Psychometric assessments are key in virtual recruitment

1 Jul

Written By

It’s now commonplace for interviews between candidates and companies to take place via video call. In fact, much of the recruitment and hiring steps are now regularly conducted virtually. This means the role of psychometric testing and assessment has become even more critical.

And with the widespread adoption of both hybrid and remote working, psychometric assessment provides crucial information on how people and teams may react to these scenarios. A deeper knowledge about an individual’s core values and type of character enables leaders to be more empathetic to an enormous range of different responses, challenges, and needs, and to implement effective working arrangements and the right culture.In the ongoing war for talent, investing in these types of assessments can help to ensure you hire right time, first time.A recent study of 20,000 new hires* discovered that 46% of newly-hired employees will be found to be the wrong hire choice within 18 months. And it’s not a lack of technical skills that are the primary reason why they do; instead, poor interpersonal skills are the main one, which many managers admit were overlooked during the job interview process because most of us hire with intuition and go with our gut feeling. We should be hiring a mix of skills and behaviour to suit the role, the team, the work environment, and the company goals.In fact, the same study shows that attitudes drive 89% of hiring failures, while technical skills account for only 11%. And other stats in this study show only 15% of companies have defined the attitudes that make their high performers the right fit and 56% of HR Executives said that half or less of their current employees have the right attitudes.

What is the cost of the wrong hire to a business?

It can take 10 weeks to fire and 6 weeks to rehire on average** so up to 4 months where productivity and management time are significantly impacted, which each have a cost implication. The true overall cost of a bad hire includes:

Recruitment cost and time to manage the process
Lost productivity while the role is vacant
The gap between a successful hire and the poor hire in regards lost productivity to the point they leave
Cost of management time in dismissing (+ any financial costs outlaid)
Duplicate recruitment costs + time to hire + productivity gap for a second time.

So, it’s fair to say that hiring the right person for the job first time around can save a business time and money.

How can you avoid making the wrong hire?

One key step in the recruitment process is to look at the soft skills and personality attributes and take the time to understand and define what those are for the roles within your organisation. Once you have those benchmarked, using psychometric assessment as part of the hiring process can really help ensure you get the best fit for all aspects of any role well ahead of onboarding the successful candidate.

One such tool is that offered by Great People Inside (GPI) who offers a fully customisable, psychometric assessment and 360° survey. Their assessment looks into the behaviours of an individual and allows hiring managers to easily learn how a candidate is likely to perform in a new role and also how to improve an employee’s performance in an existing one. The GPI assessment platform is designed to meet the exact, and differing, information requirements of each individual business to help make recruitment and development activity more efficient and cost-effective.

ProAction HR has used the GPI psychometric tool numerous times and has found it to be the best one, providing the most accurate results, and enabling us to make the most informed choice, compared to others available in the market. We also love it because it’s also fun and easy to use!We firmly believe it is vitally important to use a well-tested and validated tool, so you can confidently rely on the findings. As a team, we are reassured by the testing process that has gone into GPI that makes this a really sound option.

We know there is an overwhelming choice of psychometric assessments available, so how can you be sure that GPI is the most suitable one for your organisation? It is our preferred choice because it:

Is fully customizable, as you pay for the size of report required and the role you are recruiting or benchmarking for.
Designed to be used on any device at any time and in any location.
Offers a range of reports for interviewer, candidate etc all from the one profile.
No special training is required to interpret the results.
Is suitable for any size organisation in single or multiple locations.
Allows us over time to compile a fact base on your organisation and what works and why.