5 Reasons Your Business Needs a Talent Assessment Strategy

“We’ve always done it this way, and we’re doing fine.”

It’s an argument I hear frequently, and more often than not from companies that are, in fact, struggling to find and retain top talent.

Through my work with HR professionals, one thing that holds true for HR staff and recruiters across the board is the internal fight to get executive buy-in on the project, even when an overhaul of the talent acquisition process is necessary to help improve the business.

The reality is there is often a divide between those responsible for running the hiring process, and those responsible for funding it. The professionals I work with are in the trenches every day, formulating plans and developing strategies to improve the quality of hire. They face backlash when it all falls apart, and receive little praise when it’s all going right.

They get it.

They want to use assessments because they see the benefits, but not all the executives holding the purse strings do. Oftentimes, objections stem from stringent financial limitations: “This is a lot of money for something we don’t know will even work.”

I get it. There is fear in changing something as delicate as a hiring process. But when your business is consistently failing to keep new workers around, something’s got to give.

So when those in charge of the hiring process are struggling to get executives in their corner regarding pre-employment testing software, I usually point them to nine benefits to help their executive teams understand the vast advantages of an assessment program.

1. Improving Your Talent Acquisition Process Improves Your Company’s ROI

Okay, okay this is obvious, so I’ve made it my first point. Any respectable assessment company can provide you with evidence demonstrating exactly how they can impact your business and produce ROI.

But it’s important to note that there are two sides to that ROI:

• Improving the top line performance
• Reducing the bottom line costs

Ask the assessment company for figures on both. Understanding what impact the assessment company will have can help you build a solid case for the project.

For example, when you’re able to report to your executives that assessments could help you reduce year-one attrition by an average of 20% – 40%, you can take that information and calculate the impact to reflect your organization’s specific numbers.

While 25% attrition reduction in year one sounds good, won’t it sound better if you could talk about the impact of that attrition reduction within your departments, and on your company’s bottom line?

2. Talent Assessment Tools Can Either Transform or Support Your Company Culture

Usually my customers come to me in one of two positions: they either want to change the culture completely but don’t know how, or they have created a culture and want to maintain the “vibe.” This can all be done with an effective assessment program.

Keep hiring Negative Nancys? Talent selection tools can move you in a different direction.

Assessment companies can build a custom profile for the business, identifying the people who will create (or keep) the culture you envision.

3. Talent Acquisition Software Can Identify Job Competencies with Better Certainty

Many times, we find that our customers have missed the mark on identifying specific job competencies required for successful performance. This is not for lack of trying, as I know many customers spend months defining critical skills for specific positions.

The problem is the job profiles and critical competencies are built in a vacuum.

An assessment company that has a data warehouse containing thousands of job families and competencies can look on a much larger scale and zero in on the skillsets that are the best predictors for success in specific types of roles, whether service, sales, or support.

4. Talent Assessments Create another Level of Legal Security

The last thing any business wants is legal issues, but whether you run a lemonade stand with five employees or a multinational organization with more than 5,000 employees, I guarantee you your hiring process will be challenged – rightly or wrongly – on legal grounds at some point.

However, the beauty of predictive assessments is they rely on objective data to guide your talent selection process. A reputable assessment company will design an assessment process based on data (as opposed to other criteria that could land your company in hot water), and provide you with a technical manual that outlines why the job profile was built to certain specifications. This is a tremendous way to ensure that your hiring practices are legally sound and compliant.

5. Pre-Hire Assessments Chop Hours off the Hiring Process

The hiring process takes time, but a single interview should not eat up enough time to wipe out the better part of a workday. However, more often than not, this is exactly what happens. I have some customers who have applicants go through a 5-hour total process before a decision is made.

Five. Hours.

Not only is that bad for the candidate, it creates extra work for the recruiting team. While customers can place an assessment at any step in the overall hiring process, FurstPerson’s typical recommendation is to place the assessment immediately after application. This gives the assessment the ability to do what it does best: identify great candidates right away. Let your recruiting team spend the time where it’s best suited: working with a smaller pool of applicants who have already been identified as high-potential, so they can have quality conversations that aren’t being rushed by the pile of people to call next.