HR technology has revolutionized recruiting. And since the global pandemic, organizations have become more reliant on assessment technology to fuel hiring decisions.
While companies have used pre-employment testing software for years, it’s become significantly more popular recently. So, you might consider using it to improve your own recruiting process.
If so, it’s important to find software that’s scalable, feature-rich, and fulfills your recruitment needs effectively. In this article, we’ll explore the benefits of using pre-employment testing software, and how to pick the right one.
What is pre-employment testing software?
Pre-employment testing software is used to objectively evaluate applicants. Depending on the type of software, the platform may assess applicants’ personality traits, general aptitude, conceptual understanding, and problem-solving skills.
These software solutions usually evaluate applicants against measurable metrics to guarantee fair assessment.
4 benefits of using online pre-employment testing software
Many organizations are leveraging pre-employment testing software for a reason; it helps optimize your recruitment funnel and improve hiring practices. And here’s how:
1. Save recruiting time and costs
A report by SHRM revealed that hiring costs are rising. The report explains that companies need to consider increasing their recruitment budget to meet increasing expenses.
For now, organizations allocate around 30% of their HR budget to recruiting. We may see this figure rise to meet modern recruitment needs.
Increasing your recruiting budget isn’t the only option, though. Another is to trim your recruiting costs down, which is where pre-employment testing software is useful. With a pre-employment solution, you can cut hiring expenses by eliminating travel costs and overhead expenses.
Additionally, assessment software lets you assess applicants in bulk and evaluate them on objective performance metrics. Thus, you can hire the best candidates with a faster and more reliable hiring process.
2. Make data-driven hiring decisions
Modern organizations can’t survive without data. It eliminates the guesswork and helps increase operational efficiency. In hiring, data is just as valuable.
Pre-employment testing software helps hiring managers assess applicants on objective metrics. You can reliably determine applicants’:
- Performance;
- Problem-solving skills;
- Conceptual understanding, and more;
Additionally, most assessment software uses automatic grading or scoring on a per-question basis.
So, recruiters can trade the guesswork out for data and make informed hiring decisions. As a result, you can hire right the first time and avoid costly employee turnover expenses.
3. Mitigate hiring bias
Unfortunately, the risk of hiring bias influencing recruiting decisions is present wherever human decision-making is involved. But you can absolutely reduce recruitment bias, and employers have come up with some interesting strategies.
For example, asynchronous video interviews, structured interviews, and blind hiring practices help reduce hiring bias. And as you might imagine, pre-employment testing software excels at mitigating recruitment bias, too.
Online assessment software prioritizes objective, merit-based recruitment; applicants are vetted solely on measurable metrics, so human bias does not influence the screening stage. Additionally, scoring and grading criteria are predefined so that employers can compare applicants fairly.
Of course, testing is just one stage of the employment process. For the best hiring results, employers need to eliminate hiring bias from other recruitment stages, too, including resume/CV screening and final interviews.
4. Improve candidates’ experience
If you’re looking to hire top talent, it’s important to realize that candidates are also evaluating your organization. Thus, it’s crucial to provide a hassle-free, fair candidate experience. Otherwise, your applicants may drop out of your recruitment funnel or take an offer from your competition instead.
Here are some tips to improve your candidates’ experiences:
- Find a balance between evaluating applicants reliably without overwhelming them. Many organizations leverage multi-stage recruitment processes to assess candidates thoroughly; however, a lengthy, tedious screening process can discourage applicants. So, it’s important to optimize tests and screening processes, so they don’t stress applicants out.
- Prioritize merit-based hiring and provide timely feedback. It’s important for candidates to feel the evaluation process is fair, and many of them appreciate feedback to help them approve. If you’re using pre-employment testing software, you can share candidates’ scores with them.
- Take a remote-first approach, if possible. Remote screening and evaluation let applicants take tests and interviews from the comfort of their homes, reducing stress. Additionally, remote hiring eliminates travel times and costs.
7 crucial factors to consider when choosing pre-employment testing software
Employers that leverage pre-employment testing software are looking to get the best out of the tool. This includes trimming hiring times and costs, improving candidate experiences, and securing the best hires. Thus, to achieve your hiring goals, it’s vital to find the right testing software.
