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The COVID19 pandemic has compelled organizations to create systems where their employees can function without compromising their health. Working from home is becoming the norm, especially for “knowledge workers”. With these changes, the priorities of employers have also changed. Although companies still expect their employees to be competent at what they do, various new factors are now at play in recruitment and onboarding processes.
Creating friendly and positive onboarding experiences is nearly impossible when all employees are working remotely. Setting clear work standards for new employees is even harder when you’re working from home, especially if the recruits aren’t as good as their CVs suggested.
Virtual onboarding programs are complicated for any business. Plus, it’s not like businesses were performing great at traditional recruitment and onboarding. Skill shortages have hurt companies for decades. Screening candidates for technical jobs is hugely complex. Some of the major challenges recruiters face when filling up technical positions include –
- Shallow Talent Pools: Going after “experienced candidates” is the only recruitment strategy for many companies. Recruiters can’t appeal to younger candidates as they’re shortening the list of potential recruits right from the start. Almost 70% of companies reported talent shortages in 2019. Talent shortage levels have never been higher.
- Identifying the Right Candidates: Technical professionals have various levels of specifications. Although it’s fair to assume that their technical certifications will reflect their capabilities, that’s hardly the case. Each job position is different and requires very specific sets of qualifications. In virtual recruiting and onboarding processes, recruiters simply don’t have the time or resources to confirm whether each applicant has the skills they’re pursuing. Segregating qualified employees purely based on their qualifications isn’t a healthy practice. It doesn’t guarantee that you’re getting the ‘right’ candidate for the job.
- Large Investments in Traditional Recruiting: In traditional recruiting processes, all candidates are required to go through multiple rounds of interviews, cultural fitness tests, technical assessments, etc. Completing these processes takes weeks or months. Since very few candidates who are interviewed are actually recruited for the job, the resources spent in the recruitment process hardly ever match the returns the recruits provide. Even worse – many companies discover that their new recruits aren’t up to the task, and they have to let them go. Imagine spending all that time scouting, recruiting, training, and onboarding applicants only to find out they don’t have the technical skills or the mechanical aptitude to do their jobs!
Hence, companies that don’t dedicate large budgets to their recruitment strategies often fail to hire candidates with the most potential.
Virtual Hiring – Another Challenge for Businesses
Now that companies are having to recruit over the Internet, the cost of errors is significantly higher for recruiters. Conducting thousands of interviews over the Internet is nearly impossible, especially when recruiters must constantly monitor tests. Most companies don’t have anti-cheating measures and other technological capabilities to successfully conduct online pre-employment assessments.
Thankfully, leading mechanical aptitude test providers are stepping in to save the day for countless. These third-party pre-employment test agencies create a wide variety of mechanical aptitude tests that companies can easily use to screen their large pools of candidates. These tests can range from –
- Job or Industry-Based Tests: Why not use the hundreds of mechanical reasoning tests that have helped companies hire technical professionals in the past? Top third-party pre-employment test agencies have access to a large number of these tests that simplify the process of hiring technical employees like manufacturing supervisors or production operators.
- Subject or Topic-Based Tests: The leading third-party pre-employment test agencies allow their business clients to choose from thousands of single-subject tests that help recruiters assess candidates’ specific capabilities. For instance, if a company wants to test a candidate’s technical knowledge of engineering, they can select a subject-specific test for that candidate. Within seconds, the test will be prepared and sent to the candidate. Don’t worry, most of the questions on these tests are ‘non-googleable.’ Candidates can’t simply hop on the Internet and complete these specialized tests.
- Combination Tests: The best third-party pre-employment test agencies have large libraries of test papers and subject-specific questions. Recruiters can handpick test papers or questions from these libraries to accurately test the aptitudes of their candidates.
- Company-Specific Tests: Now, recruiters can even create customized pre-employment tests containing job or company-specific content and questions.
Pre-Employment Tests – The First Step to Recruitment Automation?
The best thing about pre-employment tests is that they’re fair. Why spend hours interviewing tens of candidates when a simple subject-specific pre-employment test can narrow down that list to three or four skilled candidates? In a 2019 survey, 53% of businesses and recruitment agencies reported that using software and Internet-based tools makes the hiring process much simpler and more effective.
With online pre-employment tests, recruiters can effectively sift through thousands of candidates and detect the ones who have the mechanical aptitudes to fit the job roles. Plus, the data amassed from these tests leaves plenty of room for future data analyses.