There has been a massive increase in the demand for good technical candidates in organisations. During the recruitment process for technical jobs, interviewees are often assigned coding assessments to help recruiters gauge candidates’ knowledge of specific technical skills and programming languages. In fact, according to research conducted by the Aberdeen group, hiring managers who utilise pre-employment assessments report 36 per cent more satisfaction with their final decision compared to those that don’t.

A well-planned technical assessment can give you deep insights and feedback about a candidate’s ability to suit the job that you are hiring for. However, candidates often run for the hills when assigned a coding assessment! This is because technical assessments are often not conducted well: there is a lack of clarity in what exactly is required from the candidate.

It’s pretty damning that most programmers I talk to say they’re bad at tech interviews.

These are people I’ve seen code extensively. They’re incredibly talented!

And yet they have no confidence they could pass a coding exercise.

So who exactly are these designed for?

— Laurie (@laurieontech) March 20, 2021

Let’s look at some of the dos and don’ts for conducting a successful technical assessment and for ensuring that both candidates and interviewers have a satisfactory experience.

Dos

Inform the candidate?

Make sure that the candidate is informed that there will be a technical assessment at some stage of the interview. Keeping them informed of the same will help them to get prepared. It will also enable them to display their technical competence and put their best foot forward.

Create a set of review guidelines

The recruitment team must create a set of review guidelines that the evaluation team can use to assess the candidate’s submission. This will ensure that there is consistency in the way all the candidates are assessed. Evaluate for critical thinking skills rather than getting the code 100 per cent right. The planning of a structured, high-quality and relevant technical assessment is quite critical and needs to be given enough thought.

Use coding assessment platforms

Coding assessment platforms can be easily personalised to help you create an effective process and hire the best candidates for your team. These platforms enable you to assess candidates’ technical skills in an unbiased manner and evaluate their competency accurately. Moreover, many of the platforms come with built-in AI-powered live and automated proctoring, which removes any kind of administrative burden on the interviewers.

Give feedback

Once the completed assessment has been reviewed, ensure that the candidate is given feedback. In case a candidate is rejected, it helps the candidate understand the reason for the rejection and areas for improvement. Even if the candidates are approved and accepted for the next stage, the feedback will help them understand what their strengths are. Investing time in providing feedback to the candidate helps in elevating the overall candidate experience during the recruitment process.

Publicise the coding assessments and challenges

You could be limiting yourself by relying only on the candidates who the recruiters send across for specific openings in the organisation. Let the coding assessments/challenges that you are planning get enough eyeballs so that a large number of candidates apply, thus serving the purpose of widening the talent pool. ·

Don’ts

Do not conduct a general assessment

Check for relevant skills. The skill being tested for should be something that is necessary for the role. If this is not done, the candidate could have wrong expectations from the job and end up dejected later. In case the candidate has queries regarding the assessment before starting on the task, make sure you answer the candidate to his/her satisfaction. This may help the candidate better deliver what is expected and help him/her avoid making incorrect assumptions. This is also an opportunity for you to assess whether the candidate is able to ask the right questions and deliver as per expectations.

Do not conduct a technical assessment if the role does not require it

Ensure that the technical assessment is conducted only for roles that need the candidate to have the specialised skill. There are many interviews that are conducted with a technical assessment “thrown in” even if the role does not require the same. This is a waste of time for both the interviewer and the candidate.

Do not assess before speaking to the candidate

Several companies make the mistake of scheduling and conducting a technical assessment even before speaking to the candidate. This could result in the loss of a potential great employee. Get an idea of interest levels and competency match. Study the candidate and the candidate’s resume before assigning assessments.

Do not give assessments that are unreasonable

While conducting technical assessments, ensure that you assign projects or assessments that are reasonable in terms of the duration needed to complete it and the level of difficulty. The assignment should not take more than a few hours to complete and, at the same time, be a good yardstick to measure a candidate’s potential.

Keep these dos and don’ts in mind when assessing potential hires. Coding assessments are a great way to hire the best and the brightest for your organisation. They should also be conducted well so that they enhance your employer branding.
HirePro’s coding assessment platform enables you to conduct exhaustive and automated coding assessments. The platform has been built by technical managers and is used by leading technology enterprises for freshers and advanced hires. To know more, reach out to sales@hirepro.com

Generation Z includes all those born between 1997 and 2012. The 20 somethings of this generation were poised to join the adult workforce when Covid-19 struck. According to data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Gen Z has been hit the hardest by global unemployment.

With the economy reviving, youngsters are relooking at the world of work and their expectations from it. They are raring to go and are eager to overcome all pandemic hurdles. In fact, by 2025, this generation is expected to make up 27 per cent of the global workforce.

Gen Z is the first generation of digital natives. Technology permeates all areas of their lives and their social media presence is prominent. Right or wrong, social media shapes their opinions about most things.

Tapping their talent and harnessing it effectively has become a strategic necessity. Candidates of this generation are vastly different from their predecessors — the millennials, and organisations have been forced to rethink their recruitment strategies.

Of the many ways to recruit Gen Z, there are a few that are very effective.

