5 Best Candidate Selection Tools To Use In Your Hiring Process

Finding the right talent is the number one priority for any company, right? Yet hiring the right people for your business is easier said than done.

The Annual CEO Benchmarking Report 2019 found that 4 out of the top 5 biggest CEO challenges are related to talent optimization, with #1 being finding the right talent.

That’s why companies turn to recruiting software for help. This includes technology like candidate selection tools, which are purpose-built to make your hiring process run smoothly.

What do these tools do, how can they improve your hiring process and what are the best tools on the market?

Let’s get hiring!

What is a candidate selection tool?

There is no doubt that today’s job market is becoming more and more competitive. And hiring the right people is harder than ever. 

According to studies by MRI Network, McKinsey, and Glassdoor, companies are finding it harder to attract top performers, and they’re also struggling to fill positions in under 12 weeks successfully.

So, what can you do to make sure you’re getting the right staff through your door?

The answer is bringing a candidate selection tool onboard.

A candidate selection tool as a digital platform that collects data about candidates’ skills and characteristics through various assessments and helps you make data-driven shortlisting (and hiring) decisions. At the same time, some selection tools allow you to create automated workflows and communication to  save a ton of time and give your candidates (and also recruiters) a smooth, streamlined experience during the recruitment process.

Finding the right people for your organization is challenging. A candidate selection tool can make this process faster and easier.

Why use a candidate selection tool?

There are a ton of reasons adding a candidate selection tool into your tech stack can improve your hiring process.

A candidate selection tool helps you create a series of steps in your hiring process. For example, you can digitally control the preliminary screening of employment applications and conduct skill tests to vetting the final job candidate through background checks.

Let’s look at four of the most significant advantages of using a candidate selection tool in your hiring process.

1. Predicting job performance 

A combination of assessments allows you to predict job performance well. From culture fit and cognitive ability to personality and multitasking, a candidate selection tool puts into place a smooth pre-selection process. Candidates can take assessments to prove they’re the right fit for the job before a human ever gets involved. 

2. Saving time

Anything that helps take away the manual load of hiring is a plus. With a candidate selection tool, a lot of laborious and repetitive tasks that go along with hiring are automated. From gathering resumes, pre-hiring assessments and shortlisting to background checks, a candidate selection tool can take care of a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

3. Boosting candidate experience

When you’re hiring candidates, it’s important that they have a good experience—even if they don’t end up getting the job.

With a candidate selection tool, candidates are engaged in the hiring process as they have constant communication about their application and its progress. Even if they don’t get the job, they will never be left out in the dark, which can help retain a positive vibe towards your company. 

4. Making better hiring decisions

It’s hard for humans to hire candidates consistently and without bias. Using a candidate selection tool, you will have all the relevant data you need to make data-driven hiring decisions and eliminate unconscious bias.

Having recruiting technology that is not effective can slow down your hiring process, as well as result in losing qualified candidates. That’s why your candidate selection tool has to allow you to work fast and smart.

So, now you know the perks of using a candidate selection tool, which one is the best for your company?

5 best candidate selection tools

1. Harver 

Harver is a candidate selection tool that helps companies to predict job performance and select the best people for the job.

Through scientifically validated pre-employment assessments and custom-designed situational judgment tests, Harver can highlight the best candidates for your job and rank them based on job and company fit.

Harver uses data and science to predict the quality of a candidate by their aptitude, culture fit, soft skills, and ability to succeed throughout their career in the role.

Organizations can upload company videos and brand the assessment experience their way, creating engaging candidate experience in the process. Harver also enables users to create automated workflows, for example, to automatically shortlist candidates meeting certain criteria and schedule interviews with them.

McDonald’s candidate experience

Harver’s clients range from companies like Zappos and Heineken to Netflix and Valvoline.

Albert Heijn, one of Europe’s largest supermarket chains, uses Harver to hire candidates 40% faster than they previously could.

The retailer started using this candidate selection tool after deciding they needed to make the hiring process more efficient for their store managers. They knew their hiring managers were wasting time by repeating manual tasks when they were recruiting, which meant the hiring process lasted longer than they liked, and decided to build a mobile-first application experience.

“Previously it took around 20 or in some cases even 30 days to hire a candidate after they applied,” Albert Heijn’s Martijn Ulehake says.

Now, with automated scheduling, we have interviews taking place 24 hours after the application. We’ve had an example where the applicant was still in front of his computer when he received an invitation for an interview.

– Martijn Ulehake, Employer Branding Consultant at Albert Heijn

Harver can assist companies throughout a range of industries such as retail, customer service, hospitality, BPO, fast-growing companies, or financial services with improving their candidate selection process. 

2. HireSelect® by Criteria Corp

HireSelect is an online pre-employment platform that tests candidates before moving them onto the next phase of the hiring process.

At its core, the highlight of HireSelect is its testing features. You can test candidates on their aptitude, personality, and skills before they move onto the next hiring round. As the employer, you can select and administer specific test batteries to suit certain jobs, and automatically manage the incoming candidates for each of them.

Oh, and HireSelect also supports a bunch of different languages like Chinese, French, German, Hindi, Japanese, and Spanish. This is handy if you’re hiring a remote team that’s spread across the globe, or if you have a need to communicate with customers in their native language.

3. AssessFirst

Next on our list, AssessFirst is a candidate selection tool that works using automatic grading.

As candidates flow into your hiring funnel, they’re graded and compared to each of the other potential hires, and then shortlisted. The easy to use interface allows you to identify candidates and employees who can succeed and engage for the job you are recruiting for.

Companies like Decathlon Russia have used AssessFirst to pre-select their candidates and predict their success. The company’s Training Director, Maxime Bakalets, says Decathlon changed their pre-selection method with Assess First and saved up to 750 hours of recruitment time. Bakalets says using a tailor-made predictive model, Decathlon has also reduced its staff turnover rates. 

4. Plum.io

Plum.io is a candidate selection tool that’s half AI-powered, half psychology-powered.

The tool gives hiring managers the technology to build a predictive talent database to align people with business objectives. The AI features of Plum help measure the talent of a candidate based on their adaptability, innovation, and communication skills, which is then presented on an easy-to-navigate interface.

Although any organization size can use Plum.io, it’s geared toward enterprise companies who are looking to cut hiring acquisition costs and bias during the hiring process. Hiring at scale is hard, which is why Plum’s platform gives enterprise companies the data needed to implement a talent strategy that works for them without taking up every minute of their hiring manager’s day.

5. The Predictive Index

The Predictive Index is a candidate selection tool offering a concise behavioral assessment and a cognitive assessment.

Working on a subscription-based model, companies can use The Predictive Index to understand what drives their people to be the best they can be. Like other tools, The Predictive Index uses assessments to unearth the best candidates for a role, but it also combines comprehensive workshops and expert consulting to supercharge the hiring process.

You can also use The Predictive Index beyond your hiring process. After a candidate has accepted a job offer, The Predictive Index gives you tools like personal development charts, management strategy guides, and team dynamics reports to make sure your best hires stick around for longer.

Next steps

Utilizing a candidate selection tool can help you cut out the tedious, manual tasks from your recruitment process. By automating your pre-employment assessments and candidate selection process, as well as streamlining your data collection and reporting efforts, you’re essentially putting a lot of the heavy lifting required for hiring on autopilot.

If you’d like to see how Harver can help you hire faster, better, and in a fundamentally fair manner, you can book a demo below.