Client Login

Category Archives: Integrity Testing

Hiring Engaged Employees: An Investment

Posted on by
Hiring Engaged Employees: An Investment

The pressure is on during the hiring process to single out the best future employee. Your company wants to be sure that any new employees are skilled enough to complete the required tasks, but whether or not someone will be a good fit for your company and current employees goes beyond the resume.

Many companies think to offer skills tests or employ background checks in order to assure themselves that potential hires are indeed capable of doing the work required. Aptitude testing, especially for engagement, is another key step toward choosing your company’s best fit and investing in future growth.

More Than Just Employee Satisfaction

Employee engagement is a measurement of how passionately employees feel about their jobs. The more passionate an employee is, the more committed they will be to your organization and the more effort they will put into their work. High employee engagement increases worker output and the quality of that output, while also extending the length of time an employee will remain at the job, decreasing worker turnover.

Employee engagement is not synonymous with employee satisfaction. Employee satisfaction measures how content employees are without addressing questions of motivation, involvement, or emotional commitment. An employee might be satisfied doing minimal work and collecting a paycheck, and increasing employee satisfaction will not necessarily lead to increased performance.

Engaged employees, however, are far more likely to be top performers. They will embrace change, search out ways to continually improve, and challenge the status quo in ways that will push your company forward. Engaged employees also expect all others to be just as invested, increasing workplace accountability and encouraging others to also increase their engagement.

The Value of Employee Engagement

True employee engagement goes beyond once-a-month teambuilding exercises and truly drives performance. Engaged employees are able to understand their tasks within the frame of the entire company, knowing exactly how they fit and how their role supports the bigger picture. Engaged workforces outperform their competition, boasting higher earnings and quicker recoveries after setbacks.

Employee engagement is a key indicator for growth and innovation. In a world where the mobile professional has become more common, employee engagement can help companies retain top talent. Companies concerned with investing in employee engagement are more likely not just to retain their top employees, but also to attract new talent and continue to grow.

Since employee engagement is so important to the longevity and success of a company, how can employers screen for engagement during the hiring process in order to help choose the most successful candidate?

Integrity/Aptitude Testing

Many companies now include aptitude testing as part of the hiring process in order to bolster the candidates’ documents, interviews, and background checks. There are a wide variety of aptitude tests available, with different focuses and different formats, so you should be sure to choose the test that is the best fit for your company. Consult with your background screening company to explain your specific needs.

Aptitude tests are the best predictor of work performance, above and beyond an applicant’s past experience or interview ability. Since employee engagement is such a strong predictor of a company’s success and retention, it makes sense to use an aptitude test to determine the engagement of potential employees in order to hire the best fit. An engaged employee increases the value and resilience of a company, making an aptitude test a solid investment in the company’s future.

Using Personality Assessments During the Hiring Process

Posted on by

Personality assessments can be useful for HR to help streamline the hiring process. These are not the same personality tests getting clicks on social media, but directed assessments with the purpose of identifying potential employee’s behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs. The results of these assessments evaluate whether a potential hire will be a good fit for your workplace.

Five years ago, as many as 60% of workers were asked to take workplace assessments, turning them into a $500-million-a-year industry – which is still growing. Over a quarter of major incorporations include personality assessments when they evaluate candidates. What should your company consider when it comes to choosing and using personality assessments?

Quality

There are thousands of personality assessments available. It is important to be sure that HR considers them carefully in order to select the assessment that best fits their company. Some lower-quality assessments also run the risk of getting a company in legal trouble, so selection is important in order to ensure a test of value. The chosen test should be in compliance with all federal guidelines, and available in multiple languages.

A quality personality assessment measures stable traits that will not change over time, providing employers with an idea of what they can expect from a potential employee. The scores provided should be normative, comparing one applicant’s results against others, and the test should provide a “candidness” scale to indicate how likely it is that the results accurately portray the test-taker. A quality assessment will also have high reliability and be shown to be a valid predictor of job performance. Choosing an assessment that is the result of all this background research means the results will be more helpful in choosing the best candidates.

Accuracy

Higher-quality personality assessments have been tested in order to ensure the accuracy of their results. Assessments which are based on the popular Five Factor Model have had the most scrutiny from outside researchers. This model looks for a potential hire’s openness to experience, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism – all important factors when considering teamwork and customer satisfaction.

Choosing a less expensive personality assessment means running the risk of making hiring decisions based on less valid results. Many popular personality tests, such as four-quadrant tests, should not be used during the hiring process, and the increasingly popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator was never intended for use in the hiring process. HR professionals should avoid using tests that sort people into a small handful of personality styles because the results will be too simplistic and therefore not accurate enough to be useful. Workplaces are also shown to be stronger and more productive when employees fit into a variety of these popular categories, so the personality assessment chosen for the hiring process needs to go beyond this simple sorting.

Use

A personality assessment should never be the sole indicator of whether a potential hire should turn into an employee. The results of a properly chosen and properly administered personality assessment are just one piece of the hiring process. These results alone are not necessarily an indicator that an applicant should not move forward, and the results of a personality assessment should be considered alongside other documentation and measures of the applicant.

Companies should choose the personality assessment that measures the attributes that most closely align with their organization. A properly chosen personality assessment will predict workplace behaviors that can affect sales, customer satisfaction, and employee turnover. If the results are free of bias, they can help companies make more informed decisions about potential hires and their likely long-term performance in the workplace.