1. Invest in the culture of the organisation: Gen Z is quite particular about the values of an organisation. In addition to a great salary, they want to be associated with an organisation that has strong values and is innovative, transparent and committed. An organisation must invest in creating a strong culture to successfully attract them.
2. Focus on the role, not the brand: Gen Z is more interested in the work they will do, not the name of the organisation. They would rather work in a role that is interesting and challenging at a lesser known organisation than be a mere cog in a well-known organisation. This generation strives to find purpose in their lives. They must be able to visualise personal and professional growth. An organisation must define job roles clearly to attract the best talent.
3. Connect early and often: Even without an immediate opening, over 80 per cent of Gen Z agree that it is important to establish employer connections. Organisations should reach out to promising candidates whenever they come across them, they would appreciate being in the loop. They are keen to associate with organisations that use digital communication and tools regularly.
4. Build a strong social media recruitment strategy: Gen Z is conscious about building a strong personal brand online. Over 50 per cent of college students agree that it is an important part of building their career. Recruiters must be equally competent about negotiating their way online.
5. Make the application process easy: To attract the best, organisations must make the application process hassle-free, user-friendly and possible through any device, smartphones being the device of choice. In fact, 54 per cent of Gen Z candidates have declared they will not apply if an organisation has outdated recruiting methods. Therefore, organisations must build strong online marketing strategies and make them attractive enough for this generation to spread the good word.
6. Make location irrelevant: Before the pandemic, location was important but post-pandemic, priorities have changed. Gen Z is willing to relocate for the right reasons although a large percentage would prefer to work remotely. Organisations must embrace the idea of location no longer being a tipping point.
7. Diversify: Gen Z is conscious about being part of a diverse workforce and would prefer to be part of an organisation that makes an effort to include people who are racially and ethnically diverse. Organisations must make an effort to hire without bias and in fact, boost diversity.
8. Consider the long-term: Contrary to popular perception, candidates from Gen Z are not looking at hopping jobs frequently. In fact, most of them are looking for opportunities with long-term potential. Only 6 per cent have indicated a preference for participating in the gig economy after graduation.
9. Offer flexibility: After salary, perhaps one of the most attractive perks that can be offered to Gen Z candidates is flexibility. An organisation must clearly state its policy on leave and working style, whether hybrid or remote. While this generation of candidates is willing to work hard, they refuse to risk burnout at their first job.

Other than the health concerns brought on by the pandemic, Gen Z faces some of the greatest environmental, social and economic issues in history. And this generation does not hesitate in raising its voice and calling for change.

Gen Z has witnessed the pandemic cause major upheavals in certain industries and quickly adjusted its career plans to align with the new job market. Organisations must realise this too and find ways to attract the best talent.

Most employers already understand that modern technology is key to attracting the top talent, to speeding up the recruiting process and effectively meeting the tech-first expectations of millennial and Gen Z candidates. Organisations must invest in the right solutions to offer a strong candidate experience as well as streamline the hiring process.

The Hirepro campus hiring workflow offers an effective remote hiring platform that can be used by everyone involved in the hiring process. It is smooth, fast, fraud-proof and secure.

Sources:

• www.forbes.com
• blog.shrm.org
• www.weforum.org
• www.cbiz.com
• recruiteze.com
• https://yello.co/blog/recruiting-generation-z/
• https://yello.co/blog/modern-technology-to-recruit-gen-z/

Organisations are constantly looking for high calibre tech talent in an increasingly tech-driven world. As the demand for tech candidates rises, organisations are opting for high volume hiring to replenish their talent pool. In this context, time, cost and efficiency are factors that pose a challenge to large scale hiring. In addition, candidate impersonation is emerging as a significant obstacle. Inefficient screening processes and inadequately designed technical evaluation methods are also depriving organisations of the right tech talent. To meet tech talent requirements, recruiters are now favouring coding tests over legacy hiring practices to gauge the overall technical capabilities of candidates and make data-driven hiring decisions.

What are coding tests?

Coding tests are programming challenges presented to a developer or programmer to assist recruiters in evaluating their technical competency. A good coding test measures not only the candidate’s understanding of coding but also their problem-solving capacity. Based on the role’s requirement, coding tests also assess traits such as logical reasoning, programming language-specific proficiency and workplace potential.

Let’s explore how coding tests help you find the best tech talent for your team.

Identify high calibre tech candidates with ease

To meet the challenges of a dynamic tech landscape, organisations are seeking tech talent that is not only well-versed in technical knowledge but can also perform competently in real-world scenarios. Coding tests use objective criteria and evaluate candidates based on their algorithmic skills and actual programming abilities to help you screen every candidate to sift out high-quality tech talent quickly and with ease.

Conduct tests in the desired programming language

The number of programming languages is ever increasing. Recruitment platforms offer coding tests with a repository of questions in a wide range of programming languages such as Bash, C, C++, Java 7, Node.js, PHP, Python, MySQL, HTML and CSS. They also allow you to conduct precise assessments for screenings, in-depth skill assessments and hackathons, as per your requirements.

Ensure fitment of tests to the role

Building an effective coding team requires hiring candidates with technical prowess, creativity, unique thinking and remarkable problem-solving ability. Recruitment platforms allow you to customise coding tests to match the role precisely and evaluate candidates in an array of skills and abilities associated with the role. They enable you to tailor coding tests in terms of different questions, question formats and skills to make sure the test captures the exact skill set and capabilities required for the role.

Detect impersonation and cheating

Advanced recruitment platforms offer several features such as impersonation and multiple people detection, code playbacks and plagiarism reports. They also provide features such as AI-powered live and automated proctoring to ensure that the integrity of coding tests is maintained. Besides, automated warnings, browser security and complete access control help you administer, supervise and evaluate coding tests securely.

Reduce subjectivity and bias

Fair evaluation of a candidate’s abilities is vital to securing the best tech talent. Subjectivity and conscious and unconscious biases such as confirmation bias, gender bias, halo effect, beauty bias and conformity bias can influence the selection of a candidate. These biases can be eliminated or mitigated with coding tests that are objective by design. Further, recruitment platforms provide comprehensive data on the test results, allowing you to select candidates based on accurate data related to their performance.

Conclusion

Coding tests have become integral to the tech hiring process. They optimise tech recruitment at scale by providing an accurate overview of a candidate’s technical abilities and reducing the time-to-hire. They also help avoid long, tedious and ambiguous interviews by providing talking points based on the candidate’s coding test results. Besides, coding tests conducted using recruitment platforms also provide recruiters with customisable tools and interactive interfaces to help them choose the best tech talent while keeping subjectivity at bay. Thus, coding tests deliver long-term results and boost employee retention by allowing recruiters to witness a candidate’s true potential. The candidates are observed in a simulated coding environment that indicates their performance in an actual, on-the-job coding environment.

