Why Use Assessments?

Reasons to use pre-employment assessments

• Two of three new hires will disappoint in the first year
• Two of three employees would rather work somewhere else
• Ninety-five of 100 applicants will "exaggerate" to get a job
• Most hiring decisions are made in haste - during the first five minutes of an interview
• One of three businesses will be sued this year over an employment issue
• Turnover costs thousands of dollars for every departing employee
• Eighty percent of employee turnover is avoidable

You want employees who are dependable
In 1998, absenteeism cost employers $757 per employee, according to a report in USA TODAY. This was the direct cost reported by a survey of human resource professionals and does not include the cost of hiring others or paying overtime to perform the work of absent employees.

You can be held liable for employees' behavior on and off the job
You must know the nature of the people you hire because their criminal behavior could cost your business millions of dollars. Every time you hire without practicing due diligence, you may be accepting liability for their actions - even when they are "off the clock."

You can be sued for illegal discrimination
In the absence of objective data, how can you demonstrate a hiring/promotion decision was made objectively, without discrimination because of gender, race, religion, etc.

Résumé writers write great fiction
In a survey of recent college graduates, 95% said they would be willing to make a false statement in their résumés in order to get a job. Forty-one percent admitted they had already done so, according to a report in Nation's Business (May, 1999).

Testing is acceptable, even expected
As reported in Molding Systems (May, 1999, v57 i5 p56(1)), a survey found that 92% of job applicants accept testing as part of the job qualification process. Only 3% resent it, while 5% were neutral.

Assessments offer a solution
Historically, employers depend upon résumés, references and interviews as sources of information for making hiring decisions. In practice, these sources have proved inadequate for consistently selecting good employees.

When training employees, a "one size fits all" approach has failed to provide the desired results.

When selecting people for promotion, otherwise excellent employees have too often been miscast into roles they could not perform satisfactorily.

Clearly, an essential ingredient for making "people decisions" has been missing from the formula.

The use of assessments has become essential to employers who

• want to put the right people into jobs;
• provide employees with effective training;
• help their managers to become more effective; and
• promote people into positions where they will succeed.

The use of assessments has resulted in extraordinary increases in productivity while reducing employee relations problems, employee turnover, stress, tension, conflict and overall human resources expenses.

Several factors contribute to the failure of traditional hiring methods. Résumés often contain false claims of education and experience while omitting information that would help employers make better hiring decisions.

Business references are of little value because most past-employers will tell you nothing but "name, rank and serial number."

These realities are the reason interviews have become the most influential factor in hiring and promotion decisions. However, experience shows only a coincidental correlation between the ability to deliver well in an interview and to deliver well on the job. Studies peg this correlation at 14% -- one good employee in every seven hires. Even background checks don't help much. The success rate becomes 26%, but that's only one good hire in every four. Unfortunately, many employers have accepted these poor results and the high cost of excessive turnover as a business reality. They have flown the white flag of surrender.

Don't Surrender! Assessments do help significantly
Assessing behavioral traits improved the hiring success rate to 38%.

When both thinking abilities and behavioral traits are assessed, the right people are hired 54% of the time.

When an assessment of occupational interests is added, successful results improve to 66%.

The most impressive results are achieved, however, when an integrated assessment is used - one that measures behavioral traits, thinking, occupational interests, plus "Job Match."

These integrated assessments employ cutting-edge technology and empirical data to assess the qualities of "The Total Person." In doing so, the individual qualities of candidates are compared to the qualities of employees who performing their duties in a superior manner. These 21st Century assessments successfully identify potentially excellent employees better than 75% of the time.

Job Match outranks all other factors
A well-documented study, published in Harvard Business Review concludes that "Job Match" is by far the most reliable predictor of effectiveness on the job. The study considered many factors including the age, sex, race, education and experience of approximately 300,000 subjects. It evaluated their job performance and found no significant statistical differences, except in the area of "Job Match." The conclusion: "It's not experience that counts or college degrees or other accepted factors; success hinges on a fit with the job."

The only reliable method for evaluating "Job Match" is with a properly designed assessment instrument, capable of measuring the essential job-related characteristics particular to each specific job. Profiles International has assessments designed for this purpose.