Assessment Programs Can Improve Hiring Success; But They Have Drawbacks That Should Be Considered

Some experts argue that using interviews alone in the selection process will mean that one out of seven hires will ultimately be judged as a successful “fit” for the organization.

By adding an assessment component and "job matching" to the hiring process, it is argued, the odds of a “fit” can go to 75%.

This is the contention of James Hazen, Ph.D, of Applied Behavioral Insights, Wexford, MA. Hazen’s company does outsourced and on-line HR support for about 2,700 small to medium sized companies across the US and Canada.

Given the growing trend for companies to add assessment programs to their hiring process, some experts are concerned that these programs may in their own way be flawed or misleading.

Based on his experience and those of his colleagues, Hazen cautions HR professionals on some of the drawbacks associated with the more widely used assessment instruments.

Some of his caveats:

• Do not use instruments never intended for use in employment. For example, Meyers-Briggs assessments are often used to gauge an employees “style”. This instrument was designed in 1952 as a marriage counseling tool and was never intended for use in hiring.

• Do not use instruments that were originally designed for clinical use and abnormal populations, that require subjective interpretation, or that carry copyright dates back to the 60’s.

• Do not use proprietary instruments based on a very small sample that are not backed by validity and reliability studies. The concerns here are around EEO and Affirmative Action issues.

• Avoid instruments that only measure one element of a total person, be it intelligence, interest, “personality”, skill sets. etc.

• By design, assessments should be no more than a third of the hiring decision.

According to Hazen and others, there are several trends in assessment that need to be looked at carefully.

• The movement towards the use of on-line assessments, even though it raises the issue of who actually took the test

• The use of “honesty” testing now for white collar positions

• The use of instruments that now include a “candor score” that can measure how much a person tried to “beat” the test.

• A new appreciation that high scores are not necessarily good nor are low scores bad. For example, if the dimension is “creativity”,  high scores would be good if we were hiring sales people but not so hot if we were hiring accountants.

• State of the Art assessments that allow you to establish a norm against proven success in a given company rather than universal generic norms that would consider all sales people to be alike. For example, there is a high likelihood that a successful salesperson in Newark is different from one in Memphis, or that selling stocks takes a different person than selling pharmaceuticals. We can now make that type of scoring differentiation.

• The sharing of any assessment results with applicants under serious consideration: this is information that is valid to both sides of the hiring process and can help both parties make a good employment decision.

Experts suggest that companies look at current hiring practices, what combination of evaluations worked in the past, and what factors were most successful in predicting a “strong” hire.