HirePro’s coding assessments are automated, highly customisable and fraud-proof. They consist of over 2,000 pre-built questions that support 28 programming languages. Features such as AI-powered live and automated proctoring, live coding interviews, high-quality and granular insights and robust security and compliance provide a superior coding assessment experience for candidates and test administrators. HirePro is trusted by leading technology enterprises and has a proven track record of facilitating coding tests that ensure you clinch top-notch tech freshers and advanced hires for your team. Find out how HirePro can help you harness the power of coding tests today!

‘‘Assessment is today’s means of modifying tomorrow’s instruction.’’ — Carol Ann Tomlinson

According to Statista, the IT BPM sector added 0.14 million to its numbers between 2020 and 2021.

And, the outlook for FY2023 (2022-23) is as optimistic as it was for the previous year, according to the NASSCOM Enterprise CXO Survey 2022. End-user enterprises are emerging as technology job creators with about 30 per cent of the respondents intending to increase their technology team by over 15 per cent.

The huge demand for tech staff has put hiring on centrestage, triggering a digital revolution in talent acquisition too.

Shortlisting candidates has moved from manual to digital to its current algorithm-based approach.

The next step in the hiring process, candidate evaluation is witnessing a wave of transformation too. What was once done manually is now happening on enterprise recruitment platforms that promise to make hiring decisions efficient and calculated for employers.

If you are a software engineer on the job market, then you would soon be on one such platform, taking a technical assessment of your prospective employer’s design.

If you are an employer, you will be on the lookout for candidates with the skills and competencies that match a role’s requirements. Thankfully, assessments are here to facilitate this recruitment process.

Significance of assessments: Finding the right tech-mate

Assessments are an excellent way to discern a person’s abilities. Their logical structure provides the necessary insight into a candidate’s aptitude for success in a specific role, thereby rendering them as effective tools that narrow down the applicant pool by filtering out unsuitable candidates.

The list above gives only a generic view of what can be evaluated with assessments. Each industry/function/role comes with specific requirements and to cater to the variety, there are different types of assessments.

Types of assessments: The tech gateway to test

Broadly, assessments are classified as either technical or non-technical.

• Technical assessments test knowledge, skills and aptitude. They also go by the names ‘role-based tests’ and ‘domain tests’. This is further categorised into two types: coding and non-coding.
  • A coding test evaluates programming knowledge and the abilities of candidates to address technical questions and complete tasks.
  • A non-coding test evaluates skills unrelated to coding. For example, it tests candidates for their domain knowledge in areas such Sales, HR, Supply Chain Management, Finance and Accounting
• Non-technical skill assessments check for compatibility-levels between a candidate and an employer. It evaluates whether the candidate is a good-fit for the organisation’s culture, beliefs, processes, structure and customs.

Now that there is a broad knowledge of the types of assessments, let us dive deeper into the main focus of this blog: coding technical assessments

Technical assessment: Identifying hidden capabilities

Educational qualification and technical competency are not always proportional. Sometimes, a candidate equipped with just a three-month code bootcamp training may have better coding skills than a graduate who has attended a four-year university course. How will you identify the better candidate?

This is where technical assessments come in handy. They measure a candidate’s proficiency by removing any other perceived good influences and affinity biases.

The market is flooded with tools that boast of various features, all of which are meant to ease the recruitment process and save time and resources.

The tools have capabilities to conduct tests for hundreds of programming languages, offering recruiters the flexibility to choose them like a package grouped either by skills or technology. Hirepro, India’s leading talent acquisition solution providers offers these:

But before administering a technical test, consider some of these things:

• Design an assessment that is role-relevant and has task-specific questions
• Give candidates a heads-up on what they are about to face so that they come prepared
• Where needed, use both coding tests and technical interviews
• Put to optimal use the tools that recruiting agencies are offering

Online assessment tools: The tech toolkit

Coders are in high demand. According to Glassdoor, 32 per cent of job vacancies are tech-related. However, employers are struggling to fill these positions. The situation calls for a revolutionised approach to hiring that can assess, monitor and save valuable resources for a recruiter.

The AI-powered coding assessment tools have these two main features:

• Coding assessment platforms

  To evaluate whether a candidate has the technical knowledge that he/she claims can be a laborious task. Using the specialised features of coding assessment platforms can simplify this task greatly. Features that are offered include:

  • Coding assessment formats (objective type, caselets)
  • Coding simulators
  • Coding interview platforms
  • Case study simulators

• Proctoring technology

To maintain honesty and integrity throughout the assessment period, robust, AI-powered technology is deployed to conduct secure, online assessments.

Benefits of using assessment tools

With emphasis on speed and accuracy, recruiters will inevitably turn to digital solutions. Here, technical assessment tools can be leveraged to widen the hiring funnel and process more inbound applicants.
Apart from nitty-gritties such as customised email invites, selecting welcome screen for candidates, setting time limits, fixing qualifying scores etc., assessment tools have these weighty advantages to offer:

• Identification of a candidate’s practical skill-set:

It is one thing to hold a certificate, quite another to be able to apply that knowledge. While the former speaks of learnability, the latter is about application. Technical assessments show just how much of a gap there is between the two.

• Substantiate quantity of soft skills

It is a misconception to think that technical assessments do not give much insight into a candidate’s soft skills. These tests are designed to also test a candidate’s problem solving ability, creativity, patience and perseverance.

• Gain high quality insights

Technical assessments are AI-powered, so their analytics can generate reports at a high level as well as granular level. The reports help to identify top performers at a glance, and also offer insights about every candidate’s performance and code-quality.

• Enhance hiring accuracy

Hiring is a complicated process and hiring right is even more so. The emphasis that recruiters lay on finding the right-fit is not unwarranted. It is, in fact, in the best interest of both employers and prospective employees. With employers wanting to optimise their ROI and employees wanting to be challenged just enough to stay interested, technical assessments take on the role of match-maker between the two.

• Hire without bias and discrimination

Unfortunately, humans are predisposed to fall into the trap of unconscious biases, which can inadvertently impact decision-making while hiring. Technical assessments, on the other hand, are impersonal, impartial and undiscriminating. This renders the selection process objective.

