It is important to be realistic about what you can expect from pre-employment screening. Testing is not a perfect tool. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. Testing companies that advertise "99.9% accuracy" and claim that they will never make another bad hire again are either not familiar with the science behind testing or misrepresenting it in order to sell their products. Employers will not make another bad hire by incorporating tests into their hiring process, but they will make fewer. There is no perfect test. While some people may not test well, others may do well. Although tests have been shown to be more reliable than interviews or resumes in terms of predicting performance, employers should remember that no one selection method is perfect.
Pre-employment tests should not be considered a part of a complete set of criteria that are used to assess applicants. This includes resumes, interviews and job experience. The best pre-employment tests are used at the beginning of the hiring process to identify candidates who may not be a good fit. Organizations that use tests make their final decisions based upon many factors. However, tests should only be considered one component of the overall decision-making process. Companies should expect that tests will streamline and improve the process of hiring, not replace it.
Data for the AMA are based upon surveys from its members, which tend to be larger organizations. Criteria Corp believes that small and medium-sized companies should be able to take pre-employment tests. Our mission is to make these assessments available to all organizations.
Figure 3: According the American Management Association (AMA) surveys, 70% of employers conduct some type of job skill testing. 46% of employers perform personality or psychological tests on potential employees and applicants, while 41% of employers screen applicants for basic literacy and math skills.
Pre-employment testing has seen a dramatic increase in popularity over the past few years. As applicant pool growth is increasing due to the ease of applying online for jobs, recruiters and hiring managers are increasingly relying on data-driven talent management techniques that simplify the hiring process. The American Management Association (AMA) has found that pre-employment testing is on the rise over the past 15 years. According to the AMA data:
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They are not intended to be a guideline for job-related skills.
What kind of results can companies expect from pre-employment testing? It is important that you have realistic expectations and goals for the results of a pre-employment program. By using professionally-developed, validated testing instruments, employers are adding objective, data-driven metrics to the hiring process. Employers can make incremental improvements to their hiring process and reduce the chance of making bad hires. It should dramatically simplify the hiring process and result in demonstrable improvements to a company's productivity, turnover, training and hiring costs. This streamlining should yield tangible benefits - an ROI Calculator can show the company what returns it can expect to implement testing.