Hiring Audits, Candidate Sourcing, and Assessments.

In this month’s informational email series, I talked about the process involved in finding the ideal candidate to help you solve the business challenge you are facing. Sometimes beginning with a thorough hiring audit - really looking at what you would like the position to accomplish is the place to start. Sourcing candidates is another part of the process that I will overview below. Finally, I am going to address determining which assessments will help you narrow the field. 

First Step - Performing a Hiring Audit 

If you are actively searching to fill a key position in your company and not getting the results you want, one tool that I have found helpful is to conduct a hiring audit. This system helps us narrow down the search so that the hiring profile is aligned with the business challenge you are trying to solve. This approach allows you to define what skills and experiences a successful candidate will need to have to help solve the problem. The word audit sounds serious, but this process helps us figure out what you really need for the position. Once you have identified the challenges unique to this role, you can appeal to a different level of candidate who thrives on solving that specific challenge. 

Next Steps - Finding Candidates

Now that you have identified the business challenge, you are trying to solve and come up with performance objectives for your new employee - how do you find them? Most critical positions in today’s workforce cannot be filled using massive online job boards or even referrals.

It is essential to identify both passive and active candidates. You can scan public profiles, past applicants in your applicant tracking system, and your current employees interested in career change. At CB & Associates, we maintain an applicant tracking system with over 10,000 pre-qualified candidates to help with specific searches. Hard to reach candidates can be identified from a multitude of sources, including niche industry and trade association databases. 

Passive job seekers are defined as individuals who are currently employed and successful in their work.  They may not be actively looking for a new job but may be open to an excellent career growth opportunity. A thorough job performance description can help you identify challenges and growth opportunities that a passive candidate might find appealing. Remember your company needs a compelling story describing their mission and how you the candidate can contribute to really engage passive candidates.

Assessing Pre-Hire Assessments

Pre-hire assessments are becoming more common as companies look for a way to be more accurate and predictive in their hiring processes. One challenge is to construct your assessments to engage your candidates while also ensuring fit for their role.  

Extensive research has been conducted on the overall ability of different types of assessments to predict job performance. Assessments with higher validity include mental ability tests, integrity tests, and multi-measure tests-which incorporate a variety of measurements, including skills testing. 

Identifying the ability you are testing for is one key factor in choosing the right assessment. For some roles, a software skills assessment may be all that is needed. For others, you may want to include a general mental ability, EQ, or leadership test.  

You may also want to include assessment tests later in your hiring process to only test candidates that have met other hiring requirements. It is vital for the candidate experience that the testing process does not feel like an additional hoop to jump through. This article from the Society for Human Resources offers a great overview of available assessments. 

I have been a part of many hiring processes during my career, and I have noticed an interesting phenomenon. Sometimes the great candidate is not the great hire. Partly because the interview process is an artificial environment and a great candidate who is confident, sociable, and articulate seems like the obvious choice. But perhaps they are there solely in response to title, or compensation, or company location. The great hire is the candidate with a high-performing, results-oriented background who has a track record of successfully tackling your businesses urgent need. You want to hire the best possible candidate, not the best available candidate. Let me know if I can help perform a hiring audit, source your candidate, or find the assessments that might work for you.