• Accelerate hiring process

Technical assessments are conducted much faster, with more accuracy and objectivity than traditional testing approaches. They remove hunches from the hiring process and thus shorten the time between first contact and first day at work.

Above all, hiring decisions can now be transparent and scientifically backed.

Conclusion: Leveraging tech for precise evaluation

In a digitised world where technology keeps disrupting and advancing at a rapid rate, top technical skills are always in demand and HR professionals find themselves at the forefront of the ‘talent war’.
To screen huge volumes of inbound applications is no mean task. On top of this, to select the best-role-fit candidate in a short period of time is even more of a challenge. It is thanks to technology that there are automated and structured solutions in the form of technical assessments that enable recruiters to overcome this challenge.
Recruitment is a tough business. Stressful for recruiters and unforgiving if anything goes wrong. Given this, it is only meaningful to employ tools that make the process error-free, unbiased, transparent, honest and, above all, efficient.

References

• blog.techtalentsouth.com
• linkedin.com
• mitre.org
• thehindubusinessline.com

People are the biggest asset of any organisation and they play a big part in its success. Therefore, most challenges faced by organisations are also people-centric. The most critical challenges are attracting and retaining the right talent. Retention can be managed in-house to a great extent with some competent, employee-friendly policies. However, the biggest challenge that most hiring managers face is attracting the right talent at the right time. Time is money and this aspect affects an organisation’s branding, culture, and, more importantly revenue.
Hiring processes are a candidate’s first branding experience with an organisation. Hence, care should be taken to ensure it is smooth. Often, organisations lose good talent because of bad hiring practices. People can get put off by HR behaviour, delayed hiring processes and more. One of the new-age ways to overcome this is to bring online assessment tools into the picture.
Online tests and assessments are conducted with the help of a system and the Internet, enabled by multiple technologies. These could be done live or offline. They could be simple Multiple Choice Questions(MCQ) tests or complex programming problems. As opposed to fully people-based hiring processes, online assessments offer multiple benefits. They reduce people’s involvement and free them up for other core work, with much less scope for error. Additionally, these tests can be easily conducted across geographies and time zones, enabling immense scaling. This enables access to a wider talent pool and is, hence, best suited for high-volume hiring like campus recruitment. During Covid-19, many organisations resorted to fully online hiring strategies. Perhaps, now it’s a necessity as well.

The advantages

When it comes to hiring, the advantages that machine-based, online assessments offer far outweigh the traditional methods. A complete and comprehensive test can be prepared by various people involved in hiring for a role. These tests can cover a wide range like with Hirepro functional assessments, cultural fitment tests and logical and technical assessments. Also, more importantly, they are impartial and may be conducted faster than when done in the traditional way. The results are instant and help the HR team work faster.
Additionally, with the help of AI, multiple insights can be incorporated to assess the results to find the best fit for a role. For example, the test results can even suggest what the gaps and training needs are. Compare the cost of a hiring team travelling to multiple geographies to conduct walk-ins and the cost of scheduling it with the help of a few clicks. That’s the ease and convenience that organisations seek and need to overcome the tough challenge of attracting the best talent.
It is competitive out there and one needs to stay ahead, perhaps, by using the best hiring assessment tool. These tools are environment-friendly as you can avoid mounds of physical files and cupboards. The quality is assured as the tests are designed with the latest technologies to prevent any form of fraud or cheating. Accessibility is another important aspect — candidates without the means to travel or with disabilities and needing special considerations can also take the online assessments easily.

The abundance of choices

Almost all varieties of tests can be administered as online assessments. Standard tests constitute aptitude, logical reasoning, mathematical, psychometric, behavioural or personality assessment etc. Specific domain-based and technical tests to suit the needs of every organisation also exist. Additionally, assessments for different skills of different roles at various levels can be incorporated into the online assessments. Whether for fresh candidates or lateral hiring, you can easily schedule online assessments. They are best suited for scale, like in campus hiring, especially during the pandemic times.
Credible online assessment providers like Hirepro help you customise and design your tests. When a candidate is evaluated impartially, you are more likely to get the best from a wide talent pool, probably in a much more cost-effective way and in a shorter timeframe. The chances of missing out on something important is very less here. More importantly, it is easier to adapt and change the online assessments as time progresses.

Conclusion

Some minor disadvantages of online assessments could include organisations not getting their tests/questions right or technical issues like Internet or power disruption. These may be easily handled with some good planning and timely human involvement. Every organisation needs to do a hiring cost evaluation for online assessments as it does involve some cost. However, in the post-pandemic world with remote and hybrid work, online assessments may just be the way forward. This is why there is rapid adoption of online assessments by companies of all sizes. Considering the current war for talent, no organisation can afford to look the other way. Also, easier candidate acceptance for online assessments makes it attractive. With the push for a digital economy in the country, sooner or later, we need to go fully online, hiring included.

Like many other aspects of business, Covid changed how and why companies recruit. Work from home became the new normal and virtual hiring became imperative. It’s not that these weren’t around before Covid. Unfortunately, some mindsets were posing challenges for remote work and hiring. With the choices running low, it’s a reality that work from home and virtual hiring are here to stay. The positive vibes and success stories from various industries are heartening. They are a testimony to how virtual working helped them cope with the challenges that the pandemic threw in. Some organisations did better than others because they already had processes and platforms in place. They were future-ready and, hence, did not have to waste time on getting organised. Many others followed suit and that set the base for new talent assessment trends.

Covid was just an enabler for the many sweeping changes waiting to happen. Organisations understood and appreciated the value of being future-ready. Those organisations that are able to see and plan for the future will always have an edge over their competitors. This ability also has financial implications. According to a McKinsey survey, 95 per cent of the economic profit is earned by the top 20 organisations. What is noteworthy is that these are the ones that already have or are implementing bold changes for future-readiness. Being future-ready goes much beyond virtual working. Let’s take a look at five talent assessment trends that help improve your future-readiness.

