What Are Digital Assessment Tools?
Digital Assessment tools, in simpler terms, are tools scientifically designed to help recruiters and teachers test aptitude, communication skills, cognitive ability and various other skills. These tools come with remarkable features such as auto-evaluation, report generation, and even grading, thereby transforming a slow recruitment process into a fast-paced one.
Digital Assessment Tools for Recruitment
If you’re a recruiter who is quite familiar with the traditional assessment process, you’ll fully understand how daunting the task of hiring is. The good news, however, is that the recruitment process has become a breeze for the talent acquisition managers who are leveraging digital assessment tools to discover the cream of the crop.
Well, how exactly? HR professionals have realized that the conventional methods of hiring are not only unreliable, they also reinforce existing biases and fail to accurately assess soft skills. On the flip side, online assessment tools speed up the hiring process and make it more productive and enjoyable.
Picking out the Best Digital Assessment Tool
When it comes to choosing a recruitment software or a digital assessment tool for recruitment, we have a proven method fortunately. However, you should remember that there is no perfect recruitment software per se. The so-called ‘perfect’ recruitment software is the one that perfectly meets you hiring needs.
Here are some points you must follow when picking out a digital assessment tool for the purpose of hiring.
• Determine your major recruitment challenges
Most recruiters gravitate to a few common recruiting challenges like attracting the right candidates, engaging qualified candidates, recruiting without bias, building a strong employer brand, etc. So, the first step is to figure out your biggest hiring headaches.
• Figure out what you want to test for
If your organization intends to test candidates for personality, intelligence and reasoning, look for tools that will help you meet your needs. In case you’re interested in testing candidates for particular roles, it would be best to look for specialized tools, such as code evaluation platforms and typing test tools.
• Identify the must-have features of your recruitment software
With thousands of digital assessment tools available out there, it can be pretty difficult to narrow down what you really want. This is why it is extremely important to know the features that you’re looking for in a digital assessment tool that you intend to use for recruitment.
Whether you need to automate time-consuming tasks or engage passive candidates, you need to identify features offered by the online assessment tool which can help you resolve your biggest recruiting challenges.
• Make sure the tool’s design will fascinate candidates
As the job market gets hungrier for new talent and the focus shifts from employers to candidates, it has become essential to concentrate on candidate experience in the hiring process.
Candidate experience largely impacts your employer brand. It is, therefore, important that the tests you use are neither complex nor super easily-solvable, so as to prevent damaging the candidate’s impression of your company.
The employers know it – 82% of them say that the candidate experience is extremely important to them. However, reality paints a different picture. Only 46% of candidates say that employers treat them with the same respect and accountability as the employees already working for them.
• Ask about integrations and API
Digital assessment tools that integrate with your ATS will save you plenty of time and effort. However, even if your recruitment software has no formal integration, an online assessment tool with effective API can integrate seamlessly with your existing systems.
• Find a recruitment software which offers your desired features
Finally, once you find a recruitment software that offers the right combination of all the features you need, it is a good idea to explore few different vendors who provide those features. Doing so will let you compare and evaluate them, allowing you to make the right pick.
List of Industries using Digital Assessment Tools
Employers from a wide range of industries are adopting online assessment tools to innovate their hiring process, making it time-efficient and bias-free.
• Hospitality
The hospitality industry, more than any other, depends on a reliable, customer service skilled workforce, which is why testing hospitality workers before you hire them seems like a no-brainer. Nevertheless, the rate of turnover in this industry is twice or thrice the rate of all other industries. Of course, it is hard to ensure that customers will be treated the right way when the people providing that service enter and leave through a revolving door.
This is why digital assessment tools are invaluable for hospitality workers, allowing recruiters to find everything from the right housekeeper to a restaurant manager.
• Retail
Turnover rates in the retail industry are alarming and this is why many retailers are constantly struggling to keep their staff.
However, one of the prime benefits of living in the 21st century as talent acquisition manager is that you have an incredible range of online assessment tools at your disposal. These tools can help you discover the right talent you need to fill those open positions.
• Banking
When it comes to the banking industry, finance recruiters and hiring managers have to pay an exorbitant price for hiring the wrong person.
Generally the most important qualities that banks and credit unions look for when hiring are interpersonal skills, basic math and verbal skills, and attention to detail. With online assessment tools, hiring managers can ensure that their recruits have the right skills and personality traits.
• Manufacturing
According to 80% of manufacturing executives, the shortage of skilled workers is moderate to severe. What matters, however, is that this issue can be fixed with digital assessment tools.
Psychologists at the Wharton School believe that adding traits like grit and manual work preferences should be kept in account when choosing a hiring assessment tool for manufacturing positions.
• Education
Hiring a teacher, assistant or an office administrator can be a monumental task as educational institutions today are being examined carefully in regards to value for money, outcomes and results.
Online assessment tools can be used to assess whether a teacher will be fit for your school or college, allowing you to evaluate if they will be comfortable working around children and handle classroom frustrations well. Apart from that, SJTs with real world situations can also test teaching skills including classroom handling, pedagogy, giving feedback, etc.
Summing It Up
Digital assessment tools in recruiting help employers remove the unconscious bias that creep into the hiring process, offering a fairer experience that produces better long-term results.
So whether you’re looking for medical workers, banking professionals, accountants or architects, even hotel managers or sales people, you may find this the perfect time to put online assessment tools to use.
