It is no secret that a poorly executed recruitment process can be
extremely costly to your organization. In fact, a survey conducted by
The Australian in 2013 estimated that making the wrong hiring decision
can cost a business 250% or more of that employee’s salary.

However, with the right assessment processes in place, your
organization can take steps toward improving its recruitment strategies
and making more effective hiring decisions.

The four key components of effective assessment processes

While it’s true that the skills and capabilities of your potential
employees will play a big part in how well they excel in a particular
role, one of the most common mistakes organizations make during the
recruitment process is allowing this factor to have a disproportionately
large weighting on hiring decisions. It is simply no longer enough to
simply consider whether a candidate can perform the functions required
of the role. In order to assess if someone will not only perform the
role well, but stay with the company for the foreseeable future, other
factors also have to be considered. Here are four critical components of
assessment processes to use to make better recruitment decisions about
virtually any role.

1. Analyzing past behavior

It’s often been said that the best indicator of future behavior is
past behavior, and this is a great philosophy to carry into your
recruitment assessment processes. Make sure to ask your candidates about
past circumstances that may be relevant to the role they are applying
for. Inquire about previous workplace challenges they have faced, and
how they responded to these situations to see if these responses reflect
the qualities you are looking for in your new hire.

2. Assessing cultural fit

Although performance and potential productivity are important factors
in any good recruitment decision, it’s essential that you do not
undervalue cultural fit. Many businesses fail to consider how candidates
will fit into the existing working environment. However, by ensuring
the values of the candidate match up with the strategic values of your
organization, you can maximize the chance that the two parties will have
a long and successful relationship.

3. Personality profiling

Personality profiling, through tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type
Indicator, can give you a good understanding of the motivation of
prospective employees and the drivers that an individual has when they
are looking at moving into a new role. This process can also map out and
reveal ‘work masks’ – that is, differences between how individuals
might behave at work and how they might behave in their everyday life.
This can give you a better idea of how they would like to be managed and
what will motivate them if chosen for the role.

4. Reference checking

Another important but often-neglected component of assessment
processes is reference checking. Many businesses fall into a
confirmation-bias orientated, ‘tick-the-box’ approach when undertaking
this step, essentially having made up their minds about a candidate
before picking up the phone. While this isn’t necessarily a bad thing,
it can lead to hirers not giving reference checking enough weighting
when making a final decision. One solution to this might be to reference
check earlier during the recruitment process, so this information can
be used to better inform and validate future decisions.

How can technology improve my assessment processes?

One of the biggest barriers preventing HR departments and hiring
managers from paying attention to these aforementioned components of
assessment processes is lack of time. When you have more than 100
candidates to review, and a time-critical position that needs filling,
it can be easy to allow important steps to fall by the wayside.

Technology such as resume-parsing tools can assist with this process
and streamline the time-consuming aspects of recruitment. This allows
employers to pay greater attention to the areas that allow for better
strategic decision making.

Other components of technology, like searching for and engaging
candidates through social media, can also be leveraged to gain access to
a greater talent pool. With more candidates to consider, it is more
likely you’ll make a recruitment decision that will benefit your
organization in the long run. At the end of the day, successful
recruitment comes down to the available resources at your disposal. By
using technology to grow these resources, you can help eliminate the
dreaded bad hire and get on with the long-term goal of growing the
organization.

By looking at your assessment processes and technology, you can really beef up your entire recruitment and hiring.