The ongoing pandemic has created global unrest and hit the business world at its hardest. This crisis has upturned HR workflows. The makeshift from face-to-face interviews to online examinations is a challenging affair that has increased in manifolds. Formulating strategies to hire the best fit candidate is a must and one such plan of action is pre employment screening.
As employers are extra careful and cautious, pre-employment testing tools help them fish out the best suitable candidate from the pool of talent.
Poor performers, bad hires not only cost the company a hefty amount but also affect in-house teams and their performance.
Since resumes and portfolios are not enough to get insights of a candidate’s skills, pre-employment screening tests and tools are reliable, faster and a sustainable strategy to screen potential candidates. Recruitment and assessment tools go hand-in-hand in today’s virtually-driven world.
With interviews going all virtual and digital, making certain that you receive the right information is a major task. Pre-employment assessments take an edge and help in making accurate decisions.
These tools are available online and create a blueprint of the candidate in the most objective manner. Alongwith saving the company’s time and money, a pre employment tool has the ability to assess candidate’s cognitive skills, hard and soft skills, job knowledge, personality traits and situational judgements.
When we say the pandemic hit the recruitment process hard, it means that traditional practices of hiring are no longer adequate. From the time when a senior employer could analyze candidates from their body language, technological tools today are the need of the hour and an authentic mode of verification.
Pre-employment screening is a series of assessment tests that allow the employer to screen potential candidates from the pool and find the best match. These tools consist of different tests, varying in shape and size, that assess candidates’ skills, knowledge, cognitive abilities and individual behavior.
Remote working has become the new normal. Video conferencing tools like Zoom and Teams have bridged the gap of communication but physical contact remains distant.
While these tools prove beneficial for the hiring process, eliminating unsuitable applicants still remains a question unanswered. Well, interviewing every candidate is, afterall, a costly affair.
Thanks to pre-employment screening services and tools, evaluating suitable candidates with the right skills is an easier task.
Hiring season is one of the most expensive and time-consuming periods for a company. Even then, as a result of bad hires due to one reason or the other, a company gets forced to bear double or even triple the expenses in terms of time and money in an attempt to correct the mistake.
It results in valuable loss of time by both the employer and the employee. This is a prime reason why pre-employment screening is considered to be of utmost importance for both the company and the job-seekers.
Pre-employment screening also sets the pace for the working environment of an employee by introducing them to the company culture for the very first time.
A company can choose to make their pre-employment screening process as comprehensive or as restricted as they deem fit. While the employment process by itself can be very exhaustive, paying special attention to the pre-employment screening can prove to be extremely rewarding by filtering out the best possible candidates for an establishment.
To confront the challenges brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses globally had to react in decisive and flexible ways. And while employment hasn’t been that high on the list it still is part of some of the costlier affairs. This is where pre employment screening comes into the picture and makes sure that the resources are put into the right place.
Pre-employment screening is the process or the set of processes undertaken by the company before the final interviews to shortlist the best and most suitable candidates for the role.
This involves sifting through the pool of applicants based on their basic qualifications and some other vital attributes that would make them a good fit for the role they are applying to. It also makes sure that an applicant is dedicated enough for the role.
It saves a lot of time and energy being expended on unworthy candidates in extensive in-person interviews.
As mentioned earlier, the employment process in itself is very time-consuming and expensive, so to make sure that only worthy candidates are a part of the process, a pre-employment screening is imperative and advisable for companies as part of their hiring procedure.
Pre-employment screening is a centralized process to gather accurate and relevant information during and before hiring. As an interviewer, it is important for you to know about pre-employment tools and how to leverage its technological competence to your benefit.
Based on the type of job profile, select the test type that unveils the most relevant information and the candidate’s ability to perform in the desired role.
Pre-employment screening are categorized into three types- pre-interview screening, interview screening and post-interview screening.
Some tests are designed to test the applicant’s mental prowess and cognitive ability, while others are intended to test a person’s behavior and see if he/she meets the set norms of expectations.
The tests within each category vary according to the industry; you can select methods that best suit your requirements and job application.
Just like SAT scores simplify admission procedure in colleges, results from pre-employment screening helps narrow down suitable candidates and ease down hiring for HRs and talent acquisition experts.
Finding the best fit employee is significant; not just skill fit but also team-oriented and stable as well. To hire right in the most efficient manner, candidate assessment tools are the ones to leverage and streamline your requirements with job seekers’ skills.
Besides evaluating relevant cases like cognitive abilities, soft skills, individual character and cultural fit behavior, pre-employment screening gives multiple other reasons to recruitment experts for using these tools in their hiring process.
It is advised to consider using candidate assessment tools as the data procured from the tests helps build a skill-oriented workforce.
How?
The insights gathered from employment screening helps in developing diverse and successful personnel. This enables the employers to understand the candidate’s behavior in the work environment. Besides, it also helps determine the best team for the hired employee to fit in.
Finding the perfect candidate for the job is a critical and time-consuming process. It is always great to leverage technology, especially when investing for a best fit hire.
Choosing a pre-employment screening software for the hiring process is an added advantage and a transparent medium of applicants data collection.
“Better the hire, better the company’s accomplishments.”
Benefits of using screening software are myriad, few amongst which are as follows:
If you are thinking of including a pre-employment screening tool in your recruitment process, consider employing these practices to get the most out of these tools and graph up your hiring scale.
1. What is a pre employment screening tool?
A pre-employment screening tool is designed to simplify the hiring process. This software tool enables the recruiter to customize, conduct, evaluate and derive results from various test types and make the best fit hire for the organization. Employment of such tools eliminates the risk of making bad hires.
2. Why is pre employment screening important?
Picking the right candidate from a pool of talent is an overwhelming process. It is important to invest in hiring tools to simply the search and make an informed decision. And that’s where pre-employment screening serves the purpose right.
It enables you to shortlist suitable applicants, make confident decisions, envision job performance, pick culturally fit candidates and most importantly, build a diverse and responsive workforce.
3. What are the benefits of including a pre employment tool in the recruitment process?
Among the various benefits a screening tool provides, some include efficient hiring,higher productivity, unbiased screening, cost-effective successful results, quick engagement for future hirings and scalable screening.
4. What are the different types of pre employment screening services?
5. What are the best pre-employment assessment tools?
Among the various tools available online, choose the one that suits your brand requisites and align with the objective you are looking to fulfill. Each tool offers something different. So learn more about their features to make an informed decision.