The changing nature of work

The normalisation of remote working brought a lot more flexibility and agility into hiring. Professional staffing and flexi work options became attractive. Companies realised they had to adapt quickly. This meant hiring managers had to change their perspectives. Adaptability and flexibility of candidates were critical, as was their technical capability. Hiring people with multiple skills or those who could be easily reskilled became imperative. The use of customised online assessment tools designed for the purpose helped this cause. Remote working also allowed access to larger talent pools catering to the diversity aspect. Along with businesses, talent assessment teams also evolved to be future-ready.

Every business is now digital

The Internet and related technologies have changed our lives and businesses forever. Whether B2B or B2C, every business is online today. From the neighbourhood stores to the big retailers, online existence is critical for survival and profitability. This is how the business landscape became future-ready without realising it. Your branding strategies will need to include digital marketing for ensuring future-readiness.

Force Majeure events

In many ways, Covid was a Force Majeure event that forced businesses to rethink contracts. The future-ready businesses that were fully prepared for remote working responded better to the situation. This one instance is ample for organisations to understand the importance of such future events. With changing world scenarios, wars, acts of terrorism and natural disasters can never be ruled out, which emphasises the need to be future-ready.

Assessing a dynamic (and fickle) workforce

A diverse and dynamic workforce brings with it some interesting and complex challenges. Attrition is a reality and meeting employee expectations is always tough. There is constant debate on which is better, hiring or using the gig economy. Decision making is not easy any more owing to these and other factors.

How do organisations conduct honest performance assessments leading to win-win situations? Annual performance reviews, ratings and subsequent hikes or promotions need to be fair and transparent. Creating data-driven assessments, preferably powered by AI, can streamline this process greatly. Clearly setting the goals at the onset and following this approach from top to bottom create employee confidence in the system. Honest conversations during performance reviews with constructive two-way feedback also help. Implementing innovative approaches for employee assessments is an indication of being future-ready. It also inculcates an organisational culture of growth, learning and success.

The increasing focus on diversity

Diversity is the new-age mantra that organisations are fast realising to be highly beneficial. Diverse hiring promotes equal opportunities for all, accepts and respects differences and creates an inclusive workplace. It also offers innovative opportunities that organisations can build upon. That it also has a direct correlation with organisation’s financial performance is a major factor driving diversity hiring. Gen Z is more open to joining companies that offer diverse opportunities because they see value in it. Thus, the diversity aspect is overall beneficial to organisations as it gives access to a larger and committed talent pool.

HirePro Functional Assessment and behavioural tests can help organisations determine candidate suitability on many factors including attitude to diversity. Employee attitude plays a significant role in sustaining diverse teams. This is where online assessments can be weaved into your organisational future-readiness.

Recruiting for a single role is a time- and resource-consuming task. There are scenarios where recruiters face the daunting challenge of high-volume hiring. This typically happens when a company needs to hire a large number of candidates for business expansion or to undertake a major project that requires a large number of people. At times, it could be a combination of both.

Therefore, recruiters will need the know-how to scale the workforce even if there is no immediate need for bulk-hiring. Successful high-volume hiring to get the best and the brightest people for your company will definitely require creativity and a sound strategy. Mass hiring comes with a set of challenges that recruiters must be able to overcome. Sorting through hundreds of applications and interviewing a number of candidates to scale up at speed can be difficult. Technology and tools can ease the process and bring efficiency to it. Read on to know effective tactics that could enhance your high-volume hiring strategy.

Automate the hiring process

Automation can empower recruiters to work more efficiently and make better decisions quickly. Automating processes such as resume screening, assessing, interview scheduling and so on allow recruiters to focus on more meaningful tasks. It facilitates bulk-hiring and also phenomenally improves the quality of an organisation’s hiring efforts. One of the key uses of automation in recruitment is programmatic job advertising, where your digital ads will help you with customised targeting. Programmatic recruitment platforms target specific people based on the role’s requirements to help you get the best talent.

Social media hiring

One of the most commonly used talent acquisition tactics, social media hiring uses inbound marketing through posts on LinkedIn, Instagram etc. to reach more people. Social hiring helps employers communicate their employee value proposition and optimise their inbound recruitment efforts. Social media is among the best sources for high-quality candidates who are likely to be a good fit because it enables recruiters to target very specific audiences and hire people who fit the organisational culture. Targeting people with specific knowledge, skills, experiences and seniority levels enables recruiters to eliminate irrelevant applications and get the best candidates.

Talent rediscovery

All companies store information regarding interested candidates in their database. Recruiters can sift through the profiles of previous candidates to find suitable talent for the current vacant positions in your company. Though they might not have made the final cut previously, there is no denying that they were interested in your brand. Leverage your existing database to rediscover talent and make use of personalised email campaigns to reach out to suitable candidates.

Use an AI-powered hiring platform

Organisations globally are increasingly using Artificial Intelligence (AI) in some aspect of the recruitment process. AI offers high volume hiring tools and endless possibilities to accelerate the recruitment process for mass hiring. AI-powered platforms such as that of HirePro help with faster and better sourcing, screening, assessments, interviews and onboarding. AI reduces recruitment time, enhances quality hires and saves significant hiring costs. It has created a simple pathway to hire the best talent en masse and also facilitated hiring a large pool of candidates remotely.

Activate employee referral programme

High volume hiring companies use present employees and their networks to rope in new talent. It is an effective recruiting strategy where employers encourage their employees to refer qualified candidates for jobs in the organisation. To hire candidates who are likely to stay longer and perform better, employee referral is considered a reliable source. Smart recruiters would optimise the number of candidates they can get through employee referrals.
High volume recruiting presents a unique challenge and also an opportunity for organisations to get the best talent. Through thorough research, utilising the resources at your disposal and incorporating the latest tech tools, recruiters can achieve their bulk-hiring goals and master the art of high volume recruiting.

