According to Roy Krause, President and CEO of Spherion, “Changing demographics, shrinking supplies of qualified workers and the growing importance of retaining top talent are just some of the reasons employers are re-evaluating their approach to the screening, interviewing and hiring process.  In today’s labor market, employers cannot afford to spend time and money interviewing unqualified candidates…the most innovative organization are leveraging advanced screening and assessment tools to broaden their applicant pools, streaming the application process to quickly identify best-fit talent, and control employment costs by accelerating the hiring process.” (1)

Due to the cost of high employee turnover, both large and small companies are capitalizing on the benefits that assessment testing and pre-screening tools can provide.  According to the Spherion Emerging Workforce Study, two-thirds of large companies have increased their use of screening and testing between 2001 and 2006.  The result is a more streamlined interview process that involves a real self-assessment of the candidates involved.  A combination of pre-screening programs, behavioral assessments, skills testing, and behavioral interviewing can all help to enhance the possible match of a candidate to the prospective employer.

Smaller companies benefit greatly from assessment testing as well, but for a different reason.  A bad hire at a smaller company can have more impact than a company that employs several hundred individuals.  The loss of one person can greatly affect all departments in a small company, making the challenge of finding a replacement even more difficult.  Hiring the quality employee over the so-so employee from the beginning can make all the difference.

Assessment testing is only affective if you properly incorporate it into your interviewing process.  You need to be aware of the job requirements to make sure you are testing for the specified positions, not just general occupations.  Many organizations have this information available to them through their own job-description databases based on the positions available at their company, or can easily obtain it through surveying the existing employees.  Also, to ensure that your testing is done in a non-discriminatory manner, you should evaluate the detailed guidelines noted on the website of the US Equal Employment Opportunities Commission at eeoc.gov (2).

Pre-employment tests can decrease the amount of time taken up by the interviewing process by eliminating some of the guesswork and cutting to the chase whether or not the candidates have the skills to perform the task.  The pre-screening is not limited to one type of company either, in fact, everyone from food service to accounting firms is eligible.  Situational questions in the survey can differentiate the leaders from the followers, and those that might make impulse decisions rather than weighing out options.  Top talent is crucial to business development, and through the increasing trend of assessment testing, those that stand out are surely to be more easily identified.

1.  Havel, Kip.  “Spherion Workforce Study Uncovers Employer

Attitudes about Interviewing Process, Identifies Trends in Use of Screening and Assessment Programs.”  Spherion.com.  8 June 2006.  http://www.spherion.com/press/releases/2006/
EW_hiring_process.jsp>

2.  Haber, John.  “The Seven Rules of Employee Testing.”

Fadinvestments.com.  8 June 2007.  http://www.fadassessments.com/docs/papers/seven_rules.pdf