“Seeing a little window into an applicant before investing a bunch of time and resources is huge.”
– Sprockets User
If you don’t have a tool in place to identify which applicants are the best fit for your business, it’s time to consider implementing one. While running background checks, reviewing resumes, and conducting interviews can certainly help narrow down your list of potential hires, the right pre-employment assessment can actually predict who will succeed and stay long-term. However, it’s important to note that not all of them are built the same or are proven to work. Let’s discuss how these solutions help reduce turnover and find out which one is right for you.
What Is a Pre-Employment Assessment?
A pre-employment assessment provides more insight into applicants by having them complete certain job-related tasks, complete tests, or respond to surveys. They essentially help employers decide if candidates will be able to properly fulfill a role before hiring them.
There are several different types of pre-employment assessments, including:
- Job Knowledge Tests
- Integrity Tests
- Cognitive Ability Tests
- Personality Tests
- Emotional Intelligence Tests
- Skills Assessment Tests
- Physical Ability Tests
As we mentioned earlier, while there are several options available, it’s important to know which assessment will work best for your business. And, most importantly, make sure it is legal to use and doesn’t discriminate (even inadvertently) against anyone before adding any assessment to your hiring process.
How Can Pre-Employment Assessments Improve Retention?
If your goal is to improve employee retention, you’re in luck. Pre-employment assessments can help you accomplish this. How? Well, if you know more about applicants, you’re obviously able to make more informed hiring decisions. This is especially true if you know they possess the right personality traits to fit the culture at your company. In a recent study on why new hires fail, it was found that 89% of the time, it was due to attitudinal reasons rather than a lack of skills. So, your best bet is to use an assessment that accurately identifies key personality traits for job fit if you’d like to reduce employee turnover.
Are They Worth It If They Add Another Step to Your Hiring Process?
The answer is yes — assessment tools are worth the extra step in the hiring process. While some employers might be deterred by the false idea that it hurts their applicant pool, it actually improves the quality of their applicant pool. Provided you implement a user-friendly assessment, the “extra step” shouldn’t mean much to applicants who truly want to work for you. Essentially, you’re filtering out job seekers who wouldn’t put in the effort required for the role in the first place.
Fun fact: Simply adding the Sprockets survey to a company’s hiring process increased 90-day employee retention by 10%!
Why Choose Sprockets
While we don’t consider Sprockets to be your average “pre-employment assessment,” it is the go-to solution for many top brands looking to predict applicant success with ease. Our platform uses simple, three-question surveys to identify key personality traits among top performers and establish a unique success profile. It then uses this as a benchmark to evaluate incoming applicants who fill out the same survey. It’s trusted by top companies like Papa John’s, proven to improve retention by an average of 43%, and works seamlessly alongside your current system. Essentially, it’s the ultimate screening tool for those who wish to hire the best applicants every time.