How to Conduct a Talent Assessment to Build Better Teams

Building high-performing teams is a cornerstone of success for all organisations. However, the shortage of tech talent today is an undeniable reality. To overcome this handicap, organisations must build robust processes to find, assess and retain the best talent. Similarly, to assemble a group of individuals who complement each other’s strengths and compensate for weaknesses, it is crucial to develop a strategic approach to talent assessment.

What is a talent assessment strategy?

A talent assessment strategy refers to the approach or plan used by organisations to evaluate the knowledge, skills, personality traits and cognitive abilities of candidates and employees. The approach also checks for alignment between the candidates and employees with the business goals of the organisation.

Talent assessment is more than a set of tests. It involves designing and using the right assessment tools and techniques to not only hire the best talent but also retain them. It is also important to remember that high-potential candidates needed to build a strong team may be hired from both internal and external sources.

What is talent assessment used for?

Talent assessment is usually conducted for one or more of five reasons.

They include:

• Pre-employment assessment to check the suitability of candidates for an opening
• Alignment of new talent to roles that best suit them
• Succession planning for various roles
• Evaluation of performance
• Training and development of employees

Benefits of a sound talent assessment strategy

Talent assessments have a positive impact regardless of the industry. The benefits include:

1. Get the best talent onboard

Talent assessments enable organisations to hire people with the right skills and talents that fit the job descriptions. They make the hiring process streamlined and data-driven. Such a system of assessment inspires trust among candidates. Also, the belief that the hiring process is based on the candidates’ attitudes and abilities boosts the quality of candidates competing for the open positions.

2. Reduce costs and streamline processes

Using online assessment tools helps organisations reduce hiring and training expenditures. Further, online tools enable simultaneous assessment of large numbers of candidates in a streamlined way making the whole process cost-effective and efficient. A streamlined assessment process is especially important during employee training since it allows the identification of learning challenges and gaps. The ensuing training sessions can then be delivered in a highly targeted manner.

3. Avoid costly hiring mistakes

Unsound hiring decisions can get very expensive in the long run. Yet they continue to happen. The reasons are manifold:

• Lack of qualified candidates
• Candidates being untruthful about their qualifications and experience
• Pressure to fill vacant positions quickly
• Errors made by recruiters.

By conducting online assessments to evaluate skills and personality traits, candidate claims about experience and abilities can be convincingly validated in a structured way. The hiring pitfalls listed earlier can be effectively avoided.

4. Hire at scale

Although low-volume hiring may be smooth even without talent assessments,  organisations that hire frequently or at high volumes must implement systematic talent assessments to avoid any hiring compromises. Online assessments are especially useful as a first level of screening.

5. Ensure culture fit

A well-designed talent assessment strategy considers all aspects of a candidate’s suitability, not just skills and work experiences. Such an assessment can skillfully assess if a candidate possesses all the behavioural traits required to thrive in the organisation’s existing work culture. A culturally bad-fit employee can quickly lose interest and become disengaged leading to a loss in productivity.

6. Reduce bias and boost diversity

Talent assessments ensure that recruitment processes are bias-free. Since the assessments are based on skills and are data-driven, human biases are reduced. Biases may be conscious or unconscious in which case, the biases are often part of an individual’s conditioning.

Unbiased hiring leads to greater workplace diversity and that offers many advantages, such as:

• A team with diverse members are more likely to make fast and better decisions
• Highly diverse organisations have been found to be more profitable
• A diverse workforce is more appealing to candidates
• Organisations that embrace diversity are known to be innovative and progressive.

7. Improve onboarding process

The primary goal of an onboarding process is to align new employees with the best role they are suited for. New employees selected after going through the organisation’s talent assessment process usually have a smooth onboarding process since the organisation is already aware of most of the employee’s skills and personality traits.

Other than role alignment, talent assessments can help make onboarding more personalised and smooth. A new employee’s training requirements can be estimated before assigning responsibilities. Talent assessments can also help organisations identify and plan future training needs for both new and existing teams.

8. Empower succession planning

Succession is a critical part of an organisation’s continuity planning. Talent assessments can be utilised to identify employees who have the right leadership traits and skills to take the organisation forward. Employees identified as having the potential to be future leaders can be trained as required.

9. Boost customer satisfaction

Talent assessments across organisations help in building strong and effective teams and that contributes towards higher customer satisfaction. Customer service assessments can help in creating effective customer support teams to resolve customer grievances, queries and conflicts quickly and skillfully. Talent assessments can help during recruitment and training of product and sales professionals too, all of which translates to higher customer satisfaction.

