Employees act as the backbone of any company, and it is necessary to hire those employees carefully. Hiring is one of the most important HR functions but can prove to be tedious many times. The traditional methods of hiring seem a bit impractical today, in a world ruled by tech.
Pre-employment testing has brought about a revolution in the recruitment process in past years.
Read this blog further to understand how to speed your recruitment process with pre-employment testing.
What is Pre-employment Testing
Pre-employment testing is done prior to hiring a person for a job. The vast number of job applications due to ease of applying for jobs has made pre-employment testing a norm in almost every company.
These tests are used to measure the competency of candidates to perform a particular task. Companies use a variety of pre-employment tests such as aptitude tests, numerical ability tests, etc.
Pre-employment tests help to screen the applications better and speed up the overall recruitment process. In addition, such tests help avoid spammers and allow companies to assess the candidates in a better way.
Benefits of Pre-employment Testing
Here are some of the benefits of pre-employment testing-
- Pre-employment testing helps companies in speeding up the recruitment process.
- Pre-employment testing reduces employee turnover by hiring only suitable candidates and eventually increasing employee retention.
- It helps in automating and simplifying the whole recruitment process.
- Pre-employment testing improves your employer brand in the minds of candidates.
Role of Pre-employment Testing in Speeding up The Recruitment Process
One of the major benefits of pre-employment testing is that it helps in speeding up the recruitment process.
Pre-employment skills tests help you speed up your recruitment process by a lot, especially in comparison to the traditional methods of hiring.
Here is how you can speed up your recruitment process with pre-employment testing.
Administer Tests Simultaneously
Pre-employment testing software allows you to administer the tests to a large number of candidates at the same time.
Pre-employment testing software helps you in assessing the candidates on different types of skills.
The software allows you to administer these tests at the same time to a large number of applicants. This helps you in reducing the time taken to conduct personal tests for every candidate. This might look small, but it makes a significant difference in reducing the overall time in the recruitment process when it compounds.
Automate Repetitive Tasks
Pre-employment testing software allows you to automate simple and repetitive tasks and increases speed and transparency.
You can make sure that when any candidate applies, they directly link to the tests you want to conduct. You can also set a filter for automatically shortlisting people who score above the pre-decided criteria.
For Eg: Candidates scoring more than 40 can be shortlisted automatically.
You can also set filters for specific categories. For Eg: People scoring above 40 in numerical ability and people scoring above 60 in verbal reasoning get shortlisted automatically.
All this helps you in speeding up the recruitment process and gives you time to focus on the more important things of your work.
Better Screening of Candidates
It comes as no surprise that due to the ease of applying for jobs, there has been a tremendous increase in the number of job applicants. With so many candidates, it becomes difficult to screen so many applications properly.
However, pre-employment testing helps you in screening the candidates in a much more efficient way.
Pre-employment testing helps you screen candidates based on their skills and automatically shortlists them if the skills match the job requirements.
A study shows that almost 78% of candidates lie on their resumes or include misleading statements in their resumes. Pre-employment testing helps in filtering out such candidates.
This helps you screen the candidates more efficiently without spending too much time going through every candidate’s application. It helps you in speeding up your overall recruitment process.
Measure the Necessary Skills
Pre-employment tests help you in measuring the specific skills that are required for the job.
It’s true that every person is skilled at one thing or the other. However, you need to ensure that the candidate possesses the required skills for the job or not.
Pre-employment testing helps you match the job requirements to the skill level of candidates and make your hiring decisions accordingly.
Measuring candidates’ right skill set helps reduce the time taken in the recruitment process, rather than focusing too much on unnecessary details.
Reduces the Number of Unqualified Candidates
Pre-employment testing ensures that only qualified candidates move further in the recruitment process. One of the major problems faced by companies is the number of spam applications they get. As a result, candidates start applying to jobs without even reading about it first.
However, pre-employment testing allows you to shortlist only qualified candidates and remove all the unqualified candidates in the first round itself.
This way, you don’t have to waste your time on unnecessary applications and focus your energy and time only on qualified candidates. It acts as a major factor in speeding up your recruitment process.
Conclusion
These were some of the ways in which pre-employment testing helps in speeding up your recruitment process.
We hope this blog helps you learn how you can speed up your recruitment process using pre-employment tests.
About the Author
Amrit Acharya is the head of products at Xobin. Amrit and his team help over 600 companies with bias-free recruitment using online assessments. An avid tennis fan, Amrit writes about recruitment optimization, hiring strategies, and product management.