One-third of companies assess job aspirants on gut feeling

While data analytics has had an invincible hold on all aspects of HR, a study reveals that not many organizations measure the impact of assessment tools used to filter candidates for recruitment through data. In fact, a significant number of organizations actually measure the impact based on “gut-feel“.

According to a collaborative study by SHRM India and MeritTrac on talent assessment tools, only 45% of organizations measure the impact of assessment tools through data and a good 30% measure it based on gut-feel. The remaining 25% do not measure impact of assessments at all.

“55% of the organizations do not objectively measure the impact of the assessment tools on business, out of which 25% do not measure the impact at all. These are alarming figures which could influence the possibility to measuring the impact and returns of use of assessments,“ the study noted.

Given the growing emphasis on recruiting the right resource, the spotlight is on the use of assessments for recruitment and organizational development. While assessments have been used as a tool to filter candidates for recruitment for some time now, there has been an increasing emphasis on generating data and information about candidates which will play a greater role in their selection rejection, onboarding and allocation decisions.

The study shows only 58% of 130 organizations surveyed use it for talent management in select stages of employee lifecycle. It said the use of assessment for fresher & lateral hiring and workforce development, individually , is expected to be much lower.

At the recent SHRM annual conference, Achal Khanna, CEO, SHRM India, said: “The world today is no longer the one of yesteryears that we remember. Much has changed in the way businesses are conducted and the world itself is in a state of constant change. It, therefore, would be counterproductive for organizations to remain stuck in the best practices of say 2005 or 2010. Better and innovative metrics to measure employee performance are evolving, and organizations must be bold enough to change with the changing times.”

According to the study , only 6% of organizations review assessment data annually through the use of metrics, indicating the need to have systems in place to regularly capture data and build a case for furthering the use of assessment tools.

The study noted that although there is a considerable percentage in usage of analytics and reporting in all spheres of hiring and talent management, there is a need to up the ante and move beyond traditional metrics based on supervisor manager feedback opinions to more quantitative and objective metrics like profit, absenteeism, revenue, etc.

One of the top challenges in using assessment tools is cost considerations and inability to justify ROI (return on investment) of assessments (17%). Technology or negative impact on candidate perception are at the bottom of the list, indicating that these are not barriers to adoption of assessment tools. A larger proportion of sampled organizations (72%) spoke of the budget spent on assessments tools remaining the same or lower in comparison to the previous financial year. One of the reasons attributed to this could be the reduction in hiring that is expected in the current year.

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