The practice of data-driven hiring is no longer a topic exclusive to the world of talent acquisition. The concept of building a smarter hiring process with pre-hire assessments has begun to generate buzz in the mainstream, garnering attention from publications like The Washington Post, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and TIME magazine.
In Part 1 of our blog series How to Transform Your Company’s Talent IQ, we discussed how companies can begin to build a better talent acquisition process. In Part 2 of our series, we’ll examine the evolution of data gathering and analysis in the assessment process, as well as some of the advantages that come with using these tools to shape and sustain your hiring efforts.
Advances in technology have allowed assessment companies to streamline the hiring process, even within the context of the assessments themselves. With the help of automation, processes to analyze the data collected by talent assessments that used to take weeks are now largely instantaneous, providing quasi real-time feedback employers can use to make critical decisions regarding their hiring and recruiting efforts.
Pre-Hire Assessments: Validation Reviews Back Then
In the true nature of technology, the way in which pre-hire assessments are leveraged within an organization has undergone an evolution. Data can be gathered instantly, analyzed, and compiled at a rate that allows companies to streamline their hiring processes to meet their current goals with current information.
However, this was not always the case.
In the past, a proactive organization might have extracted data from assessments once every 12 to 36 months to evaluate their performance against a host of key performance indicators. Much of the process was done manually and involved extracting the data, organizing it, analyzing it, and creating a report to share with leadership.
The process could take anywhere from hundreds to thousands of hours of work, depending on the size of the study. And when all was said and done, organizations were essentially making decisions based on data that were often from the distant past.
Validation Reviews Now
Thanks to advancements in technology, leading pre-hire assessment companies have largely automated data collection and analysis, which offers a number of advantages that allow companies that use assessments to make high-impact hiring decisions much more quickly and accurately.
Advantage 1: More, Newer Data Allows a Quicker Reaction Time in the Talent Acquisition Process
When leadership needs to make a decision, older data are not nearly as effective (or accurate) as current data. By using old data, companies marginalize information – such as the current labor market, economic conditions and business strategy – crucial to choosing courses of action for the business.
However, the modern analytics movement has empowered leading assessment companies to streamline the review process, taking it from a matter of weeks to a matter of minutes. Working in tandem with analytics experts to perfect the timing of talent analytics check-ups, organizations can access and interpret the data regarding the hiring process as frequently as needed. As a result, companies can see what is happening in their organizations in the present versus the past.
Advantage 2: The Ability to Identify New or Hidden Trends in Data
Through systems integrations and application programming interface (API) connectivity, businesses are able to merge talent assessments with applications they have already implemented, including:
- Performance management systems
- Training systems
- Applicant tracking systems
- Learning and development systems
- Human resource information systems
The combined information these data provide allows organizations to work together with assessment vendors to see a fuller picture of their talent assessment process, and draw conclusions about its effectiveness.
If we think about organizations with several different branches as an example, this capability is incredibly useful in identifying qualified candidates from a variety of cultural and geographical backgrounds. After all, organizations with large populations of workers are often hiring for the same job in multiple locations, however the specific set of competencies that identify top talent in one location do not always generalize to other locations due to local markets and cultural factors.
In the case of large enterprises with multiple locations, the integration of talent assessment software into the company’s other platforms can help experts identify job profiles that are effective in one geographical area but not another, and make the necessary alterations.
Advantage 3: Saving Money in the Pre-Hire Process
The more the distance between data collection and analysis can be narrowed, the quicker and more cost-effective the process becomes. Automation eliminates the wait.
Experts estimate analytics can drive cost-related savings in excess of 70% versus traditional, manual processes. Moreover, given the fact that analytics draws on more recent data, the ROI of the pre-hire assessment process can increase dramatically; as much as 65% more than backward-facing approaches.
Taking the human element out of the equation allows for a smoother and more precise review process. Removing what was once a manual and labor-intensive component does not simply save organizations time and money, it allows organizations to confidently make critical decisions quickly with accurate, error-free data.