Here are some factors you might want to prioritize in your search:
1. Ease-of-use
The pre-employment assessment solution you choose should be easy to use, both for recruiters and candidates. Some features you might want to look out for include:
Recruiter-interface features
- Intuitive UI
- Existing repository of questions (to streamline assessment creation)
- Toggle options to adjust proctoring settings
- Bulk inviting features (to invite test-takers in one go)
- Automated scheduling features
- Helpful documentation
- Automated scoring
- Custom question generation feature (to design your own problems)
Applicant-interface features
- Intuitive UI
- Easy sign-in option
- Efficient facial recognition
- Ease of navigation (especially from question to question)
2. Remote proctoring capabilities
Proctoring settings are a critical feature of any good pre-employment testing software. When assessing candidates to fill a role, guaranteeing fair play is important, both to secure the best hires and do justice to sincere applicants.
In general, the most essential proctoring settings include:
- Lockdown (Full Screen Violation)
- AI video proctoring
- External copy/paste disabling
- Out-of-tab activity logging
- Plagiarism detection
Depending on the type of assessment or skills tests, you may not need to use all these settings. However, it’s important to look for a platform that has the proctoring settings you need.
3. Scalability and automation
Corporate job posts attract around 250 applicants on average, so choosing a scalable assessment platform isn’t an option, but a necessity. The most obvious scalability feature you’d need is for the platform’s infrastructure to simultaneously handle numerous candidates. Otherwise, if the architecture is lacking, the assessments may lag, or the platform could go down.
Beyond a robust technological infrastructure, bulk invitation features are important. The platform you choose should include functionality to mass-invite selected applicants. Moreover, automated interview scheduling technology is vital for bulk testing too.
4. Scoring criteria
If you’re investing in software that evaluates candidates, it’s important to check the scoring criteria. Otherwise, relying on results that aren’t accurate or meaningful can hinder your hiring decisions.
The best assessment software solutions are open about their testing and scoring criteria, so you can evaluate them before making a decision. For example, We Create Problems (WeCP) uses SkillMaps to scientifically evaluate tech candidates across 12+ performance metrics.
5. Technical and customer support
The purpose of choosing a pre-employment testing software is to streamline and optimize hiring decisions, so it’s important to select a platform that you can rely on. This means picking a solution that’s backed by an active, helpful team. When evaluating a platform’s support offerings, consider factors like:
- The platform’s documentation and help guides – how good are their self-service offerings?
- Demo scheduling. Is the platform’s team ready to give you a walk-through?
- Post-purchase support. After you decide to use the platform, will their support team help you out when needed? For example, if you need help designing a test, or face technical issues?
6. Reporting and analytics
Testing software is meant to empower hiring decisions, not make them for you. Thus, it’s crucial to choose a platform that provides detailed evaluation reporting and analytics so that recruiters can make informed hiring decisions. In general, you might want to look for platforms that offer analytics insights:
- The time each applicant took to complete the assessment
- Each candidate’s performance across different metrics, with qualitative scoring.
- Each candidate’s choice of sequence
- The chances of guesswork (based on how quickly applicants answer questions)
and more.
7. White-label and branding capabilities
White-labelling your employment tests helps encourage employer branding and makes assessments truly yours. Some customization features you might want to prioritize include:
- Custom landing page creation
- Logo insertion
- Button and layout customization
- Post-test redirection
Take your tech hiring to the next level with WeCP (We Create Problems)
Looking to hire the best tech talent? WeCP (We Create Problems) is an advanced pre-employment testing software that helps employers recruit top talent. With WeCP, you get access to:
The largest repository of technical assessment questions
Our question bank contains over 0.2million unique questions to evaluate over 2000 technical skills. If you need more customized questions, WeCP lets you design your own problems, and our support team will help you out.
Advanced cheat-proofing technology
Which includes AI video proctoring, advanced plagiarism detection, internal patrol, and more. Our questions are also uniquely designed, with more than 9000 new ones added quarterly, so candidates can’t just Google the solutions.
A proven record of success
WeCP (We Create Problems) has helped leading organizations and Fortune 100s halve their hiring costs, increase test completion rates by 98%, and drive interviews to offer conversions up by 98%. These numbers are testament to the success of our testing methodology and robust platform.
So if you’re looking to optimize your tech recruitment, schedule a demo WeCP. We’re here to help.
