How to Use Pre-Employment Testing During Hiring

ICYMI: evidence is the future of hiring. 

In today’s labor market, where the threat of turnover is high, and quality talent is in short supply, evidence-based hiring is every employer’s most effective tool for recruiting and retaining top talent. 

The practice helps employers zero in on the candidate indicators that are actually indicative of positive employee outcomes, like engagement, productivity, retention, etc.

It’s about building a hiring process that incorporates more predictive factors–and weighs them more heavily–to improve hiring outcomes over time. 

An added plus: evidence-based hiring benefits both employers and employees alike. It pushes organizations to minimize the bloated, bureaucratic, impressionistic parts of their hiring processes in favor of shorter, easier, and fairer hiring cycles. 

The Tools that Power Evidence-Based Hiring

With this mass mentality shift towards data-driven hiring, comes a whole new category of software and services designed to help employers collect and analyze data earlier in the employee lifecycle. 

Named “pre-employment solutions”, this category helps employers make better, data-driven hiring decisions, and there are three major types: 

Pre-Employment Background Screening

Pre-employment screening services, such as S2Verify, help clients improve hiring and contracting decisions and detect risk so they can protect their people, reputation, and finances. From background checks to professional license verifications, pre-employment screening services provide employers with the data they need to determine whether a candidate is a fit or not. That data also feeds insights into long-term evidence-based hiring plans so employers can screen and hire quality candidates more efficiently over time.

Applicant Tracking Systems

Similarly, Applicant Tracking Systems allow recruiters and hiring managers to attract, source, evaluate, and hire candidates better and faster. ATS track candidates throughout the recruiting and hiring process, screen and sort resumes for relevant data points, streamline recruiting and interview operations, and more.

78% of recruiters using an Applicant Tracking System report that it has improved the quality of the candidates they hire–and not just for the ways that it helps employers assess candidates.

Applicant Tracking Systems also serve as a much-needed internal hiring “audit”. The collected data helps employers identify inefficiencies in the process (i.e. is the application process too long? Are there inconsistencies in communication? Are there certain employees that are better at spotting quality candidates than others?) The result: a hiring process that better serves both candidates and employers.

Pre-Employment Testing

For years, employers have relied on resumes and degrees to predict positive employee outcomes. But recent research shows that selecting candidates based on skills can lead to better job outcomes than relying on degree attainment or resume history–especially in the age of remote work.

In response to this skills movement, employers are turning to pre-employment testing to screen for the skills that they deem predictive of positive employee outcomes–from standard job skills to emotional integrity and cognitive ability. Candidate assessments also collect critical data points that inform employers’ long-term evidence-based hiring model. 

Pre-Employment Testing Supports an Evidence-Based Hiring Process

The key to a good evidence-based hiring program: standardization. After all, the practice of evidence-based hiring is all about removing subjectivity, bias, and intuition at every opportunity. Ultimately, the goal is to collect data that is as objective as possible. 

Pre-employment testing brings automatic standardization to the hiring process, delivering on that objectivity. Candidate assessments ensure that all applicants are being measured against the same metrics–and against the metrics that matter most to employee outcomes. 

According to research from industry-leading Criteria Corp, employers that use pre-employment testing found a 52% better hiring success rate, 29% greater employee productivity, and 48% lower turnover. They’re getting better and better at determining whether someone has the right skills to do the job.  

To Test or Not to Test

But, pre-employment assessments pose some threats to your hiring process if improperly executed, including compliance threats. 

Tomorrow, tune in for the next episode of America Back to Work: Expert Interview Series. We’re sitting down with Josh Millet, co-founder and CEO of Los Angeles-based Criteria Corp–one of the first SaaS solutions to provide talent assessments to the market–to get his take on pre-employment testing. 

Millet created Criteria with the mission to take powerfully predictive science and make it accessible to organizations of all kinds, enabling them to make better, evidence-based talent decisions that drive results. 

Plus, check back Friday on the blog. We’re sharing the pros and cons of pre-employment testing–so you can figure out if it’s right for your organization. 

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