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Trends in Pre-Employment Assessment — What to look for in 2006

It has been a very interesting year for those of us who follow the pre-employment assessment industry. The past year has seen quite a bit of movement in this space. Much of this movement has come in 2 inter-related areas. The first of these is an increased interest in the use of pre-employment assessment from the consumer side. In other words more and more organizations are using pre-employment assessments. The second area of movement is in increased interest in product development amongst vendors of pre-employment assessment tools. These two areas are obviously highly dependent upon one another and both are essential for moving the industry forward. It is the interest in the use of assessment tools and the increasing number of success stories related to their use that have led assessment companies to feel comfortable investing in product development. This is an excellent situation as increased investment in new products will help the industry move forward past what I feel has been a plateau. This plateau has been caused by a lack of innovation in assessment content as well as a failure to find new and interesting ways to integrate assessments into the hiring process. To help the reader better understand what I am getting at here, I have identified 6 trends which I feel will help move assessment into a new era in terms of its value to the hiring process. These trends are as follows:

Simulations will begin to gain more traction

While the development of new technology for the delivery of assessment has certainly been moving forward at a nice pace, I feel there is still a major plateau in terms of the actual assessment content that is in use today. While delivery, reporting and analytics all continue to become more sophisticated, the actual content used to assess job applicants has seen little change over the past 5-10 years. While research has greatly increased our ability to create more concise measurement instruments, it has done little to change the nature of the content of which assessments are made. We are still living in a world where applicants click radio buttons and answer questions that seem unrelated to the job for which they are applying. Simulations have the power to change all of this. They can provide an excellent measurement opportunity while actually engaging applicants in a more meaningful pre-employment assessment experience. Simulations offer extra value because they can help provide reinforcement of employment branding as well as allow the incorporation of realistic job previews which allow applicants have a good idea of what they will be getting into should they be offered a position. Simulations are also essential for appealing to our emerging workforce which is represented by a generation raised on video games.

Assessment will find its way into the search process

There is no doubt that assessment is poised to move into the arena of job searching. Sourcing providers are finally realizing the inherent flaws with the keyword search model. Look for job boards and sourcing providers of all sizes to begin looking to use assessment to try and ensure tighter matches when searching candidate databases. There will be a wide range of products and strategies in this area some of which will be viable and some of which may push the envelope in terms of legal defensibility. This subject represents an interesting area when it comes to legal defensibility. It will be interesting to see how these issues play out. So far a few companies have made attempts to tackle this issue but this year I believe that this trend will be magnified as sourcing providers look to ensure they can deliver more value to both job seekers and organizations paying for access to job seekers.

Increasing use of assessment as part of “end to end” RPO platforms

In keeping with the trend in outsourcing RPO (recruitment process outsourcing) is gaining lots of momentum as of late. I believe that this coming year will see the development of a number of new offerings in this area, all of which will rely on assessment tools as a key component in the value proposition. This makes sense as it offers a parallel to the integration that has been happening in the ATS industry for the past few years. The main issue here will be the ability of companies to offer value via assessments that can be used in a turnkey or off the shelf manner. This segment of the industry is not quite ready to tackle a broader play that will require the use of professional services to support each assessment implementation. Rather, the short term will see the development of off the shelf or transactional assessment products that can be easily configured and delivered via a 3rd party outsourcer. While this type of implementation may reduce the accuracy of selection decisions, it will provide a significant increase in value over not using any assessment tools at all.

Increased use of assessment for Professional jobs

Most of the uptake in assessment over this past year has been aimed at what I feel is low hanging fruit. In this case I am referring to hourly/ entry level jobs. This makes sense as performance at these jobs is less complex then it is with higher level jobs, making it easier to measure. Another thing about these jobs is that the metrics needed to help understand ROI are much more available and objective in nature (i.e., turnover, attendance, sales revenue, customer service behavior, integrity) making it easier to fully understand the value of increased accuracy in employee selection decisions. Now that some form of assessment is starting to be standard for most entry level positions in medium to large companies, there will be a push to develop similar products for the professional jobs. This is a much more difficult play for both companies using assessment and those creating assessment products. Professional positions are more complex and thus performance at these jobs is much harder to document. This means it will be more difficult to gain clear understanding of ROI associated with the use of assessments for these jobs. None the less, assessment is just as valuable, if not more valuable, for these types of jobs as it is for entry level ones. Expect to see some new products that will begin to tackle this issue. Don’t be surprised if some of these are simulation tools, as I believe these are an excellent way to model more complex jobs.

Yet more vendors throw their hats into the ring

Given the increased interest in the use pf pre-employment assessments, I expect to see even more new vendors popping up in the next year. I spend quite a bit of time following this industry and not a week goes by that someone does not call to my attention a new product or vendor who is seeking a piece of the pie. Many of these vendors represent a relatively weak effort to cash in on this space while others have developed very viable products. This means it will continue to be difficult for those who do not have the proper background to differentiate between these types of vendors. Hopefully, the level of consumer savvy and education will also increase.

Continued integration of assessment into ATS platforms

This trend has been lurching forward for the past 4 years or so. More and more people are learning first hand that an ATS alone falls short when it comes to ensuring systematic, accurate decision making during the hiring process. While an ATS is an essential tool for ensuring good hiring decisions, it will fall short of delivering full value because it does not provide decision makers with the data they need to ensure they are making informed decisions. Integrating assessments into the hiring process and using an ATS to help summarize assessment results for decision makers is a critical part of creating value within the modern hiring process. As organizations finally begin to realize this, the trend of increased integration of assessment into ATS product offerings will continue full steam ahead. Look for increases in assessment product offerings in this area from ATS vendors of all sizes.

Increasing interest in International assessments

Most assessments currently in use in the US have been created and validated with the US market in mind. This creates problems when one considers the increasing globalization of business. It is absolutely not acceptable to make the assumption that an assessment tool that works well in the US to select American workers will function in the same manner when used to select workers from another culture in another country. I believe that there will be an increased interest in tools that can be used across multiple countries and locations to help organizations make better hiring decisions on a global level. The key to ensuring the development of viable products that can meet global needs lies in research. The only way to measure the effectiveness of an assessment tool across cultures is to collect real data that can be analyzed in order to reveal the true level of compatibility across cultures. I expect to see an increase in interest in this sort of research over the coming year. However, I believe that a real understanding in performance differences between cultures and the ability of assessments to account for these differences is still several years off. The important thing is that we continue to conduct the research needed to get us to this point.

The good thing about all of the trends I have discussed here is that they are positive ones. I feel that pre-employment assessment is really starting to come into its own as a viable tool for adding value via its ability to ensure organizations hire individuals who will allow them to better meet their strategic business objectives. No matter what the business, winning is still about 2 things: effective leadership and having the right people in the right jobs. Pre-employment assessment is an essential ingredient for both of these and thus its value will continue to become apparent as hiring moves forward into the end of this decade.