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5. When should assessments be inserted into the hiring process?

This can be mathematically determined to optimize the value of the assessment in the hiring process. In practice, however, there are many factors to determine the best positioning of the assessment. Some of these factors include the quality of the initial applicant pool. For example, with Internet job boards, organizations can be faced with a flood of clearly unqualified applicants that would be too costly to assess. In that case, a set of prescreening questions should be used to obtain a better pool of applicants-eliminating those who are obviously unqualified.

Another factor is the control and authentication of the applicant during assessment. When you have a number of anonymous job applicants applying over the Internet or telephone, you cannot be 100% certain who is actually answering the questions. In this case, you should be asking highly verifiable questions, such as 'are you of legal age to work,' 'what shifts can you work,' 'have you completed formal training in XYZ,' etc. A basic prescreening set of questions can also be used with this group of applicants.

However, if you were going to conduct an in-depth assessment of very specific skills (e.g. knowledge of Java computer programming), it would be desirable to verify the examinee's identity before administering the assessment. Therefore, a more lengthy and job-specific assessment is optimally administered on organizational premises, either by a hiring or HR manager-ensuring that both the applicant is authenticated and the assessment process if standard and fair.

In general, it's best to use automated assessment technology to narrow down the applicant pool before conducting face-to-face interviews. Interviews are relatively expensive compared to tests, and the bandwidth of your interviewers is limited. Therefore, it is essential that hiring managers are promptly provided the most qualified applicants to interview. The interview can serve many purposes, including screening, recruiting, 'marketing' both the job and your company, selecting, and negotiating the hire. Since qualified applicants are valuable commodity, you'll need to promptly identify, screen, interview, and select the most qualified candidate to ensure you quickly and effectively fill the vacancy with the best fit.

Since there is no one best approach to the hiring process, Vangent will help you map out the best approach for your specific goals…and then provide assessments and prescreening questions that can be used throughout the process.

Think of the hiring process as a flow of applicants through a funnel: Initially, many applicants inquire about the job; the most serious and those who meet the basic qualifications move on to the next step, which might be an assessment; and those who do well may move on to the personal interview. (Some steps that occur in parallel would include a background check; if required, a medical check would occur post-hire.) The key? Make the applicant funnel flow smooth, fast and efficient.