With tight budgets and a wealth of candidates on the market, it's common for companies to cut corners when hiring. However, eliminating important screening and evaluation tools can be costly in the long run. By avoiding these five typical employment testing mistakes, you can help reduce turnover, avoid discrimination lawsuits and save time and money. Testing Just For Skills And Not For Job Or Cultural Fit: Skills are quantifiable. Valid assessments reveal indicators of a skill or application proficiency. This is only part of what the candidate brings to the job. When behavior, attitude and personality are not assessed in the hiring process, you are only evaluating half the candidate. A candidate who tests as an expert in a given skill can still be a bad fit for the job, company culture and organizational morale. It is just as important to learn if a candidate's behavior, attitude, and work-related values are likely to enhance or interfere with their success as an employee. Skills can be improved with training. Counter-productive behavior, such as theft, substance abuse or aggression, is a different story. Take a three-dimensional look at candidates during the selection process to measure skills and behavioral traits. | Kurt Ballard Sr. VP Global Sales & Chief Marketing Officer Qwiz |
Using Invalid Assessment Tools: Be wary of assessment tools that are the lowest price in town. Like anything else, you get what you pay for. Shortcuts may have been taken to reduce development costs and thus lower price. Validity of a test refers to its value as a source of reliable, relevant information about the people taking the test. A test cannot be valid unless it is reliable. Test reliability depends primarily on the quality of its construction. Test construction, using skilled test developers, professional content analysts, editors, subject-matter experts and industrial psychologists, takes time and money. Testing For Skills Unrelated To The Job: The content and design of the test should relate directly to the job. To the courts, the critical issue of determining job discrimination is whether a testing tool is an effective means for assessing the job-relevant knowledge, skills and abilities (KSA's) of job candidates. Employers can justify their desire to identify candidates that are most likely to be successful employees. For most job titles, a demonstration of content validity is considered acceptable legal proof of validity. The objective for the employer should be to measure job-relevant skills and stay out of the courts. Accepting Poor Test Quality: Fair and objective tests do not rely on "tricknology." Tests should never be designed to trick or confuse a candidate. Instructional design is a science that applies theoretical tools to accurately measure a candidate's skill level. Look for tests based on real-world applications, not on certification examinations or textbook definition. At Qwiz, we utilize Blooms Taxonomy, an instructional design tool, to categorize the level of proficiency required to correctly answer a question. Once a test is developed, it is constantly reviewed to maintain its integrity and relevance. Good tests require good questions and the development does not stop once a test is published. Relying On Tests Exclusively To Make The Final Decision: Effective hiring processes combine many components, including résumé review and tracking, skills and ability assessments, behavioral and personality assessments, interviews, and background and drug screening. Assessment scores are guidelines and should never be used as the sole basis for making hiring or promotion decisions. Many companies seek to match qualified people to positions that are defined and required for the success of their organization. Skills and competencies tell just part of the picture. The most productive employees bring with them the best combination of skills, attitude and cultural fit. About Kurt Ballard: Kurt Ballard brings more than seventeen years of sales, marketing, and leadership capabilities to the Qwiz team as Sr. Vice President & Chief Marketing Officer. Most recently he led the development of the sales and marketing methodology for Exult's Gunn Research Group, working with Fortune 500 companies to implement best practice-based improvements to human resource and finance processes. Mr. Ballard has held leadership positions in the staffing industry with Norrell and Staffmark in strategic sales, process and facility outsourcing, and client relations. About Qwiz: Qwiz provides competency assessment solutions serving: corporate human resources, the staffing industry, Call Center, Legal, Finance, Healthcare and IT markets. With over fifteen years of proven success, Qwiz offers competency assessment solutions for office professionals in five different languages: English, Spanish, French, German, and Dutch, as well as a complete line of training products in English. |
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