Best talent assessment methods

Some of the most effective and widely used talent assessment techniques are:

• Online skill tests: Both hard skills and soft skills can be assessed through online skill tests. Automated scoring and reporting make these tests popular and easy to use.
• Personality tests: They can help analyse the big five personality traits, namely agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness and neuroticism. Implementing these tests at various stages of selection can improve the interview planning and communication processes too.
• Cognitive ability tests: They assess mental abilities such as critical and abstract reasoning, logical reasoning, spatial ability and verbal aptitude. Cognitive ability test results are perhaps one of the most indicative of future performance and should be included in every talent assessment.
• Interview process: Structured interviews are those that ask all candidates the same questions so that it becomes easier to compare candidate responses. The interviews could be face-to-face, over the telephone or on video conferencing platforms.
• Check work samples or create simulated work environments: Candidates could be asked to provide samples of their work so that organisations can estimate their skill and efficiency levels. Candidate performance during a simulated work environment can also give the organisation a clear idea about the candidate’s skills, knowledge, risk-taking attitude and ability to work in teams.
• Trial day: Candidates who have cleared all the rounds of the hiring process can be asked to go through a job trial for half a day or a full day to validate the assessment process.

Key steps in conducting talent assessments for building a team

Talent assessment processes can be implemented at individual and group levels, depending on organisational requirements. Here are some important steps to ensure the process is smooth and effective, whatever the size of the team.

1. Define clear objectives, time, and budget

Before embarking on a talent assessment process, it is essential to establish clear objectives. The organisation must lay out the specific talents in terms of skills, competencies and attributes it is looking for in the team members. Understanding the organisation’s goals and the requirements of each role helps in tailoring the assessment process.

The assessing team must also be clear about the time frame and the budget available for the talent assessment process. Knowing both can help in planning an efficient assessment strategy.

2. Select the most appropriate assessment tools

There are numerous talent assessment tools available in the market, ranging from personality tests to skills assessments and situational judgement tests. The organisation’s selection team must take care to choose tools that align with the organisation’s objectives and provide valuable insights into both hard and soft skills. The best way is to use a combination of tools for a comprehensive and sound evaluation.

Some of the features desirable in a talent assessment tool include:

• Cost-effectiveness and ease of use
• Compatibility with popular mobile devices
• Automated scoring and grading
• Security and anti-cheating settings
• Ability to create insightful and complex personality tests in addition to skill and knowledge tests
• Advanced analysing and reporting capabilities
• Ready-to-use tests

3. Involve key stakeholders

Since team dynamics involve more than just individual skills, it is prudent to involve all key stakeholders in the talent assessment process. Inputs from managers, team leaders and even potential future team members can provide a well-rounded perspective on what attributes are crucial for success in a particular role or team.

4. Do not neglect internal candidates 

Considering internal candidates for different roles has certain advantages that should not be ignored. Some of them include:

• Save on recruitment costs
• Save on time-to-search since the talent pool is easily available
• The candidates are already a good fit culturally and are familiar with how the organisation functions
• Internal hiring boosts employee loyalty and reduces turnover

5. Design comprehensive interviews

Interviews remain a vital component of talent assessment. Interviews must be structured to evaluate not only technical proficiency but also interpersonal skills, problem-solving abilities and cultural fit. Behavioural questions that explore past experiences can reveal a candidate’s approach to challenges and teamwork.

6. Assess cultural fit

A team’s success is often tied to its cohesion and shared values. Assessing cultural fit involves evaluating whether a candidate aligns with the organisation’s values and can seamlessly integrate into the existing team culture. This step is vital for minimising potential conflicts and ensuring long-term team harmony.

7. Consider diversity and inclusion

A diverse team brings a wealth of perspectives and ideas, fostering innovation and creativity. While assessing talent, it is important to ensure that the talent assessment process considers diversity and inclusion. The organisation must implement strategies to attract a diverse pool of candidates and create an inclusive environment that values and leverages differences.

8. Communicate with candidates regularly

In the recruitment market today, a positive candidate experience is very important. Regular communication plays a large role in keeping candidates feeling engaged and still part of the process. A very long period of silence after the assessment process can drive away candidates and even resort to posting negative feedback on popular social media platforms.

9. Continuous feedback and improvement

Talent assessment is an ongoing process that continues after recruitment. It is important to encourage a culture of continuous feedback and improvement. Regular evaluation of team performances can help in identifying areas for enhancement. This iterative approach ensures that the talent assessment strategies implemented evolve with the changing needs of the organisation.

10. Invest in professional development

Similarly, building better teams is a continuous process. Investing in the professional development of team members is a critical step. They must be provided with opportunities for skill enhancement, leadership training and ongoing learning. A commitment to continuous improvement will contribute to the long-term success of any team and consequently, the organisation.

Final word

Clearly, conducting a talent assessment to build better teams is a multifaceted process that requires careful planning and consideration. An effective process can help organisations assemble teams that not only meet their current needs but also adapt and thrive in changing business landscapes. Building better teams is not a one-time task – it is an ongoing journey of assessment, development and refinement.

HirePro offers customised assessments to organisations to test candidates on aptitude, personality, behavioural competencies and domain and technical skills. Candidates can be assessed by using HirePro’s pool of standardised tests that can be tailored as required to suit every organisation’s unique needs. All the tests have been reviewed and quality checked.

Write to us at sales@hirepro.in for a demo.

Sources: proprofs.com,toggl.com