Talent Assessment: 5 Compelling Reasons to Get Started

Every company strives to provide the best service, deliver the most innovative products and generate the highest revenue. To do that, you need great people. For talent acquisition, you need to quickly find the best candidates for the open position. When it comes to personnel development, it is essential to identify, promote and retain high potentials.

In a changing world of work and in times of talent shortage, data-driven personnel decisions are more important than ever. Consequently, talent managers need to use all the tools and techniques available to them to identify and recruit the most suitable candidates. Talent assessments can help you design an effective, replicable talent management strategy for hiring and developing top talent.

Let's start with the basics before we begin listing the 5 reasons why organizations can no longer do without talent assessments.

What Is Talent Assessment?

Talent assessment is used to identify the best-fit candidates for a job, either as a pre-hire assessment or for personnel development. With the help of talent assessments recruiters can look beyond CVs, school grades, college certificates and university diplomas to find out, whether a candidate is a good person-job-match.
Valid assessment tools provide information about e.g. candidates’ abilities, personality traits, motivation, working styles or digital readiness. All the information gathered from different assessments can make a prediction of a candidates’ job- performance and success and might even forecast the retention rate.

The use of talent assessments does not only make sense for pre-employment testing, but can also be extremely beneficial for self-assessment, employee development and identifying leadership potential.

What are the different types of talent assessment tools?

1. Aptitude Tests

Cognitive ability tests are powerful predictors of long-term professional success. They measure e.g. numerical ability, verbal ability, abstract logical abilities or specific cognitive abilities, such as concentration or short-term memory. Skills assessments can e.g. include coding assessment tests or language proficiency tests.

2. Personality Tests

Employees and candidates bring more than just skill and experience with them to work - they bring their personality and all the preferences, tendencies, and styles that come with it.
Work-related personality assessments can help organizations hire, promote and develop the best talent.

3. Job Simulations

Job simulations are used to give candidates a preview of the job role they are applying to. They can include work samples, simulation tests or so-called Situational Judgment Questionnaires (SJQs) to showcase the specific job and to predict job-success.

How Are Talent Assessments Used?

Aptitude assessments are typically used as part of a screening process that helps hiring managers decide which applicants to invite for an interview. Many aptitude tests are administered online from home or on-site, such as in a store. They are usually integrated with the company's Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS), which employers use to track applications.

Some employers use job simulations to assess the candidates' ability to complete the tasks related to the job and give candidates insights into the daily routines. For instance, an employer could require an employee to do a role-play with applicants to assess skills in sales, troubleshooting, verbal skills, or consulting.

Talent assessments may also relate more generally to tools used to determine top-performing employees within a company for talent development purposes. Processes implemented internally to pinpoint skills gaps and develop employees to fill those gaps also fit into this category.

Reason 1: The Use of Talent Assessment Predicts Job Performance

A business impact study can define the unique combination of characteristics that leads to success in your organization. Knowing this, it's just a small step to determine the talent assessment mix that will give you the profile of each applicant.

The results from talent assessment tests help predict job performance and give employers confidence that applicants can do the job well.

Reason 2: Talent Assessments Reduce Bias

Valid assessments of talent are based on the scientific principles of behavioral and ability measurement. This means that any test provides a range of evidence of its reliability and validity over time. In addition, it provides evidence of its consistency in scoring and its ability to be benchmarked and compared across individuals. All this combined provides a solid basis for decision making.

Using digital assessment tools with a rigorous test design, extensive piloting and continual data analysis ensure that tests are bias-free. Using those within a hiring journey means that candidates are selected objectively.

Tools that generate interview guides for the hiring managers to use during the feedback discussion ensure fairness and standardization of the interview.

Reputable test providers have research teams that include psychologists and statisticians. The team not only develops and refines new tests, but also collects and publishes data on how the tests are actually used. This means, for example, that they study gender or other group differences in test scores and help customers understand their own data.

Reason 3: Talent Assessments Support Diversity

Making better hiring decisions requires organizations to attract a broader talent pool to build a more diverse workforce.

Fair talent assessments are based on the requirements of the job and the job-relevant skills of the applicant. Prejudices are excluded. The use of talent assessments in personnel selection thus automatically lead to a more diverse hiring or development process.

Reason 4: Talent Assessment Delivers a Strong Candidate and Employee Experience

Candidates are increasingly choosing employers that align with their own values and goals. Pre-hire assessments, such as realistic job previews, can help improve engagement and completion rates by providing valuable information about your company culture and values. Talent assessments that are consistent with your corporate look and feel additionally support your employer brand.

A good hiring process is one where both the applicant and the company are armed with knowledge about each other to make the best decision possible.

Reason 5: The Use of Talent Assessment Tools Result In Tangible Business Impact

The use of talent assessments saves time, energy and heartache. They speed up time-to-hire by helping focus on the very best, very quickly. And they reduce hiring manager time spent in interviews with poor quality candidates.

Adding assessments to any hiring and development process establishes a science-based foundation that supports selection choices, determines role and culture fit and helps guide how to best develop hired candidates. Evaluating candidates by assessing talent results in tangible business impact.

Take-Away

The use of scientifically sound talent assessment in hiring and workforce development creates a basis for making informed talent decisions. With the help of talent assessment, you can determine the person-job fit as well as the cultural fit to identify and hire the best candidate as well as to retain and develop high potentials. Talent assessment has been proven to contribute to business success and increase diversity within the organization.

Aon | Assessment Solutions

Aon's assessment solutions provides clients with powerful tools and insights to help them make better talent decisions at every stage of the employee lifecycle. This includes pre-hire assessments, identifying future leaders, screening for digital skills and agility, and AI-enabled solutions.