The Metiss Group's Blog

Many hiring managers choose to not administer pre-employement assessments for lower paying jobs – this may be a mistake.  Hiring managers rely on assessments to help them uncover candidate strengths and weaknesses that are not easily recognized in an interview but need to be explored in reference checks and subsequent interviews.  These are the same strengths and weaknesses that can give you a competitive advantage or future headaches.  Wouldn’t you want to know that before making the hire?

Managers sometimes skip investing in an assessment because the investment doesn’t seem to make sense for a lower paying position. When faced with this decision, consider your answers to the following questions:

• How much impact does this person’s performance make on our organization?  If s/he makes a mistake, how much could it cost me?  If s/he is an awesome addition, how does that impact our profit?  Will this person be in a support role to one of my superstars — what impact could that have on the superstar as well as the work itself?
• Will this person interact with our customers directly?
• If s/he is a poor hire, who will need to put in extra time/effort to correct or complete the work?  How much more will that cost me?
• If performance isn’t as expected, how much additional time will I personally need to spend in coaching through performance issues, and what’s my time worth?

If after asking yourself these questions you still feel comfortable skipping an assessment for a non-key role, consider not doing an assessment but also consider outsourcing the work if it is that insignificant to your organization.

This entry was posted on April 25, 2010 at 10:58 pm and is filed under Selection. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.