this comprehensive guide.
The evolution of pre-employment screening
Pre-employment assessments started as basic tests where the employer used aptitude tests to check candidates’ skills and abilities. An early example of this is the Alpha Army Test, which the US military used during World War I. These pen-and-paper tests checked candidates’ verbal and numerical abilities and their ability to heed instructions.
As time went on, companies adopted these methods to check how well candidates could perform a job before hiring them. These pre-employment testing procedures consisted of written and oral tests, which the candidates backed up with resumes.
In more recent times, pre-employment testing has adopted a more sophisticated system using AI-powered platforms like Vervoe to administer assessments.
These tests, specifically Vervoe, use skill identification, immersive question types, and on-the-job context and content to check how well each candidate can perform the job. In the end, the platforms compile the results and rank candidates accordingly.
Pre-employment tests now also include work-culture assessments that tell the employer if the candidate’s personality and culture align with the organization’s. These screening practices have been integrated into both on-site and remote hiring processes as an aid to interviews and resumes.
As pre-employment assessments evolved, various classifications of the assessments came into the limelight. These classes include personality tests, cognitive tests, hard skill tests, and soft skill tests. Here’s a quick breakdown:
- Personality tests assess the candidate’s personality, so you should have an idea of how they think and interact with others.
- Cognitive tests evaluate a candidate’s perception, reasoning, and problem-solving skills. These assessments can also tell you about the candidate’s critical thinking skills and ability to learn.
- Hard skill tests assess a candidate’s knowledge of a role and what it entails. Hard skill tests are role-specific assessments that evaluate a particular skill. For example, a front-end developer test would evaluate the skills specific to front-end developers.
- Soft skill tests directly measure character traits and interpersonal skills such as leadership, problem-solving, and time management skills.
Today, pre-employment testing utilizes integration with Artificial Intelligence (AI), data-based analyses, applicant tracking systems, and multiple communication channels. This has transformed the rigorous and time-consuming screening process into more streamlined and effective shortlisting.
Technological advancements shaping screening practices
Organizations in recent years have adopted technological advancements to shape their pre-employment screening practices.
When you think about recruitment, one of the first things that comes to mind is a resume or portfolio. But the thing is, resume screening isn’t a reliable method of candidate screening. According to a 2022 survey from StandOutCV, 64.2% of people admit to lying at least once on their resumes. As such, it’s best to leverage these technological advancements as much as possible. Let’s explore some of them below.
Resume scanning tools
Although resume scanning isn’t ideal as a primary strategy for recruitment, it’s still a common practice. Plus, completely ruling out the place of experience in recruitment isn’t ideal either. To this effect, it’s always advisable to use the resume scanning practice as a backup recruitment strategy.
The catch here is that businesses don’t have the time to scan possibly hundreds of resumes. Instead, they use resume screening software like resume parsers, resume enrichers, and AI-powered resume screeners. These tools assess the candidate to ensure their information is actually correct. And in the long run, they help you save shortlisting time.
AI-powered testing platforms
The truth is a candidate assessment during recruitment is no news in 2024. As time passes, the idea of hiring based on their background is becoming less relevant. This is possible because pre-employment platforms are only getting smarter, integrating AI technology and recruitment into their systems.
Artificial Intelligence in hiring not only enhances the candidate’s experience but also makes the recruitment process much easier for organizations.
On the candidate’s part, they can access information about the test and easily navigate the testing platform with the help of AI. For example, testing platforms now use virtual assistants and chatbots to help candidates navigate their platforms.
Organizations can also set up assessments, add company branding, and use AI-generated reports to structure their recruitment strategies.
Predictive analytics
One of the most challenging parts of recruitment is drafting a strategy that works for your organization. It gets even worse when there isn’t a system for analyzing former recruitment strategies to know what works best. However, the good news is recruiting software uses predictive analytics to ease this burden.
With predictive analytics, you can analyze reports from past recruitment processes and point out effective strategies. By consolidating this information, you can monitor and avoid past recruitment errors to make better hiring decisions. As such, you get the best out of your recruitment process.
