Maximising Recruitment Efficiency with Customised Assessments
In today’s era of tech-enabled personalisation, almost every aspect of our lives has been transformed, including hiring. The traditional approach of administering standardised tests to numerous candidates has given way to customised tests.
Customisation helps identify the best-fit candidates based on holistically crafted assessments that gauge all aspects required for a specific role. It does so more realistically, with optimised resources and costs. As organisations increasingly adopt a skills-first hiring approach, customised assessments are becoming essential. They help elicit many hidden skills and traits of candidates that most standard assessments often miss.
How can organisations customise the assessments for their recruitment needs effectively? Here is a three-step strategy to achieve the desired outcomes using customised assessments.
1. Plan
They say failing to plan is planning to fail. When it comes to customised assessments, planning is critical for success. What are the factors one must consider while planning? Let’s take a look.
- Evaluate the hiring process to know at which stage the customised assessments need to come in.
- Analyse the roles that are hired and the relevant skills needed, including personality traits and cultural fitness. For example, customised assessments may work best for niche and specialised roles or leadership
positions, while standard assessments might only need slight adjustments for other roles. - Determine the best way to assess the required skills. Various assessment options are available such as personality tests, virtual reality (VR) assessments, multimodal assessments, gamification, and adaptive tests.These options help organisations become inclusive by ensuring a fair chance for people with varying abilities to perform their best.
- The question bank is one of the most critical aspects of a customised assessment. Customisation typically means no two roles or candidates get the same paper. Hence, there needs to be a robust, accurate, relevant and updated question bank of high quality to ensure that the planned objectives are achieved. This often requires input from subject matter experts (SMEs) from academia and industry. The question bank should include realistic workplace scenarios enabling candidates to demonstrate their skills fairly and transparently to ensure unbiased hiring decisions.
- Scoring can be a challenge, when there are varied customised assessments to work with. The planning must also consider weightages and score calculation based on performance data. Proctored and recorded assessments with customised reports can provide evidence to support hiring decisions.
Planning with these considerations can ensure customised assessments give the desired results.
2. Pick the right online platform
The best way to implement customised assessments is through credible online platforms. When choosing an online platform, several factors should be evaluated:
- Compliance: Ensure the platform meets applicable standards and regulations.
- Security: Check for data security and administration capabilities.
- Robustness: The platform should handle machine and internet issues, with recoverability options.
- Integrity: Look for features to identify fraudulent behaviours, such as impersonation alerts and live and automated proctoring.
- Integration: Assess whether the platform can seamlessly integrate with existing ERP systems.
- Cost-benefit analysis: Perform an analysis based on the volume and type of hiring to determine the platform’s value.
- Audit and admin requirements: Hiring is a key function in any organisation, and has to be transparent and accountable. Therefore, the platform must enable audit trails with data and reports with evidence for every hire. A recent LinkedIn report titled “Future of Work 2024” mentions six predictions shaping hiring strategies for the year. According to the report, companies redefining the quality of hires are focusing on implementing objective and evidence-based candidate assessment processes.
3. Track, measure and tweak
Periodic tracking and measurement of identified metrics are necessary to ensure the process is on the right track. Technological advancements are disrupting the status quo more rapidly than ever before. It is crucial to stay abreast of the trends and incorporate changes accordingly.
Collecting feedback from candidates and internal stakeholders can provide insights to further refine the process.
Advanced technologies like AI will only further augment hiring. Only a good strategy or a proven partner can ensure that customised assessments succeed. HirePro offers precise customised assessments to maximise hiring gains, covering the complete spectrum of virtual hiring, including customised assessments.
