A Guide to Candidate Testing and Verification

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The hiring market has become so competitive that your team is likely to speed up the hiring procedure for securing the top talent. However, it is important to hire only the qualified candidates as well as the right fit for your organization. For achieving this, the hiring process must emphasize candidate testing and verification. In this post, we will discuss the benefits of two testing and verification hiring steps – skills tests and prescreen surveys.

Prescreen Surveys

A pre-screen survey is a vital tool for automating the applicant review procedure. After the candidates submit the applications, prescreen surveys immediately send automated follow-up mails by thanking them for their interest and provide a link to the survey. These surveys consist of several true/false questions and candidates require only a few minutes to complete. Data shows that 40 percent of applicants do not even bother to complete the survey means only the most serious candidates who want to join the company take the time to fill out the survey. Few benefits of prescreening surveys are discussed below:

Tailor Surveys for Every Role

Instead of sending the same prescreen survey to all the candidates, you can curate a specific set of questions for every role. For instance, if a given role requires a particular certification or a driver’s license, you have the option to include these as “Qualifying” questions in the prescreen survey. If the candidate is not having a valid license or certification, you will know the person is not the right fit for the open role. You can also put questions about availability – whether the applicants are available to work on weekends or nights among other questions for weeding out the applicants who do not fulfill your requirements.

Focus only on Qualified Candidates

Survey shows that on average, business takes about seven to ten days for reviewing and responding to job applicants that can lead to losing skilled candidates to competing job opportunities. The reason the hiring and the HR manager often takes a long time for reviewing applicants is they end up spending much time manually reviewing the applicants who are not even the right fit for the specified roles. By including candidate testing in the hiring process, job seekers who do not fulfill the basic requirements of the role can be eliminated automatically from the process before your team wastes time in reviewing the applications. As you are saving time, you can able to focus more on the qualified candidates and other responsibilities that will help in moving the business forward.

Skill Tests

You will not believe that 80 to 85% of job applicants lie on their resumes. A candidate may say she or he has years of sales experience or expert at Excel, but the truth will reveal when taking the skills tests. Skills tests ensure the candidates have the skills they have listed on their resumes or can discuss in interviews before you offering them the role. The benefits of these tests include:

Hard Skills Test

In the first round, the technical test can help in gauging an applicant’s hard skills whether the applicant has the right aptitude skills. The skills comprise mathematics, service technician, Microsoft Office, CAN requirements and many others depending on the role. Whatever the position you want to fill, the candidates should have the confidence in performing the job well. Or else, you risk hiring the non-qualified candidate and have to begin the hiring process again for finding a replacement.

Soft Skills Test

Although hard skills are necessary, it is important to know the soft skills of a candidate to succeed on your team. These-skills are not technical, but essential for most jobs such as business vocabulary, compassion, etiquette, or customer service management. The tests help in determining the candidates whether they have the right work ethics in getting the job done effectively. Depending on the results, you can get an idea of whether the candidates can be a good cultural fit and provide a valuable experience to customers. If you have hired a candidate with inappropriate soft skills, the employee may cause tension among team members or drive customers away.


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