Talent assessment methods (and why you should diversify)

Companies compete intensely in the war for talent and invest huge amounts of time and money to attract candidates. They often spend very little on improving their methods for assessing those candidates. Most organizations stick to the rudimentary - discovery interviews.

While interviews will always be part of the hiring process, they are not the most suitable form of assessment for every skill and competency. The truth is that the best candidate for a role might not be the best interviewer. Relying on interviews alone can be a lot like judging picture with missing (or assumed) puzzle pieces. Below are some ways to diversify how you assess candidates for different genres of technical and soft skills.

Quick links:

• Behavioural Assessments

• Skills Assessments

• Work Samples
  

Behavioural Assessments

A LinkedIn study revealed that 89% of bad hires lacked critical soft skills. An employee’s soft skills impact their individual work as well as their ability to collaborate with others. Behavioural assessments are an excellent tool that help companies:

• Understand if a candidate will work well within the role

• Predict the candidate’s collaboration and leadership style

• Reveal how the candidate enjoys working and their likely level of job satisfaction in the role

That last benefit is powerful, but often overlooked. Have you ever known someone fully capable of a job, but who hated doing it? That’s the result of someone who fits a role on paper, but not in practice. The goal is to choose candidates who are not only capable of the work, but who will thrive in the unique job parameters, work environment and culture that exists in your company. In the long run, understanding these nuances around job satisfaction improve retention rates and reduce the costs of turnover.

While these assessments enhance the effectiveness of your hiring process, their full potential is realized when existing employees take the assessments as well. Team-wide assessments help construct a holistic picture of how your team enjoys working together. By knowing your team’s core behaviours, you can get a sense of which new hire will integrate well with them.

Interested in using behavioural assessments? Here are some of the top brands used by companies:

• Mercer
  Clientele include: Uber, Adobe, American Express, Microsoft, Accenture, Suzuki

• Pymetrics
  Clientele include: Swarovski, Colgate-Palmolive, McDonalds

• PredictiveIndex
  Clientele include: Nissan, IBM, Subway, Docusign, Canon

• eSkill
  Clientele include: Coca-Cola, LG, Pepsico, FedEx

• Criteria
  Clientele include: Ford, 7Eleven, Asahi, Cision

Skill Assessments

Technical skills are some of the hardest to evaluate in an interview format. Luckily, there are alternative ways to tackle this challenge. Below are two popular methods to test a candidate’s technical skills.

Knowledge Test
Knowledge tests evaluate a person’s factual knowledge about an area. They often take the form of a quiz - using open ended or choice-based questions. These tests help confirm a candidate’s technical knowledge or professional expertise. These can be sent out using automated tools like Google Forms or be as simple as a work doc you ask the candidate to fill out and send back.

Benefits of knowledge tests:

• Create a consistent and objective method of comparing candidate expertise

• Reduce time spent interviewing - Candidates do tests in their own time and managers review the results

• Unveil any knowledge gaps that managers should investigate further in interviews
  

Case Study
Case studies are effective at revealing how a candidate would apply their previous experience, technical expertise and decision making skills to the type of work they’ll be doing in the role. While knowledge tests are more rigid in their format, case studies allow room for candidates’ creativity and presentation skills to show. A case study can take many forms. For example, you can ask candidates to:

• Create a presentation based on an example project or brand they’ll be working on

• Develop a strategy or budget proposal based on information in a brief

• Provide analysis and recommendations for an example data set

• Read through a problem scenario, then devise and explain their proposed solution

Best practice would be to have candidates complete the case study before the last interview, and not afterwards. This allows candidates at least one additional face-to-face wherein they can showcase their communication skills and walk you through their thought process behind the case study. It also leaves the opportunity for you to ask questions and stress-test their ideas.

Work Samples

For many roles, candidates can produce a sample of their past work. Work samples could include:

• A previous presentation or report

• Outline of products or services they designed

• A website, app or tool they developed

• A portfolio of graphic or design projects

Work samples give you a more realistic view of their work quality. Much like a case study, work samples also provide an opportunity for the candidate to walk you through their thought process in relation to the outcome. Furthermore, because these samples were done in a real work environment, you can delve into what real-world challenges the candidate faced - whether that be with the work itself, processes, or the people they worked with.

One word of caution - make sure when you request work samples that you respect any non-disclosure agreements the candidate has signed in the past, and do not pressure them to send work samples that would violate those agreements. If it is not possible for them to provide a work sample because of an NDA, having them do a case study (as previously described) can be a great alternative.

Our take

Diversifying methods of assessment help you fill in those critical information gaps so that you can hire the best candidate for each role. We have no doubt that trialing some of the methods above will make you more confident when comparing and selecting candidates.

---

At Ari Agency, we’re constantly working on innovating the hiring process. We go the extra mile to understand your business values, objectives and culture to help customize the assessment process and help you make better hiring decisions. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you find your next all-star.

Check out these articles you might like