Here’s something we wish were a myth: By 2030, organizations can expect to lose $8.5 trillion in revenue due to talent shortages and skills gaps. But the fact is, ongoing labor trends hinder hiring and retaining good fits. And with the Baby Boomer generation retiring soon, organizations also need to start planning to replace even more experienced employees as they retire.
Despite these current and looming workforce challenges, your organization can keep revenue up. How? By not letting misconceptions give you the wrong idea about hiring decisions.
And one way organizations can make better talent decisions despite some of these challenges: talent assessments.
Read on for the truth about talent assessments, which can set you free to hire and retain top talent – even as other organizations miss out due to myths and misconceptions.
Myth 1: “Assessments don’t help find quality candidates”
The myth: Screening by resume can stand on its own. Assessments are unnecessary or unreliable.
The reality: Resume tracking is subjective and tells an incomplete story. Meanwhile, assessments are designed by industrial-organizational psychologists to provide objective and accurate data to predict fit for a specific role.
You can use assessments to gauge a wide or narrow set of workplace behaviors and attributes that contribute most to success. For instance, companies that use Harver’s assessment solutions can increase quality applications by more than 30%. How? With 30+ flexible assessments that are scientifically designed to measure workplace behaviors, soft skills like dependability, and other key predictors for great fit.
By hiring top quality talent, you can directly impact revenue growth via higher productivity. For more, watch the webinar Hiring for Impact: How Talent Acquisition Leaders Can Deliver Business Value & Top-Line Growth.
Myth 2: “Assessments take too long”
The myth: Assessments are time-consuming for companies and candidates.
The reality: Assessments can actually speed up time to hire, especially compared to labor-intensive alternatives like resume reviews.
While it might seem counterintuitive, implementing assessments isn’t “adding another step” to further complicate your screening process. Assessments themselves don’t have to take long to complete – Harver’s assessments take as few as 7 minutes for hourly roles or 16 minutes for professional roles.
With real-time results, recruiters and hiring managers can make faster, more informed talent decisions. Even team scoring is simplified and standardized for additional efficiency. As an example, companies using Harver’s assessments decrease time to hire by 52%.
Myth 3: “Assessments are all the same”
The myth: All assessments measure the same things or are otherwise interchangeable.
The reality: There is a wide variety of assessment solutions out there, but keep in mind not all measure the same things or do so at the same level.
Some assessments measure how candidates behave in the workplace. Others assess soft skills like decision making, hard skills like typing, or even alignment of values between candidates and employers. There are also situational judgment tests, which measure a candidate’s natural reaction to common on-the-job scenarios. This transparency also supports bottom line profit by reducing early attrition and recruiter efficiency via stronger two-way matching.
Myth 4: “Assessments are just for pre-hire”
The myth: Assessments are only useful for external candidates or talent acquisition.
The reality: Assessments unlock the objective data and actionable insights for the entirety of the talent pool and lifecycle.
Need to overcome a widening skills gap in your industry? Reskill and upskill to fill open roles and keep revenue up. Soft skills assessments enable faster and more successful L&D and mobility initiatives because the better you know a job seeker’s potential for a role, the faster you can proactively start growing them to be the best fit possible.
By measuring soft skills like effort, learning, and fairness, you can fill roles by matching internal job seekers with the best fit for any role. This investment in assessing soft skills leads to increased productivity, improved retention, and higher ARR.
Get the facts when considering assessments
Just as you want to choose talent based on fit for role, you can choose an assessments solution based on how well it meets your unique needs.
Here are some tried and true attributes to look for when vetting potential assessment providers:
- Multi-measured – Humans are complex, so look for a solution that’s comprehensive and can measure various key skills and attributes.
- Objective – Ensuring that candidates are screened for fit to role while mitigating adverse impact due to subjective shortlisting.
- Flexible – Enabling quick reskilling, upskilling, or developing of talent to respond to any situation or challenge.
Want to save your organization’s share of $8.5 trillion in lost revenue by 2030? Visit our Assessments page to learn more about Harver and our solutions for hiring and developing talent better and faster.
