Spotlight Online for College Employment and Recruiting Professionals, May 29, 2008 

After Rocket-Hire conducted its fifth annual Screening and Assessment Usage Survey recently, Charles Handler saw that the use of prescreening and assessment tools on the rise. However, the positive news Handler unearthed about the use of this technology was tempered by a somewhat unsettling trend: the lack of proper evaluation of these tools.

“Evaluation is an absolutely critical component,” says Handler, president and founder of Rocket-Hire.com, a consultancy specializing in using technology to build employee selection systems. “Proper evaluation as a core part of implementation is the top challenge related to the use of assessment.”

Handler says that employers don’t evaluate the tools for many different reasons. For one thing, he says, it can be a laborious process and they aren’t willing to take the time to provide the data needed for proper evaluation.

Handler defines prescreening tools as those that “gather information about, or ask candidates to respond to questions about their experience, skills, and qualifications in order to determine if they meet minimum job requirements.”

Meanwhile, he points out that assessment tools are “scientifically based screening tools that look more deeply into a candidate's abilities, interests, and skills, and include personality measures, cognitive tests, situational judgment tests, job simulations, and more.”

“There are varying levels of the streamlining these tools provide,” he says. “At the very least, in a high-volume hiring situation, they allow organizations to weed out candidates who would not be good or appropriate for a particular job and only focus on those who are. In other situations, these tools add insight. I would never recommend that assessment is the only piece of evaluation in the hiring process. Hiring really is a process of making an informed decision. The more information you gather during this process, the clearer that picture becomes.”

Use of these tools is growing (for example, 59 percent of the survey’s respondents used assessment tools that gauge personality measures in 2007 versus 21 percent of respondents who used these tools in 2002, and the use of tools that identify candidates’ skills and knowledge have jumped from 12 percent in 2002 to 56 percent in 2007).

Among employers who do properly evaluate their tools, satisfaction is high. Rocket-Hire’s research found that 65 percent of prescreen users and 77 percent of assessment users felt these tools added value to their organization. On the other side, 21 percent of prescreen users and 10 percent of assessment users felt these tools did not add value. (Handler points out that only 27 percent of users of prescreening tools and 36 percent of assessment users collected metrics to judge the quality of their use.)

Still, there is much room for growth. Handler says that the biggest barrier to organizations using prescreening and assessment tools is a lack of understanding of how to select the best tools to use and of how the tool is adding value.

“There are many, many ways to approach using these tools,” he explains. “Organizations need to understand the methodology and the contingencies that can limit their success. This includes making sure that the content of the assessment is well-aligned with the performance outcomes the organization is seeking.”

Handler recommends that organizations look at assessments relative to resumes, interview results, and more, to provide additional information. He says, for example, that asking students to take an assessment could identify issues that can be discussed during an interview.

“It really helps organizations focus their lines of questioning and gives them the opportunity to address any potential red flags,” Handler notes. “And the full domain of possibilities allows for options that are useful for almost any job.”