How Pre-employment Screening Tests Filter Out Top Talent

We all know that recruiting and retaining top talent is a major concern of business leaders. Turnover most interferes with an organization's success. Rampant turnover can negatively impact the employer brand. And, of course, there is the financial cost of turnover. The Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) estimates that it takes employers the equivalent of six to nine months of an employee’s salary to find and train their replacement.

Despite the significant costs of turnover, far too many employers still do not make an upfront investment in recruiting by training hiring managers in interviewing techniques, by benchmarking salaries, or by researching the current employment market. Many regard recruiting and hiring as a necessary evil, and not as critical to their businesses. What do we see as a result? Lazy recruiting. Maybe lazy recruiting was a moderately effective strategy when unemployment was in the double digits, but in the current tight labor market, lazy recruiting is not going to fly. And really, regardless of whether lazy recruiting is effective, lazy recruiting is still bad business.

This is what I was thinking about recently when a client told me that he’d just taken a pre-employment screening test. This is a guy who has decades of experience in his field, a wide professional network, and many former colleagues and managers who can vouch for him. He surpassed ALL sales goals over the course of his career – ALL OF THEM. You know the saying “Can sell ice to an Eskimo.” This guy is that guy. After his initial screening call with HR, he was asked to take an online “assessment” before proceeding to the next step in the process. He complied. That was three weeks ago, and he has not heard anything back from them. Perhaps the position has been put on hold, or maybe the hiring manager has been traveling. We don’t know. But both he and I assume that the reason for the radio silence is due to his “score” on their assessment.

Stupid.

But lazy recruiting leads to unstructured interviewing. And unstructured interviewing wastes everyone’s time. Recruiters and hiring managers often judge candidates based on subjective, rather than job-related, criteria. So, pre-employment assessments can seem like a quick solution. The problem is, these assessments neglect to assess important details. They don’t consider how willing (or able) someone is to learn and improve. Additionally, some cognitive ability tests have been deemed by the courts to be discriminatory. None of these tests give the whole picture on a candidate, but all of them assume that people come from a standardized mold.

My client was given a cognitive ability test that asked him things like “What is the next number in the series? 24, 31, 38, 45, 52.” And, “circle, triangle, square, octagon—what should the order be?” Are you kidding me?!?! What does any of that have to do with his ability to communicate the value proposition of a company’s solutions to the market? How does his lack of recalling tenth-grade geometry relegate him to the “no thanks” pile? I can only imagine what may have come next—maybe they require candidates to diagram sentences, too.

Compared to other hiring selection practices, pre-employment assessments are among the least effective in predicting job performance. Companies that rely on these assessments to evaluate candidates are going to find themselves spending more money on the back end of the deal.  This is NOT a way to hire. This is a great way to repel top talent.