With the advent of technology and the internet, most industries and processes have witnessed a revolutionary transformation. The process of recruitment is no exception. It is no surprise that the technology enhances business and customer applications by utilizing deep learning, data analytics, cloud-based computing, virtual reality among others in today’s world.
If these technologies are adequately utilized these can significantly improve efficiency and can prevent various redundancies being faced by the organizations on the hiring front. Among them, assessment tools that are designed for testing a candidate personality, ability and aptitude serve as effective recruitment tools.
ROLE OF ASSESSMENTS IN HIRING
As per various studies, over 70% of resumes are inaccurate and approximately 40% of the resumes contain actual lies. Hence, the skill assessment tests give the recruiters assurance if the candidate possesses the stated skill or not.
The assessment tests act as a filter process and are beneficial for employers and job applicants as a whole as the hiring becomes faster. The following are some of the vital benefits that are gained by employers from having the right assessments as a component of the hiring process.
- Assessment in hiring stands for testing the personality traits, technical as well as soft skills of the candidate that can fit both the job and the organization. The results obtained through assessments can be used to determine whether a candidate is likely to stay and fit within the company culture.
- These assessment tests go beyond streamlining the hiring process and enhance equitability, objectivity and legal defensibility of a company’s recruitment process.
- Further, it reduces the cost and saves time by streamlining the selection process and also helps in reducing the turnover rate and providing better results.
- These pre-employment tests help in analyzing various characteristics of candidates such as ambition, leadership, teamwork, stress-tolerance power, analytic thinking, problem-solving abilities etc. needed during the job.
- By preventing the wrong hiring of the candidate, it reduces the negative cost spent at the time of hiring.
- It reduces bias with standardized, validated measures thereby providing complete satisfaction to the candidate.
- It also eliminates the barriers of scheduling the hiring process and the availability of the candidates.
WHAT ARE DIFFERENT KINDS OF ASSESSMENTS USED IN HIRING
The fast-growing use of assessment tools that range from skill-based tests to aptitude and personality tests makes the hiring process easy, productive and enjoyable thereby helping companies to target the candidates that are skilled and knowledgeable.
There are different types of pre-employment and employment assessments used by the organizations.
Various kinds of assessment used in hiring are as follows:
- Personality tests: These tests help the employers in determining the candidate fit in the company and how their personality can increase the productivity of the business. These tests determine the workplace patterns, relevant characteristics, traits and to different situations how people will respond.
- Job knowledge tests: It involves giving job-related tests by the employers to the candidates to test their knowledge about the job they are applying for. These types of tests are useful in the case of jobs that require specialized knowledge or a high level of expertise. Limitations include it doesn’t check for learning ability and many candidates are good learners despite less knowledge and sometimes people cannot put their knowledge in theory and apply it in practice.
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Integrity tests: This is the most objective test used by employers in measuring the reliability of the applicant by preparing questions that test the integrity and ethical guidance of candidates when they encounter a certain situation at the workplace. Below are some sample questions:
– Do you have the same core values inside and outside the workplace?
– Publishing work samples on your site is ethical according to you?
– Have you lied to your manager during your previous job?
– If asked to do some illegal work by the client, will you do it? - Cognitive ability tests: These questions are formulated to check the mental capacity of the candidate in the working place. The most commonly used cognitive test is the General aptitude test (GAT) which determines the ability related to logical, verbal and numeric reasoning to approach tasks.
- Emotional intelligence tests: These tests evaluate the candidate’s knowledge of emotion and relationship-building skills. If results came out to be high that indicates that the candidate can defuse conflict and relieve the anxiety of coworkers during their frustration. This not only reduces occupational stress but also result in lower employee turnover and increased personal well-being.
Skills that are revealed through emotional intelligence tests are as follows:
- Teamwork- it indicates that the candidate can succeed if they can collaborate with coworkers of different backgrounds and personalities as working together increases the chances of achieving goals and promotion to a higher level.
- Adaptability- depicts how the candidate can change according to the current needs and demands of the company.
- Empathy- involves understanding the emotions of others in a given situation which depicts that the employee is compassionate and willing to help coworkers to achieve their goals.
- Skill assessment tests: it includes testing the hard and soft skills of the candidate by the employers during the later stage of hiring to understand which candidate to hire. It further involves testing other skills such as research, presentation or leadership skills to advance in the hiring process
- Coding tests: it includes evaluating the individual’s ability to code effectively by assessing the candidate on various languages and technologies such as Unix shell, spring framework etc. This test effectively helps companies in determining which candidate possess the problem-solving skills that are required to be successful for the job.
LATEST TRENDS IN ASSESSMENTS AND THEIR IMPACTS
These latest trends are changing how assessment is delivered and provide a wide-ranging impact on many different organizations, including corporations, professional membership bodies, educational institutes, training companies and government departments. These are as follows:
1. END OF THE ROAD FOR PEN AND PAPER
There is another big change that has been observed with changing trends that are moving away from using pen and paper for delivering exams, as it involves many issues around administration and security, some of them are as follows-
- Presence of huge administration burden with printing, marking and storing papers.
- Lack of real-time visibility and reporting.
- Security issues with their transportation and managing their access among people.
- It takes a longer lead time for results.
- Nowadays, as people are mostly working on keyboards and screens and they are not used to writing hence, it becomes difficult for people to write the exam for hours.
- It is easier for errors to be made in data entry and reporting.
