The Advantages of Pre-Employment Assessments

For most businesses, labor is the most significant expense. Payroll costs comprise approximately 70% of a typical U.S. business’s cost structure. Reports have estimated that American companies spend $130 billion dollars annually on hiring and selection.

It should come as no surprise to learn that hiring mistakes result in even higher costs. According to HR.com, poor hiring practices result in massive monetary hemorrhages. A poor choice in hiring a salaried person will cost a company $7,000; a mid-level mistake generally costs $10,000; and a wrong executive-level hire will cost a company well over $50,000. Most likely, these are very conservative numbers.

A big part of labor cost management includes the hiring process: successful businesses are cautious to ensure they don’t make bad hiring decisions. How do they achieve recruiting success? By utilizing pre-employment assessments.

Online pre-employment assessments can give you, the business owner, a better view of an applicant’s behavioral style, motivations, critical thinking skills, emotional intelligence, learning style, etc. Based on time-tested, scientifically prepared questions to measure internal motives and likely job progression, these pre-hiring tests protect your interests and budget in the long run.

Here are the advantages of pre-employment assessments:

1. Improve Hiring and Selection
The right person in the right job is priceless; the wrong one is a nightmare waiting to happen. Bad apples spoil the bunch, and employee disengagement is contagious. Since Gallup began tracking employee engagement in 2000, less than one-third of U.S. employees report being enthusiastically involved and committed to their work.

Using pre-employment assessments allows you to accurately identify job applicants before the final interview and make scientifically informed judgments to build an organization of A+ teammates.

2. Increase Sales
Use pre-employment assessments to teach your sales team powerful behavior profiling skills. Empower them to identify observable behaviors based on those gleaned from pre-hiring assessments and then encourage them to adapt their selling style to fit the customer’s buying style.

3. Improve Customer Service
Pre-employment assessments allow you to know in advance that your people believe in your organization and care about your customers. This puts you in a better position to equip and train your support team with invaluable communication and behavioral profiling skills that pay countless dividends.

4. Increase Productivity
Pre-employment assessments measure several personality and individual facets. They give you the ability to identify (with scientific accuracy) the strengths and shortcomings of each employee. You can use this data to create specific action plans from the data you amass to maximize your organization’s talent.

5. Reduce Employee Turnover
Use pre-hire assessments to ensure the best possible positional “job fit” for each new hire. A great fit means more robust retention rates, lowering the high turnover costs.

6. Customize Employee Training
One size fits one, not all. By harnessing the extent of your assessment data, you can develop more potent and more specific training programs. Learn how each person learns best and get them on the road (or back on track!) to productivity sooner.

7. Model Team Building
By “knowing” your new employees before they start the job, you’ll be able to place them in a group where they’ll be most likely to thrive. Create your teams based on compatible skills and traits, not just generic ideas of balance.

Top-level teams are comprised of behaviorally compatible members with an optimal array of complementing proficiencies. Pre-employment assessments allow you to match skills and weaknesses to create powerhouse teams.

Data trumps hunches and prevents bias from corrupting essential decisions. By taking advantage of pre-employment assessments, you not only give yourself a chance to save and grow more of your hard-earned money but also help provide a healthy and positive company culture.

If you’d like more information on how pre-employment assessments can help your business, click here to download a sample assessment. I’m trained to both administer and interpret testing results. I have issued and interpreted over 3000 assessments.

Coach Dave