Prescreening tests are an excellent way of making your recruitment process more manageable and scalable. They can significantly reduce the time it takes for hiring managers to deal with the task. They also help make it more objective by putting all candidates through the same evaluation and avoiding unconscious biases the interview process can have.
Having quantitative data in your hiring and selection can be extremely important, particularly if you are recruiting multiple positions that require similar skill sets. In addition, with many jobs now receiving hundreds or even thousands of applications, the ability to quickly sift through them is more important than ever.
The Reasons You Should Use Pre-Screening Tests
Prescreening Tests Make Recruitment Fair
When reviewing résumés, it is all too easy for even the best-intentioned people to allow their biases and preconceptions to influence the hiring decisions that they make.
Small inconsequential factors—such as a person’s name or origin—may have no impact on their ability to do the job, but these can stick in people’s minds and shape their selection choices. A prescreening test gets rid of these problems during the early stages of the hiring process. Candidates are given the assessments and scored according to criteria, meaning that everyone has an equal chance of performing well.
Most industries are full of close-knit individuals who talk to each other about their experiences at various companies. However, once an organization gains a reputation for any recruiting bias, it can be challenging to attract quality applicants. So having a robust and reputable prescreening process is an excellent way to signal to potential employees that you are running a fair process and want to attract the best talents.
Prescreening Tests Make It Easier to Scale
You can receive hundreds or even thousands of applications for the roles that you want to fill. And that can be far more than what you can manually review.
Having a prescreening test in place can assist you with this problem. You can set minimum qualifications for applicants and let everyone who passes this basic check take the assessment. Then, the hiring manager will review the results to know which candidates will proceed to the interviews.
For prescreening assessments to help you reduce the number of unqualified applicants you need to interview, you should have the right benchmarks according to your goals.
Prescreening Tests Give Unique Insights
Job interviews have many advantages, for example, they are a great way to find out about cultural fit. You can also use interviews to determine whether a potential employee shares the values of your organization.
However, they are less good at allowing you to compare candidates against each other. This is because every interview goes differently. And even if you use prewritten questions and go with a competency-based approach, it can still go in a different direction, depending on you and the candidate.
There is also the risk that you can’t recall essential parts of the interview later. While most interviews are recorded and minuted, it’s rare to review the transcripts in total. HR practitioners also commonly rely on their gut instinct and recollection of the encounter to decide whether a candidate goes to the next stage of the process.
When you use prescreening tests, you get valuable information about a talent. You can then use these insights during the interviews to get to know an applicant better. Candidates now have tools to prepare for an interview, often based on the organization. By exploring the knowledge prescreening tests provide, you can prod deeper to know a potential employee.
Prescreening Tests Create Paper Trails
At times, you need to prove that you run a fair, open, and balanced recruitment process—one that does not give a candidate an unfair advantage over another.
When you use valid and reliable prescreening tests, you have a standard when you evaluate applicants. This shows that your organization is doing its best to find the right talent for the position.
With recruitment more challenging than ever, it has never been more critical for businesses to make the right hiring decisions at every opportunity. It will not only ensure that you have the best talents for your organization but will also prevent you from incurring the terrifying costs of having the wrong person end up on your payroll.
We at People Dynamics offer various prescreening tests that fit your goals. Our low-cost online prescreening assessments are locally developed using current psychometric theory, principles, and methodologies utilized in the thousands by local, national, and multinational organizations.