Hiring the right talent has many obvious benefits to the company — improved productivity, a better team, happy clients… the list is endless. On the other hand, a poor hiring decision can prove to be pretty steep on many counts, leading to reduced efficiency, unhappy team members, higher turnover and a significant cost to the company. A Gallup study estimates the cost of a poor hiring decision to be as much as one and a half to two times the annual salary of the employee.

The good news is that costly poor hiring practices can be fixed with good recruitment strategies. While resumes provide candidate background and an insight into past experience, recruiters know that, often enough, it may exaggerate abilities and responsibilities. Holistic hiring assessment tools add significant value to new-age hiring practices by going beyond skills and knowledge assessment and providing insights into personality, traits and behaviour. Talent assessment tools allow for evidence-based recruitment, which results in recruitment becoming a data-driven process.

The importance of tools and technology in talent assessment

Online hiring tools have led to sweeping changes in the recruitment process. With the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating remote hiring, companies have revamped their hiring practices by adopting tools-based emerging technologies to assess the potential workforce.
AI-powered talent assessments offer several advantages. Let’s take a look at some of them.

Improve quality of hire:

Talent assessments provide hard evidence of candidate ability and help companies understand whether a candidate is a good fit for the role. Automated skill assessments and functional assessments act as filters to assess candidate knowledge and fitment and create shortlists faster, with no manual intervention. Talent assessments thus reduce the time taken for screening candidates and help narrow the talent pool.

Build a cohesive team: Hiring assessment tools let recruiters evaluate a number of parameters for candidates, both in terms of competency and cultural fitment. AI-powered assessments allow for the building of psychological profiles of candidates, analysis of behavioural traits and characteristics, and provide insights into whether the candidate will fit into the job role and organisation culture. Matching candidates to the right role results in a high-performing and greatly skilled team, which in turn results in a highly productive workforce.

Reduce unconscious bias and build a diverse workforce: Traditional hiring methods can be a deterrent to hiring a diverse workforce. In spite of their best efforts, even well-meaning, seasoned recruiters may have implicit biases with respect to race, ethnicity, gender, religion, socio-economic factors or religion, resulting in discrimination of certain groups of people. While organisations can lose out on valuable talent due to such biases, diversity impacts financial performance too. A McKinsey study found that companies in the top quartile for racial, ethnic and gender diversity are likely to have better financial performance. Online assessments use AI and ML technology to eliminate bias by offering several features such as gamification, blind resume screening to ensure anonymity and transparent video interviews that can assess facial and verbal cues to spot any misinformation.

Improve productivity: Recruitment teams stand to make big strides with talent assessment platforms. For example, large volume recruitments in IT can use online coding assessments to host hackathons or programming skills tests. Instant and automated assessment of candidates frees up recruiter time for more productive tasks and reduces time to hire. Skill gaps identified during the hiring process can help determine cross-training and upskilling requirements for the new employee.

Enhance employer brand: Talent assessment tools pave the way for faster results and decisions, creating a positive experience for the job applicant and improving company reputation. Companies can personalise the experience for candidates with custom tests and logos. When talent assessment tools tie into the hiring stack, it results in an automated and seamless candidate experience from interviews to onboarding. A pleasant hiring experience can lead to recommendations by candidates, resulting in the likelihood of expanding the talent pool with relevant and interested people.

Digital hiring platforms that offer talent assessments and functional assessments streamline the recruitment process, resulting in better hiring practices and superior candidate experience. HirePro offers automated, highly secure and fraud-proof coding assessments and functional assessment platforms to test candidate skills, technical and domain knowledge, personality and aptitude, which lets companies onboard the right candidate. Adopting a data-driven talent acquisition strategy can help companies hire better, faster and more efficiently.

“Acquiring the right talent is the most important key to growth. Hiring was – and still is – the most important thing we do.”
– Marc Bennioff

An open job attracts heaps of applications. Recruiters have thousands of resumes at their perusal. Would they have the bandwidth to go through each of them to check for correctness of facts? It may not be practically possible to verify whether the information given on every resume is accurate. Imagine bringing on board candidates who claim to know a certain programming language but in reality may not be proficient enough in it? Would an organisation want to hire candidates who have listed effective presentation skills as a highlight on their resume but can’t get a single coherent sentence out in front of an audience? Hiring is an effort, one that can be minimised with the right strategy and plan. Organisations that go the extra mile to ensure that they make good hiring decisions are ones that have higher productivity rates. Hiring the wrong people can negatively impact productivity, cost and time of the organisation. How can organisations be sure that information presented on resumes has not been casually thrown in to impress the recruitment panel? Here is where pre-employment assessments can help.

A great way to validate a resume is to check the candidates’ skills using pre-employment assessments. These targetted assessments will help minimise hiring time and ensure the right pick for the organisation.

What are pre-employement assessments?

Pre-employment assessments are a gamut of standardised tests designed to objectively assess candidates’ technical and functional skills that are necessary for a particular job role. These tests are configured in various forms to help recruiters gauge candidates’ programming, problem-solving or cognitive abilities. They offer a deep insight into the skills of potential candidates and help recruiters pick the right ones that are the best fit for the job role and the organisation.

Pre-employment assessments are particularly useful when hiring for technical positions, given the dearth of technical recruiters. Coding assessments and pair programming are types of pre-employment assessments used by organisations to test the technical acumen of candidates when hiring for technical roles. This is one of the many types of assessments available in the market. There are other types of assessments that organisations can use in tandem to test a candidate’s overall fit for a job role.

Types of pre-employment screening

Pre-employment assessments are of various types, and the type of assessment an organisation chooses to employ to test its candidates depends on the skills that a particular job entails. Assessments can test the technical skills of a candidate, such as knowledge of a particular programming language, or their soft skills and aptitude, such as problem-solving capabilities or negotiation skills, or even the integrity of the candidate. Pre-employment assessments are important because it helps test the practical knowledge of a candidate along with his or her theoretical knowledge. Here is a list of types of assessments generally used by organisations as part of their recruitment process.

