How do you know if a particular techie is a right fit for your job or not? The process of reviewing the job applications, the applicant’s skills set, and their ability of practical application of those skills, after sourcing them is known as candidate screening. And this process involves the evaluation of resumes, experiences, personalities, and skills through assessment tests, interviews, etc.
Resumes can help you peep into the candidates’ skills. But, they are insufficient to give you an insight into the candidates’ personality or their ability to use the skills for problem-solving. So, you need to arrange the candidate screening tests to make sure that you hire the right fit. These candidate screening tests are often known as pre-employment tests.
For example, in academic settings for college entrance examinations, in-class tests, etc.
The graph below illustrates the need for assessment tests.
Attrition rates are high, and so are the growth rates of most companies. Therefore, in high likelihood, your employees are currently directing a lot of time into the hiring process to refill or fill the positions. So if you want to minimize the time your employees are spending on the tech hiring process and let them focus on the jobs you would hire them for, then yes, you need a screening tool.
Resumes or CVs are unverified documents. Screening tools help you perform the first level of verification. We all have seen candidates that looked fantastic on paper but fizzled in the in-person interview. Screening tools help us minimize the likelihood of this scenario.
You can pre-game the personal interviews with targeted questions asked via the tool before the personal interview. So, your interviewers can walk into an interview better informed and know which areas of interest (as uncovered by the screening tool) to investigate further. So, if you want to increase the quality of your hires, you need to use the screening tools available.
Let’s discuss an example.
Say you are looking to hire a software engineer. For this role, you get 300 applications. Your HR reviews those and reduces this number to say 100. Now the engineers on your team or in your company have to conduct the 1st round of interviews of these 100 candidates.
Let us assume the 1st round is only a 30-minute interview. So now, the engineers on your team or in your company will spend 50 hours just on the 1st round of interviews. Typically, all that happens in the 1st round is the general assessment of skills. It helps to eliminate the apparent misfits for this role.
This 1st round can easily be eliminated by a screening tool. From our experience, after the 1st round, we usually eliminate 60–90% of the candidates. Yes, the noise is that high. In this example, let us say that we eliminated 70 out of the 100 candidates. If you have used the tool instead of a personal interview for the 1st round, you just saved your team or your company’s 50 hours of productive work.
Customized tests can assess the skills of the techie and their compatibility with your job requirements.
You can assess the techie’s skill set through the tests ranging across a broader collection of disciplines. Most assessment platforms are focused on technical hires. But, some platforms provide assessment tests that can help you hire for almost any role. Explore the platforms and find the right fit for you.
Through these tests, you can understand a techie’s ability to use their problem-solving skills by asking the right questions. You can also ask questions on the grounds of their cognitive ability, leadership ability, etc. Predefined tests also save your time spent on creating new sets of questions. Most sites offer you to create custom tests so that you can hire the best talent.
The screening tools save you time and money.
The tools save you time as you do not need to create a google doc for every candidate anymore manually. It even reduces the cost of hiring as you can screen out easier and faster without limiting yourself on the number of applicants or compromising on the quality of hire.
Even the video assessment tests make the process more manageable. These tests can be one-way or two-way. One way video assessment refers to a pre-recorded interview method enabled by technology. This method accelerates the hiring process. Traditional interviews are also known as two-way interviews. Usually, two-way interviews are considered the final step to the hiring process.
These tests help you reach a larger pool of candidates.
You do not need to limit your possibilities anymore. Let us understand with an example. Say you got 250 applications for each role. Generally, it would not be possible to even go through each resume. You often have to let go of some of the best candidates in the process.
Using the test platforms helps you widen the net. You can now send the test to all 250 of them and identify the best talent for your role.
You can avoid conscious or unconscious bias.
A study by the world’s leading research and advisory company, Gartner, revealed that an employee’s performance is 12 percent higher in a diverse team. Diversification helps in increasing employee engagement.
But, often due to conscious or unconscious bias, we try to hire replicas of ourselves. The assessment tests help you understand who’s better for your role, based on their skill set, without any bias and hire accordingly.
The priority is to assess if the candidate can do the job or not. Most startups consider training raw talents to make them better at what they do. But, to experiment with something, having a set of skills is crucial for both the company and the candidate.
What are the types of tests that can help us assess a job seeker’s skill set?
1. Tests to assess hard skills based on the role of the candidates. For technical hires, programming tests can focus on games and contests, code pairing, etc., so that you can assess the candidate’s ability to solve a problem, analyze a code or fix a bug.
For general hires, the roles can range across several disciplines, including Digital Marketing, Communication, Math, etc. You can focus on the candidate’s ability to use the skills to solve a problem.
2. Pre-defined tests to help a candidate practice can be used for ranking the candidates along with the assessment tests.
3. Take-home projects.
See the graph to understand how your competitors strategize the tests.
Personality testing
Hiring candidates with “soft skills” is a trend now. Companies realize that they need to find someone who fits well with their team. A survey from West Monroe Partners, a consultancy in Chicago, disclosed that nearly all (98%) human resources leaders agree with the fact that soft skills are essential for technology hires.
Soft skills such as creativity, project management, passion for growth, and other social or emotional skills are fundamental. How can we assess a candidates’ personality?
G eneral assessment tests, and Psychometric tests
A graph is presented below. It illustrates the importance of psychometric tests.
Say you are a team of twenty hustling your way to stand out. Would it be possible for you to get a couple of in-house developers, given such a high fee range? In that case, of course, outsourcing would help you scale faster. Also, you have fewer people to manage. And do you know the best part about outsourcing? They already have a track record and thus are reliable too.
There are different ways to get the perfect tech team. You can use the "hire slow, fire fast" way to hire the best in-house team and then get going. In case you do not have the money or resources, you can easily outsource the best one. So, I'm sure you are wondering, "What should I be looking for when I'm hiring?" I'm glad you asked.
It is not just about building a product. It is about creating something efficient and beautiful. If your product is not visually pleasing or easy to navigate, it can never satisfy your consumers. UX/UI skills are thus very vital. Your tech team needs to have a user-centric approach to build the perfect solution.
Hiring can be a long, tedious, time-consuming process, and end up being more trouble than it is actually worth. Now is the time to work smart with easy access to experience and expertise. You sit back while MarsDevs builds the applications for you. With a team of dedicated developers, MarsDevs focus on providing value through premium code quality. And the best part? It is cost-efficient, active, and by far the best!
Regardless of the stage in software development, MarsDevs can chip in anytime you need. So, why wait? Get in touch with MarsDevs today and find out how far they can take you and your team. Don't forget to subscribe to this blog to see regular updates about MarsDevs, their services, and other industry news!
