Candidate Selection: A Definitive Guide
Learn of candidate selection to improve your candidate selection process and build a high-performing workforce.
Talent acquisition and early careers specialists often face a conundrum when it comes to shortlisting, especially for graduates. They are inundated with applications, far more than could otherwise be accommodated using traditional hiring practices. Moreover, given their lack of experience, CV sifting and interviews simply aren’t effective tools for recruitment, as they literally don’t have anything worth talking about.
This is a harsh reality which many talent acquisition specialists simply choose to ignore, dramatically reducing the effectiveness of their graduate recruitment programmes.
The alternative, however, is to use graduate pre-employment testing as part of the shortlisting process. In principle, this allows organisations to assess large numbers of applicants simultaneously, largely at the click of a button.
This option represents the only truly scalable approach to graduate recruitment, as every other form of assessment requires significant time investment from the HR team. However, especially to those new to graduate testing, concerns exist regarding the efficacy, fairness, and practicality of these assessments, sowing seeds of doubt.
In this article, we will outline the benefits of graduate testing for early careers recruitment and ease concerns held by newcomers to online assessments for recruitment.
The primary reason for adding graduate tests to your early career recruitment processes is to improve the quality of hire. However, many talent acquisition specialists, HR professionals, and hiring managers are simply unaware of how effective pre-employment testing can be, especially relative to interviews. We know from the research that aptitude tests—i.e. verbal, numerical, and abstract reasoning tests—are the strongest predictors of complex job performance known. This is because they are directly related to one's ability to learn, solve problems, and make decisions, which are key to any kind of white-collar occupation. This is particularly salient here for early careers, as the learning component will be especially important, making aptitude tests uniquely powerful tools.
Other assessments are particularly powerful tools for improving quality of hire. Behavioural assessments, such as personality questionnaires, also have the added benefit of being powerful predictors of retention, not just performance. Naturally, person-environment fit is the primary driver of retention in the workplace, and when people misfit to their environment, their instinct is to leave. As a result, if candidates are a poor fit for the role, team, or organisational culture, they are substantially more likely to quit. Behavioural assessments serve as early warning systems for misfit, significantly improving retention.
A wide range of other tools can also add value to the recruitment process, helping to boost performance and/or retention.
Situational judgement tests are commonly used graduate tests, which evaluate a candidate's ability to make reasonable judgements and effective decisions. Hard skills, such as coding skills or software package experience, can also be assessed using graduate-level testing. Ultimately, adding additional layers to an existing selection process increases its predictive power, making it easier to identify top performers. This is particularly true for organisations that rely on multiple rounds of interviews to select candidates, representing a huge amount of redundancy. Instead, by diversifying your selection tools, you make far better use of your candidates' time, while also maximising the probability of making good hires.
The biggest concern, and thus roadblock, for incorporating graduate testing is concerns about fairness, and across a number of fronts. Neurodiversity is a key consideration in employee selection, and organisations are (quite rightfully) very concerned about potential impact. The reality, however, is that existing selection processes are particularly harmful for neurodivergent candidates, especially CV sifting and interviews. Dyslexia is the most common form of neurodivergence, and it primarily impacts writing and reading. Consequently, CVs, cover letters, and applicant forms are uniquely challenging here. Autism is another major neurotype, and the research shows that interviews are incredibly discriminatory towards candidates with autism. Graduate tests, however, allow you to diversify away from just interviews and CV content, making the process more fair.
Extra time, for example, can be applied to online tests, giving neurodivergent candidates a reasonable adjustment. Additionally, accessibility software, browser extensions, and native display changes can easily be made and accommodated using graduate tests, improving fairness considerably. Moreover, when designing these assessments, publishers are required to undertake adverse impact analysis and adhere to strict test design guidelines, making them far more rigorous and fairly designed than interviews.
Another concern that organisations have is that of social mobility. Organisations are often very concerned that graduate tests will, somehow, benefit candidates from privileged backgrounds. In reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. We know that educational requirements—i.e. UCAS points, degree classification, GPA etc.—are all very biased in favour of privilege, with people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds struggling in comparison. This is because people from privileged backgrounds don’t need additional jobs, and thus can focus 100% on study. They can afford extra help via tutors, extra-curricular support, and other paid resources. Aptitude tests, however, only assess innate ability and cannot be influenced by these external factors, making them far fairer predictors of potential.
The last major concern that organisations have regarding pre-employment testing is that of scalability. They believe that adding an additional step to the recruitment process will make it more cumbersome, increasing the administrative burden on assessors. This is perhaps the most mistaken belief that organisations hold, as nothing could be further from the truth. With online assessments, 10,000 applicants can be invited to complete their assessments online, remotely from their own homes, with the literal click of a button. Assessors can then sort, rank, and filter candidates by their chosen criteria, allowing them to shortlist candidates in record time.
This matters because pre-employment tests are the only scalable selection tool—i.e. adding 10, 100, or 1000 candidates takes roughly a comparable amount of time. This makes graduate tests uniquely advantageous here, as early careers typically see high volumes of applicants.
The other benefit of graduate tests is that they can be used in lieu of interviews, especially rounds of interviews. Often, organisations will rely on multiple rounds of interviews, even at graduate level, creating huge redundancy in the selection process. After the first interview, significant diminishing returns will be seen regarding predictive validity, making multiple interviews increasingly inefficient. Replacing some of the earlier stage interviews with assessments saves significant time, energy, and effort, which removes the opportunity costs associated with interviews. After all, hiring managers could be doing other things than interviewing, adding value to the organisation elsewhere. By using graduate tests instead, the net value created will be substantially higher across the organisation, making them a uniquely valuable tool.
HR practitioners and talent acquisition specialists that are new to psychometric testing may be, understandably, cautious when making changes to existing processes. However, the risk associated with not changing their selection process must be considered, and the opportunity costs they present. Although some pre-employment tests are better than others (the quality will differ between providers and assessment methods) the science behind the principles is very well established, and the evidence-based approach is to incorporate them. As with any tool, quality matters, and you should do your due diligence and choose a provider with the expertise required to provide your desired results.
If you are interested in adopting graduate tests for recruitment, but have concerns about them, then feel free to get in touch with us and book a call to discuss your requirements.