Scientific assessments: How technology can be used for effective recruitment

The novel Coronavirus pandemic will go down in history as a black swan event that profoundly altered the way businesses function. The outbreak of the virus brought a grim outlook as we witnessed salary cuts and layoffs across sectors. However, after months of turbulence, we’ve started to witness signs of recovery in the job market. That being said, things have changed dramatically for businesses across the world during the pandemic and the one thing that was talked a lot about was the need to hire staff’. Recruitment of new hires has always been an important step to convert new employees into the long-term plan of the organizations, rather than adding them into the mix of employees and hope that they would find their way around.

Virtual hiring helping businesses recover

The lockdowns witnessed organizations adopting technology speedily and switching to virtual hiring to ensure business continuity. A recent report titled ‘The State of Developer Recruitment 2020’, by HackerEarth cites that about 47% of tech organizations in India switched from traditional hiring to remote assessment during the pandemic. The trend of corporates switching their entire recruitment strategy to virtual platforms is expected to continue even when things get back to normal.

Demand for scientific assessment tools in remote hiring

The remote working revolution has opened an enormous talent pool for companies that in turn has increased the demand for scientific assessments while hiring. Given the pressure of profitability and safety of employees, companies with access to a quality talent pool are a huge benefit. Businesses no longer need to limit their hiring to a small radius of towns and cities, and this means they can now hire people without any geographical limitation.

How technology can be used for effective remote recruitment

Technology-led recruitment can be easily customized to cater to the unique hiring and workforce development demands of an organization. A scientifically designed assessment helps organizations cut costs, biases, human errors, and above all, can assess huge volumes of candidates in a short period improving the quality of hires.

Cognitive assessments

The cognitive assessment tests a candidate’s ability to learn fast, solve tough problems and understand ideas that are new and accomplish set targets. The tools help the company to evaluate very crucial aspects in a potential hire such as logical reasoning, decision making, and critical thinking. Cognitive assessment skills help companies to predict employee success in knowledge-based or vocational roles across sectors.

Behavioural assessments

Behavioural assessments are aimed at assessing core competencies required to perform a certain job. They evaluate competencies that comprise knowledge, skills, and personality traits in an individual. These competencies are critical elements of a job and the evaluation score helps employers understand if the candidate will justify the role offered. Failure in assessing the behavioural traits of candidates can contribute to the attrition rate of a company. Scientific assessments can help organizations better understand the temperament of their new hires.

As businesses continue to adopt technology and shift to a remote model, the changes made by organizations today will hold them in good stead in the future. Employers need to progressively re-think and reinvent their recruitment strategies. To make up for the time and profits that were lost during the pandemic, a surge in hiring can be expected in the coming months. Emphasis will be on aspects like boundaryless hiring and skill-based selection criteria through virtual assessment tools. When implemented as part of the hiring process, the benefits of quality remote recruitment can be exceptional!

By Sujatha Kumaraswamy, CEO, MeritTrac Services