Elevating Hiring Decisions

Ensuring seamless integration with a new organization can be a challenge, especially when the stakes are high in bringing in new leaders. With the rapidly changing tech environment and high competition, fast integration into corporate culture and adoption of brand vision is essential to protect valuable company resources and make a quick impact. 

Evaluating someone’s personality, emotional intelligence, industry expertise, and technical leadership skills provides comprehensive insight into the candidate. In the current economic state, organizations are selecting candidates carefully and inserting behavioral assessments as an additional screening layer to reduce turnover risk.  

According to a report from Psychology Today, 80% of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests to vet for upper-level positions. Interestingly, the personality testing industry is expected to grow to be a $6.7 billion industry by 2027. Hiring niche talent and executive leaders has become increasingly more challenging, which is why understanding what motivates a person and which leadership attributes shine, can shed light on a person’s alignment with company values and key objectives. 

What are Behavioral Assessments?

According to the University of Washington, the questions in a behavioral or competency-based assessment are ‘designed to reveal the extent to which the candidate exhibits the knowledge, skills, abilities, or characteristics of the desired behavior/competency.’ These show not just about what a candidate knows, but how the candidate applies what they know to meet expectations. 

Leadership requires a deep level of emotional intelligence to drive success within an organization. That means having a high level of competency in areas like communication, cultural development, decision making, and delegation. These types of skills are hard to uncover in technical assessments, which is why interviewing methods are evolving and more organizations are incorporating behavioral-based interviewing (BBI) practices.

These assessments tailored for executive selection, focus on personality, values, and leadership competencies. Uncovering what people want, how they get what they want, and what will get in their way. The psychology behind this explores how people’s core values, motives, and unconscious biases affect every aspect of their lives, from what they find rewarding to how they make decisions. In other words, this helps employers understand how a candidate’s values, personality, and potential dark-side characteristics predict success in a role. 

Cost of a Bad Hire

Making the wrong hiring decision is expensive and time consuming. An updated report from the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) found that a company can expect to spend $7,500–$28,000 in hard costs to find and onboard a new employee, including job board fees, background checks, and the new hire training. However, Edie Goldberg, founder of the talent management and development company E.L. Goldberg & Associates, said that executive-level recruitment can cost around 60% of the position’s salary when considering both hard and soft costs. Soft costs that impact the overall toll of recruiting on a company include the time departmental leaders and managers invest in supporting the interview process.

"When all of these professionals are meeting with potential candidates, screening applications, scheduling a few rounds of interviews and making final decisions, it takes away time from accomplishing organizational goals/outcomes, which then certainly ties to ROI," said Ankit Shah, supervisor of talent development at Columbus State Community College in Ohio.

This is where the importance of assessments during the hiring process comes in. Organizations leverage competency assessments to evaluate capabilities and past experience in specific skills and situations, but now many are taking it to the next level by incorporating behavioral assessments in the interview process. 

Benefits of Behavioral Assessments 

1. Find Candidates with Specific Traits

Behavioral assessments provide valuable insights into candidates' personality traits, work styles, and behavioral tendencies. According to a study by Nocti Business Solutions, companies that use pre-employment assessments are 24% more likely to have employees who exceed performance goals and 35% less likely to experience turnover. This highlights the effectiveness in identifying candidates who possess the desired traits that are more likely to succeed in specific roles. 

2. Data Driven Hiring Decisions 

Rather than making hiring decisions based on your gut or how well a candidate’s resume looks, utilizing an assessment can reduce unconscious biases by encouraging objective, data-driven decisions. According to a study conducted by Harvard Business Review, research found that using behavioral assessments in conjunction with structured interviews can reduce unconscious biases by 51% (compared to unstructured interviews and no assessments).

3. Determine Cultural Fit

Using behavioral assessments in the hiring process is beneficial for determining a cultural fit as it helps identify candidates whose values, behaviors, and work styles align with those of the organization. According to a study by Deloitte, 82% of organizations believe that culture is a potential competitive advantage, yet only 19% believe they have the "right" culture. Behavioral assessments can help bridge this gap by providing insights into candidates' personalities and how they would fit into the company culture. In fact, a survey by The Predictive Index found that 88% of respondents believe that assessing culture fit is important when hiring.

We are now finding that the average competency test does not do the trick in revealing all of the necessary information for making good hiring decisions. Even a highly qualified candidate can be wrong for a job if they lack the right human skills. In an effort to minimize turnover and incur duplicate recruiting fees, search firms and internal teams are implementing behavioral assessments to better understand the likelihood of success and overall satisfaction in the position.