Planning on testing your job applicants? It’s all about the timing!

Get ready for the understatement of the year: the hiring process is complex.

Effective recruitment requires thoroughness and patience from both the employers and the future employees, especially when a myriad of technical and administrative procedures are involved. Exams and other evaluation methods are increasingly being used in order to obtain an objective measurement of job applicants. These tests are effective in moderation and in the right context. Although their results can shine a light on a candidate’s competencies, they risk scaring applicants away or swaying HR managers into a premature decision.

The key to understanding the potential benefits of evaluations is this: timing is everything. Should exams be given during the ‘screening’ period or as a final hurdle for shortlisted candidates? Our experiences with different companies, in different professional contexts, have helped to provide insight.

From the outset, recruiters have to agree on the importance of the skill to be tested. Is it a true ‘dealbreaker’, essential to executing the job’s missions successfully ?

In Client Services, for example, language skills are a must from day one (from the first phone call, even!). A company looking to hire a bilingual French-English employee should therefore test the applicant’s French level during the beginning stages of the recruitment process. Otherwise, precious interview time is wasted on candidates who may not be completely à l’aise in a foreign language.

That being said, in other sectors fluency in a given language may not be high-priority and recruiters can enjoy a little more flexibility in their decision. In these circumstances, tests can help hirers choose between two similarly qualified candidates, or can determine what kind of language training the new hires will need.

It’s worthwhile to consider the impact of a skills evaluation on a company’s brand. An old school, stressful and tedious exam can deter an applicant, and take away from the innovation-friendly image that a company is trying to achieve. HR teams have a golden opportunity to offer an evaluation that’s intuitive, user-friendly and job-specific, and in doing so show candidates that they take the satisfaction of their future employees seriously.

From our own experience in collaborating with Human Resources agencies and departments, we’ve seen quite a few cases in which the test is either offered or administered during an in-person interview. A good prospective employee-employer relationship is established, and the hiring staff gets an objective breakdown of the applicant’s skills. Not a bad solution!

The given test results may not be able to directly signal who to hire, but including them in your team’s recruitment process can provide an objective and impartial perspective into an applicant’s qualifications. Particularly for companies who reserve interviews for only the most appealing resumes, an exam or independent evaluation can help provide a comparative analysis between the last candidates standing.

The best plan of action? Think carefully about the available job’s missions, skill requirements and objectives, and plan the timing of the skills measurement accordingly. According to what your team needs, a skills-based test or exam can smooth an already complex process and result in the employee profile your business has been searching for.