The people you hire are your most important asset. They are what will drive company growth. It is why the hiring process can become so expensive, and why it is so important to get it right.
Cost of hire for a single candidate typically runs into the thousands of dollars, or tens of thousands for more senior roles. This includes the overheads to do with HR personnel, advertising vacancies, training and equipment. Then there is the additional and hard-to-quantify cost of getting a new hire fully up to speed - usually a process that takes a few months.
And what happens if your company hires a candidate who turns out to be a poor performer, or worse, incompetent?
Here’s the typical impact:
Hiring a poor performer negatively affects team and company productivity.
You have to pay the salary and associated costs of a bad employee.
A poorly performing colleague can affect the morale and commitment of other employees.
It creates the opportunity cost of missing out on more suitable candidates
At some point, after what is often a long hiring process, you have to fire the underperformer. Then you start again from scratch, incurring yet more hiring costs as well as absorbing the detrimental impact on your company of having the vacancy go unfilled during the recruitment process.
This is where rigorous pre-employment testing comes in. Pre-employment assessments make your hiring process smoother, ensuring you get your new hires right at the first time of asking, lowers your hiring costs and reduces time-to-hire. It takes much of the onerous side of hiring away.
Effective Pre-Employment Testing for Optimized Hiring Processes
At MSELECT we use IBM Kenexa Skills Assessments to offer our clients a faster, cost-efficient, highly effective hiring process.
The IBM Kenexa Skills Assessments cover over 1,000 online tests, covering a diverse range of topics, including finance, administration, languages, IT, email, customer service, industrial, engineering and many more. They are further broken down into more specific skills and job functions. Some examples are accounts payable, software proficiency (such as Microsoft Office, Acrobat and so forth), programming, arithmetic and spelling tests, data entry and various types of coding.
The tests are conducted online, they are timed and the results are sent to us. We also provide copies to our clients if desired. They are rigorous, wide-ranging in scope and are directly pertinent to the type of task assigned to, and contribution expected of, the ideal candidate for the vacant position.
For international clients recruiting professionals from various countries, language tests are also a common step, notably professional English for international communication.
The Benefits to Your Company of Pre-Employment Testing
Pre-employment testing delivers a number of benefits that can have a massive impact on your company. These include the ability to:
1. Identify qualified candidates quickly, and reduce recruiting costs and time-to-hire
Pre-employment testing streamlines your hiring process. It allows you much greater accuracy in identifying and eliminating unsuitable candidates early. This saves you time and cost.
2. Only interview high-calibre candidates
Only suitable candidates are moved forward to the interview stage by removing those who fail at the pre-employment testing stage. Not only does this make the process more efficient, it also helps in making the right hiring decisions.
3. Drive organizational performance by increasing the quality of your hires
With the aid of pre-employment testing, your company makes improved hiring decisions. This change is then felt within the company. The highly qualified new employee is much more likely to make a positive contribution to the performance of your company. Moreover, matching highly qualified candidates with the aid of pre-employment testing with the right role in a great organisation typically increases your employee retention rates and lowers staff turnover.
The final word
Pre-employment testing offers so many valuable benefits and makes your recruitment campaigns more effective, less costly and less complex. Good hiring practices form the cornerstone of any successful company eager to grow, and by recruiting professionals who have proven their ability and knowledge by passing pre-employment tests, your company positions itself better for success.