Industry-specific innovations and best practices
As pre-employment screening evolves, industries come up with innovative ways to incorporate it into their hiring processes. Here are some industry-specific innovations and best practices with pre-employment testing:
- Accounting: Companies in the accounting industry use skill-level-based pre-employment tests to evaluate candidate’s accounting skills. These companies apply math, bookkeeping, and cognitive ability tests to check how fit a candidate is. They also apply shortlisting tools to find only the best candidate for the role.
- Health and medical: While pre-employment tests aren’t the primary judge of medical skills, the health industry uses these tests to evaluate other soft skills they require in an employee. For example, medical organizations apply communication tests to check how well the candidate can interact with patients and other hospital employees.
- IT services: Depending on the IT service an organization offers, they can use pre-employment screening tests to measure candidates’ hard IT skills. Examples of these tests include software operation assessments, tech-skill tests, and collaboration skill tests.
One thing to note here is that these companies utilize more than one pre-screening test while assessing candidates. This makes sure they’re testing knowledge, skill, and personality to find the best fit for the company and the job.
Addressing challenges and ensuring compliance
Like other parts of recruitment, pre-employment screening comes with its challenges. For one, pre-screening has its costs, and more often than not, businesses don’t draft a budget big enough to cover these expenses. This causes discrepancies that could lead to bad hires if you don’t handle them properly.
Here are some other challenges with pre-employment assessment and how you can handle them:
Lack of reliability
The truth is that pre-employment testing can modify and improve your recruitment process. However, they can also be inconsistent and, thus, unreliable, especially when judging personality.
On a personality test, a candidate can claim to be friendly and outspoken so that they get the job. As such, it might be difficult to judge their true characteristics based on a screening alone.
To curb this, you should be more objective. For example, with personality tests, you should avoid using questions that might make candidates give inconsistent answers.
Instead of asking questions like, “How important is a moral personality in the workplace?” you can use scenarios. Your question could paint a situation that can be a test of the candidate’s workplace morality. This way, you prevent generic answers and get an idea of their true personality.
Additionally, you should pair pre-employment testing with interviews or other screening media to evaluate candidates thoroughly.
Inadequate diversity
Pre-employment testing sets standards for candidates to pass, which could negate diversity and inclusivity in successful candidates. As a result, you could end up with candidates with similar backgrounds, soft skills, and personalities.
This lack of diversity can lead to a lack of innovation and effective communication in the workplace. This, in turn, could slow business progress and reduce revenue.
You can address this by recruiting people from varying platforms and running background checks to ensure diversity. You can also focus on pairing up pre-employment tests or using diversity recruiting tools to evaluate a particular metric. For example, you can use two tests to gauge a candidate’s experience rather than just one.
Compliance issues
It is possible for pre-employment screening procedures to breach compliance guidelines. There are regulations set up to guide employers while implementing a pre-employment test, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidelines.
EEOC guidelines are regulations that direct employers on how to administer a pre-employment test. The EEOC regulations include the following:
- Employers should administer the test without considering the applicant’s age, race, nationality, or religion.
- Employers should validate the tests, ensuring they are suited to the open position.
- If there are any changes to the job requirements, the employer should make adjustments to the tests accordingly.
To avoid compliance issues, you should familiarize yourself with these regulations and keep up with them. You can also hire specialists to make sure you’re always in the loop about pre-employment assessment laws.
What employers need to know for informed hiring decisions
If you’re in the labor market, you need as much information about your candidates as you can get. From their personalities to their experience and skill set, the future of employment demands using a data-driven approach when making hiring decisions.
With that in mind, finding reliable information about your candidates can be tricky. So, you can’t depend on one source. This means that even when using pre-employment assessments, you should use other media to discover more about your candidates.
For example, you could rely on interviews, background checks, remote hiring tools, or resumes alongside pre-employment testing. This gives you a more rounded approach when screening applicants.
To this effect, it’s vital to evolve alongside pre-employment screening. This means that you should keep up with skill-based hiring trends and introduce new strategies in your recruitment process.You can start by using AI-powered and reliable pre-employment testing platforms, like Vervoe, with diverse tests for your standards. All you have to do is create a free Vervoe account and explore our advanced screening options to supercharge your recruitment process today!