Hence, organizations are moving towards online assessments. EduThrill is one such comprehensive platform that gives the option of customizing the assessments as per the job specifications. Moreover, the platform has a library of more than 400000+ MCQ questions that cover 1000+ technical and functional skills. So, it’s easier for recruiters to use the platform be it for campus or lateral hiring process.
2. ONLINE PROCTORING/ REMOTE INVALIDATION
- Using remote invigilation to recreate the exam hall experience online depicts shifting away from the traditional assessment delivery method and this provides flexibility to the candidates to write the exam at any time from any place.
- In remote invigilation, the invigilator can watch over the candidate using video, audio and screen share which is recorded and used later for review if required.
- This remote invigilation helps organizations significantly by reducing administration overhead, providing greater security and the ability to extract the right candidate from any country worldwide.
3. ENGAGING AND GAMIFICATION ASSESSMENT
The changing trends demand more engaging and effective assessments. The common interview questions are often boring and ineffective. Most candidates have heard them before and hence, they have a ready script for those questions. Consequently, they fail to demonstrate their actual competency and skills. In such a scenario, gamification comes to their rescue. By using quizzes or challenges, a fun element is added to a dull recruiting process. Moreover, candidates get to show their creative side and problem-solving capabilities and mental agility.
EduThrill is one such platform that uses gamification to make learning and assessment pleasant. The students can practice through various fun games, challenge their friends and prepare through engaging games. This helps them learn by fun.
4. ONE-WAY INTERVIEW
- One way video interview allows you to make the hiring process more collaborative.
- Instead of having one hiring manager, there will be a team of members to review candidates, provide comments, and give assessments.
- Companies are turning to one-way interviews as they are offering distinct advantages such as scheduling mo re interviews at the same time, widening the candidate pool and helping in assessing technological skills.
5. INCREASED LEVEL OF AUTOMATION
- Industry experts believe that recruitment automation will augment and enhance human recruiter’s abilities, rather than completely replace them.
- Recruitment automation make changes in the following ways:
- Automated resume screening reduces the time of hire by saving recruiters hours that are spent manually reading resumes.
- Automated pre-qualification enhance candidate experience by providing continuous, real-time feedback.
- One way interview helps in analyzing candidate words, speech patterns and facial expressions.
6. ASSESSMENTS ARE MORE CANDIDATE-CENTRIC
- With changing trends, organisations are now adopting a more “candidate-centric” approach. The contemporary recruitment process involves enhancing the engagement with the candidates.
- Research highlights that 63% of job seekers reject job offers based on bad candidate experience and 72% of candidates have bad experiences that they can share online. Hence, organisations are more focusing on the candidate-centric hiring process.
- Nowadays, companies have ditched the outdated request for CV and instead opt for interactive activities, video submissions and games, communicating with the candidate through phone or skype call, performing the one-stage interview. These things help both the candidate in having an idea about the job they are applying, and the organization will get a real insight into the candidate’s skill.
- And lastly, a hiring organization can streamline the onboarding process which keeps the candidate up to date and improve the efficiency of the onboarding process.
BENEFITS OF NEW-AGE ONLINE ASSESSMENTS IN HIRING
- It saves a lot of time spent by the company in organizing the offline assessment.
- The virtual process is significantly cheaper than the physical one.
- The results are quicker and more precise as the assessments are performed on a computer. Moreover, the chances of bias are eliminated in the case of online assessments.
- As the test is performed online, it gives the candidate an advantage to perform the test at their convenience. Hence, a higher number of candidates are likely to appear.
- The test can be taken up by multiple candidates from various locations. This improves the reach and accessibility.
USP OF EDUTHRILL’S ASSESSMENT SOLUTIONS
- EduThrill uses gamification and artificial intelligence that make assessment engaging for candidates and hiring process cost-effective.
- It facilitates virtual video and coding interviews using state-of-art interview tools.
- Candidate selection is performed using AI-powered analytics reports and ATS tools.
- The company has created a set of 400000+ questions that assess the technical and functional skills of candidates using an AI-driven gamified assessment platform which help the organizations in screening the best candidate based on required skills for the job.
- It also includes platform Codelyzer that can be used to evaluate IT candidates on coding, design, architecture and quality parameters as it supports multiple languages and help in accessing the candidate capabilities.
- The company put forth news and posts about recruitment drives on the website and various social media platforms thereby providing the organization with higher viewership and receiving various applications from across the world.
- They further provide data and analytics, thereby ensuring the best cultural fit. This reduces the cost and time of hiring.
TO SUM UP!
Gone are the days when hiring was done via machine test, aptitude test, followed by a formal interview in a cubicle. The world has gone digital and so have the business processes. Gen-Z is looking out for innovative organizations. And the first impression of any organization is in the way they conduct their recruitment. Hence, organizations need to switch to more engaging new-age hiring and assessment solutions. This not only helps them to build their brand but also make the hiring process more effective and engaging. The new-age assessment solutions help them filter the candidates in no time. The assessments are online and hence the results are quick. Moreover, the organizations have options of either creating the tests from the online library or customizing their own tests. All these features plus the additional user-friendly functionalities are provided by EduThrill.
If the recruiters want to make their hiring process more engaging, attractive and fun, then they must opt for platforms like EduThrill. While the recruiters can use the new-age assessment solutions offered by EduThrill, the job seekers can prepare for interview for any job functions spreading across IT, Marketing, Sales, HR, BFSI, Accounting & Audit, Analyst etc. with AI-driven gamified assessment and analytics. Hence, the platform is comprehensively built to cater needs of recruiters and jobseekers.
