Candidate Assessment

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Candidate Assessment

How a candidate performs during the technical, behavioral, and sample work assessment phase of interviews will often be a good indicator of job performance.

The interview process should be designed to assess as many of the job-related competencies as possible to create a 360-degree perspective of the candidate's skills.

During the technical assessment, interviewers will be looking for a candidate's ability to:

- Communicate effectively
- Understand and articulate technical concepts
- Solve problems creatively
- Work well under the normal pressures of the role

Once you have a grasp of the candidate's technical skills, you can move on to the behavioral assessment. This is where you'll be looking for qualities such as:

- Motivation
- Positive attitude
- Teamwork skills
- Flexibility
- Interpersonal skills

The behavioral assessment aims to get a sense of how the candidate will actually behave on the job. Do they have the right attitude and motivation to succeed? Are they team players? How well do they handle stress and pressure?

The best behavioral assessment tools are usually structured interviews that ask candidates to describe how they have behaved in specific situations in the past.

Using interview intelligence software can help.

Creating a prompt list with questions to ask during the interview process can help uncover a candidate's behavioral potential.

Questions about how the candidate has handled situations in the past can give you a good sense of how they will handle similar situations in the future.

For example, you might ask:

- "Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult customer. How did you help them resolve the problem?"
- "What was the most challenging project you've ever worked on? What did you learn from it?"
- "Describe a time when you had to go above and beyond the call of duty to get the job done."

Asking questions like these can help you get a better sense of a candidate's true potential.

The final stage of candidate assessment is the work sample test. This is an opportunity for candidates to show you what they can do by completing a task that is representative of the work they would be doing on the job.

Work sample tests can be used to assess a wide range of skills, from writing and editing to data entry and analysis.

When designing a work sample test, it's important to keep the following in mind:

- Make sure the task is realistic and representative of the job.
- Give clear instructions on what is expected.
- Provide enough time for the candidate to complete the task.
- Assess the results objectively.

Work sample tests can be a great way to assess a candidate's potential, but they should only be used as part of a comprehensive assessment process that includes both technical and behavioral assessments.

Candidate Assessment Meaning

Candidate assessment meaning:

The purpose of candidate assessments is to improve the accuracy of hiring decisions and to identify individuals who are likely to be successful in a role.

Overall assessment of employees, especially top performers, should give you a solid framework to build a list of relevant skills to assess in candidates.

By assessing each candidate on job-related competencies, organizations can reduce the subjectivity of interviews and get a better sense of each candidate's potential.

Types of Candidate Assessments:

There are many different types of assessments that can be used to evaluate candidates, but some of the most common include:

- Technical skills assessments
- Behavioral assessments
- Work sample tests

Technical skills assessments assess a candidate's ability to understand and articulate technical concepts. They can be used to evaluate candidates for roles that require specific skills or knowledge, such as software engineering or IT roles.

Behavioral assessments aim to get a sense of how the candidate will actually behave on the job. Do they have the right attitude and motivation to succeed? Are they team players? How well do they handle stress and pressure?

Work sample tests are an opportunity for candidates to show you what they can do by completing a task that is representative of the work they would be doing on the job.

The benefits of using assessments as part of the hiring process are clear. By taking the time to assess candidates objectively, you can improve the accuracy of your hiring decisions and identify individuals who are likely to be successful in a role.

Say for instance that you're hiring an Account Executive.

You'll want to assess your applicant's ability to generate opportunities, nurture a prospect through a sales cycle, and then close them as a customer.

These are all skills that can be assessed through technical skills assessments, behavioral assessments, and work sample tests.

When designing your assessment process, keep in mind that it's important to use a variety of assessment types in order to get the most accurate picture of each candidate.

When used correctly, assessments can be a powerful tool in your hiring arsenal.

Candidate Assessment Tools

There are many tools to help you assess a candidate's technical skills.

G2 ranks Predictive Index #1  among pre-Employment candidate assessment tools.

The Predictive Index is a personality profile test that helps companies "build dream teams."

It will give you insights into how a candidate thinks, solves problems, who they work best with, and their work style.

All extremely useful information when building a healthy company culture. The Predictive Index, Culture Index, 16 Personalities, DiSC Assessment, CliftonStrengths Finder and others help you understand a candidate's behavioral skills.

These are all great tools, but don't forget about the technical side of things.

Technical skills assessment tools for coders, developers, and software engineers include:

- CodeSignal
- CoderPad
- HackerRank

These tools help assess a candidate's coding ability and are often used by organizations during the screening process.

In addition to technical and behavioral skills, it's also important to view samples of work.

Platforms like GitHub will allow you to see a candidate's previous work and get an idea of their coding style.

Other great ways to see how a candidate would actually perform in the role:

- For sales positions, request a role play or give them a case study to review.
- If you're hiring for customer service, have them do a mock support call.
- For marketing roles, ask them to put together a social media campaign or write a blog post.

When it comes to candidate assessments, there are many different options to choose from. The most important thing is to use a variety of assessment types in order to get the most accurate picture of each candidate.

Assessment tools for recruitment and selection are becoming increasingly popular as organizations strive to find the best fit for their open roles.

As AI (artificial intelligence) powered tools continue to enter the market, the options for candidate assessment will only continue to grow.AI assessment tools will automate many of the steps used to assess candidates in the past and allow you to bring a data-driven approach to hiring.

One of the tools to help you hire better is interview intelligence software.

This type of tool uses semi-structured questions to analyze a candidate's past performance and provides insights that can help you predict whether or not they will be successful in the role.

As these tools continue to enter the market, the war for talent will only get more competitive and organizations that are using the latest assessment tools will have a significant advantage when it comes to finding and hiring the best candidates.

Interview Assessment Tools

A 6-step interview process tends to be the most efficient way of screening and evaluating candidates.

In our ebook, "How to Hire Great Software Engineers," we give each step in detail to help you build a streamlined interview process.

But here's a short summary of the steps:

1.) Initial Screening
2.) First Interview
3.) Panel Interview
4.) Task Completion or Assessment
5.) Final Stage
6.) Reference Checks

Using interview assessment tools like Pillar, integrated with your ATS (applicant tracking software), video conferencing software, and scheduling software can streamline and automate much of the interview process.

If you think about the time you spend emailing back and forth with candidates to schedule phone screens, interviews, assessments, and the like, you could easily save hours each week using an automated system.

Not to mention, you'll be able to keep track of all your interviews in one place and have all the information you need (e.g. recordings, notes, etc.) right at your fingertips when it comes time to make a decision.

When it comes to conducting the actual interview, platforms like Pillar offer you the option to build semi-structured questions as prompts, keeping your interviewers on target, and giving you metrics on each candidate.

If you combine interview intelligence software with skills assessment tools you'll have a complete behavioral and technical picture of your candidate.

Pillar's app and video interview platform were created to help you make better hires.

A recent study of our customers showed that over the last year, hiring managers were able to cut turnover by 50% while hiring 2x faster.

If you're looking to create an effective hiring process for your company, Request a demo to see how we can help you save time, and money, and hire better.