• Job knowledge tests: A job knowledge test assesses a candidate’s proficiency in the technical skills required for a particular role. These assessments challenge a candidate’s actual knowledge of a particular subject. A recruiter may ask a candidate to take a test to evaluate his or her prowess in a specific programming language, which the candidate mentioned in the resume.
• Personality questionnaires: Personality questionnaires help recruiters assess a candidate’s personality traits such as assertiveness, patience, confidence etc. These questionnaires could also test the integrity of the candidate. Integrity tests focus on ethical questions and the responses of the candidates.
• Culture fit assessments: A candidate may fit a job role well, but will he or she be a good fit for the organisation? If a hired candidate does not fit well with the overall culture of the organisation, it could spread dissatisfaction not only in the candidate but in other employees as well, and lead to increased attrition. Culture fit assessments gauge the candidate’s preference in terms of organisational culture. It will help determine whether the candidate’s values align with the overall organisational values and culture.
• Cognitive ability assessments: Cognitive ability assessments help evaluate candidates’ ability to apply their mental processes by testing their verbal, logical and numerical reasoning skills. Organisations have to deal with tough challenges that require their employees to think on their feet and find viable and effective solutions to the problems their clients face.
• Soft skills assessments: Soft skills are very important non-technical skills that stand out in a business environment. Soft skills assessments test candidates’ communication, problem-solving and interpersonal skills. For a role that requires client facing, the candidates are expected to have exceptional soft skills, which may be evaluated with the help of soft skills assessments.
• Situational judgement tests: Employees of big organisations may have to face different scenarios on a day-to-day basis — tight deadlines, tough clients or sticky situations. Situational judgement tests assess a candidate’s ability to wade through these challenging scenarios at work.
• Language assessments: Owing to the global nature of businesses today, candidates may be expected to take up language assessments to test their language skills before they are onboarded.

Why use pre-employment assessments?

Pre-employment assessments could give better insights into a candidate’s profile than a resume or a face-to-face interview. It is impossible to gauge a candidate’s technical prowess, personality traits, soft-skills, ambitions and aptitude in the short span of 20 to 30 minutes that a hiring manager spends with the candidate in an interview session. It puts immense pressure on recruiters and hiring managers to find the right fit for a job role, as the cost to replace bad hires could be quite high. Contrary to some arguments, pre-employment assessments save time and cost for the organisation by helping narrow down the best fit candidates. Here are some advantages of using pre-employment assessments to test applicants for a specific job role.

• Streamlined recruitment process

When used effectively, pre-employment assessments can help streamline and speed up the recruitment process. With the latest technology enabling automation in pre-employment assessments, evaluating candidates becomes automatic. With manual evaluation of candidates out of the way, the entire process of recruitment quickens and becomes more efficient than before.

• Enhanced quality of hires

Pre-employment assesment ensures selection of candidates best suited overall not only for the job role but for the organisation as well. This results in improved quality hires who bring better productivity, which, in turn, positively impacts the growth of the organisation.

• Reduced hiring bias

One of the biggest problems in recruitment today is the presence of unconscious bias. Organisations have strived to put away any sort of bias in the recruitment process. Pre-employment assessments help eliminate bias in the process by screening out candidates based on their skills and capabilities alone, not taking into account any demographic or background information.

• Improved legal defensibility

Pre-employment assessments are objective in nature and, thus, help improve the legal defensibility of the organisation’s hiring process, provided the assessment is being used only to test skills related to the job. Use of a good assessment software streamlines the process and makes it consistent, putting organisations in a better place to defend their recruiting process, in case questions arise on the legality of their hiring practice.

• Bettered candidate experience

In the process of streamlining the recruitment practice, pre-employment assessments pave the way for candidates to gain insights into the organisation and discover the strength of their skills. This leads to better candidate experience. Also, a positive experience during the recruitment process and a better fitment to the job role results in better employee retention. It further reduces the cost related to employee turnover. A lower employee turnover results in better employer branding, which, in turn, attracts better hires. A win-win situation for both employees and the organisation.

Good to remember…

When implemented effectively, pre-employment assessments can be of immense help in streamlining the hiring process. Organisation leaders, along with hiring managers, can take to the board room to discuss the types of pre-employment assessments that might suit the requirements of the organisation, and help zero in on the right candidates for the open positions. The aim of a pre-employment assessment is to gauge the capability of candidates to do the job that an open position requires. But, it is not the only ticket to best hires. Pre-employment assessments are only a part of what should be a well-thought-out and implemented hiring process. What an organisation needs, over and above the use of pre-employment assessments, is a holistic hiring strategy that can ensure it hires the best candidates from the available talent pool.

HirePro’s AI-enabled coding and functional assessment technology offers an exhaustive bank of questions that can be used to create custom assessments. It enables organisations to screen and pick the best candidates from the applications received for the job role. Send your queries to sales@hirepro.in to know more about our automated assessment technology.

Resources:

• devskiller.com
• www.skeeled.com
• www.shrm.org
• www.criteriacorp.com

A couple of decades ago, education and one’s performance in the academic space were considered the sole measures to judge a candidate’s competency. There has been a significant shift in these hiring criteria during the fourth industrial revolution. Skill-based or competency-based hiring is the norm today. A study conducted by Dr. Sean Gallagher from Northeastern University cites “companies like IBM who demonstrate that skills-based or competency-based hiring appears to be gaining significant interest and momentum. Gallagher’s survey shows a majority of HR leaders reporting either having a formal effort to de-emphasize degrees and prioritize skills underway (23%) or actively exploring and considering this direction (39%).” This shift in mindset has resulted in more and more hiring teams adopting skill-based assessments to measure the competency of a candidate.

Another change in the hiring landscape has been the surge in the demand for technical talent. Though skilled technical workers are available in plenty, it is still a challenge to find the right candidate with the right mix of technical skills. This places unwarranted pressure on the hiring team responsible for hiring tech talent. They have to sift through resumes laden with tech abbreviations to cull out candidates with the relevant experience and skills. This is why most hiring teams consider technical assessments with automated, structured frameworks to be a lifesaver.

What are skill based assessments?

These are role-based tests that help you determine the suitability of a candidate for a particular role. A suitable hiring partner would be able to tailor or customise the assessment to suit the domain or role you are hiring for. These assessments are meant to gauge the technical abilities of candidates as well as their responses to specific problems they might encounter in their role.

Here is a range of domain-based assessments:

• Coding assessments: backend programming, database programming, frontend programming and scripting
• Aptitude assessments: logical reasoning, data interpretation, quantitative ability and verbal ability
• Functional assessments: finance and accounting, sales, HR, supply chain management and law

Advantages 101

Skill based assessments are ideal for evaluating a candidate’s suitability for a certain position.
Most employers have adopted this method because of the many benefits it brings to the table.

• Reduces bias and discrimination

Different biases such as affinity bias, gender bias, ageism, racism and many more can come to play during the hiring process. After all, hiring professionals are also human and can fall prey to these unconscious biases.
These assessments act as a neutral impersonal funnel through which candidates are evaluated only on the basis of their skills and abilities. This prevents bias from creeping in during the early stages of the hiring process.

• Focuses on ability to succeed

These tests evaluate candidates across a range of abilities required for several types of tasks that they may have to perform in their role.

• Accelerates the hiring process

These tests help recruiters quickly narrow down the candidate list instead of spending precious time reading resumes and finding suitable candidates. This, in turn, accelerates the hiring process.

• Ensures accurate hiring decisions

These tests evaluate the candidates on a wide range of skills that they would need to apply on the job. They also ensure that hiring is not influenced by the natural bias of the hiring team. This, in turn, makes for more accurate hiring decisions.

The How

Assessments can be very effective if they are well-thought-out and planned well.
Let’s take a look at how you can craft an effective assessment plan.

• Plan Strategically

Start with defining what you wish to accomplish with this evaluation. Define the skills being assessed, the roles and the complexities that you wish to address. Once you define these objectives, charting out the plan will come naturally.

• Choose the right assessments

You can choose from a variety of online assessment tools. The key point is to ensure that the skill assessment or functional assessment you administer is aligned with your objectives.
If you wish to evaluate the coding skills of your candidate, narrow down your assessment to backend programming, database programming, frontend programming, scripting, etc.
If you wish to evaluate the functional skills of your candidate make sure to use tests that evaluate functional skills. Some assessment platforms like HirePro offer functional assessments on a wide range of functional domains like finance and accounting, sales, HR, supply chain management and law.

• Customise the testing pattern to suit your requirements

Design the tests for screenings, capability assessments or hackathons based on your needs.

For example, you can decide to administer pre-designed MCQs from your recruitment partner’s database to filter out unwanted candidates in the initial stages.
You can use proctored online technical assessments with advanced role-based coding simulations to choose the best amongst the qualified candidates.
You can host live coding interviews with candidates to accurately assess their technical skills in an unbiased manner.

• Analyse test results to pick the right candidate

Evaluate each candidate based on their Stack rank (rank, percentile, marks), Code status (compilation status, test case status, time to solve), Code performance (average memory consumption, average execution time) and Code quality (cyclomatic complexity, lines of code, plagiarism score).
This will help you filter out the most appropriate candidate for the role.

Choose the right assessment tool

The use of a suitable assessment platform can help optimise your hiring process and enable you to find the right candidates for every role in your organisation. The key, of course, is in finding the right assessment platform. There are a number of online assessment tools available in the market. You can find your ideal online assessment platform by asking these questions.

• Does the assessment platform have its own library of tests?

A suitable assessment platform should have its own library of assessment tests. If it’s a coding assessment platform, it should be able to support a wide range of programming languages like Bash, C, C++, C#, D, Erlang, F#, GNU Octave, Go, Java 7, Java 8, JavaScript, jQuery, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python 2, Python 3, R, Ruby, Rust, Scala, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Angular, AngularJS, and Data Science (Python).

• Does the assessment platform allow you to customise tests?

The assessment platform should also allow you to build customised tests for your specific needs. This allows you to have more control over the hiring process and makes the hiring process unique to your company.

• Does the assessment platform allow you to conduct live coding tests and hackathons?

Live coding sessions with candidates and hackathons allow you to accurately assess their technical skills in an unbiased manner. Make sure that your hiring platform allows you to have brainstorming sessions over a shared coding window.

• Does the assessment platform offer advanced proctoring?

A great assessment is of no use if you are unable to prevent fraud. In fact, fraudulent behaviour is one of the reasons organisations used to shy away from online tests. However, this risk can be mitigated with strong proctoring. Make sure to choose a platform that automatically notifies you of fraudulent behaviour through impersonation and multiple people detection, plagiarism reports and code playbacks.

You can control fraudulent behavior through AI-powered live proctoring, automated warnings and disqualification, question randomisation and auto-expiration, secure browser, and granular access control with time, IP and browser.

• Does the assessment platform offer superior candidate experience?

A smooth candidate experience enables you to project a positive brand to your candidates and thereby elevate your standing as a preferred employer. Make sure that the platform you choose allows for a smooth test experience in spite of machine and internet issues. Ensure that you are able to keep the candidate engaged with timely interventions over email, phone and chat.

• Does the assessment platform give you detailed performance insights?

Tests are of no use if your platform is not able to give you relevant insights on the candidate’s performance. Make sure that the platform you choose is able to give comparable feedback on the candidate’s performance across various relevant criteria.

• Does the assessment platform comply with your security and compliance requirements?

It would be prudent to make sure that the platform complies with the relevant data protection policies that you adhere to.

Online Assessments are powerful tools that can positively impact your hiring efforts. The trick is to understand what you want to achieve by adopting this strategy. Once you have your hiring outcomes in sight, it’s a simple matter of evaluating the online assessment tools out there and choosing the one that suits you best. Visit us at XXX to know more about HirePro’s AI powered online tech assessment platform.