Using Assessments for more Effective Interviewing

There is no substitute for personally interviewing job candidates. However, the focus of the personal interview has dramatically changed. Recent advances in assessment technology have brought about significant advances in the quality of information provided by assessment instruments. The purpose of this article is to encourage you to explore some of the possibilities available with these new selection tools.

Use assessments earlier in the process. It saves time and money. Too often companies conduct multiple interviews with a candidate, consuming many hours of time before using an assessment instrument. When the candidate is found to be a poor match for the job in question, the company finds itself in a quandary: Believe the interviews or believe the test? Experience has shown in far too many cases, that the assessment's objective information was more reliable. A more effective and economical strategy is to limit the initial interview to a brief meeting with the candidate to satisfy any critical elements of job suitability, such as certain skills or education, available transportation, availability for the position, grooming, language capability, etc. If that brief interview finds the candidate worthy of further investments of time and money, the next step is to complete a quick survey, such as CheckStart, which is designed to assess the candidate's suitability for the position. This allows you to screen out unsuitable candidates before spending hours of valuable management time.

Professional interviewers feel that "at best", they can avoid poor performers 70% of the time. This is sometimes possible with unlimited interviewing time, using the most sophisticated interviewing techniques. With tools like CheckStart, an average manager, with little training in interviewing, will have a higher success rate than the professionals. With such tools, an experienced interviewer can discover remarkable insights into a candidate's future performance and even their future potential in other positions.

New assessment tools provide interview questions selected specifically for each candidate. These questions direct your attention to each candidate's challenges in a particular job. The HermanCheckStart report includes behavioral event interview questions for the selected Job Category(HermanCheckStart Job Categories). These questions are selected based on the candidate's traits and/or abilities measured by the HermanCheckStart Assessment. You have a choice of 4 - 5 behavioral interview questions per trait. HermanCheckStart also alerts you to areas of concern that are critical to job performance in a particular Job Category.

Assessments provide 1/3 of the information for a hiring decision. You must obtain the other 2/3'rds utilizing interviews, background checks and other resources. Assessments can tell you how well a candidate's personality traits and cognitive abilities match the traits and cognitive abilities required for success in a particular job. Then you add your own questions, which are typically more directed at exploring the candidate's skills, experience, and personal attitudes and values, to what the assessment provided. These other "non-assessment" activities enable you to determine how well the candidate matches your company's culture. It also allows you to determine how well their skills and experience match those necessary for the job. These three sets of information (Assessment for personality traits and cognitive abilities, Review of Skills and Experience and Interviews to determine company fit and attitudes), plus references, background checks, and other possible sources, combine for a fairly complete picture of probable job performance and one that is a sound basis for a hiring decision.

Once suitable candidates have been identified, your interview time can be used to examine how the candidates' skills and experience can be integrated into the company to the greatest advantage. By screening out unsuitable candidates, assessments free you from trying to answer the question, "Can this person do the job?" You can use your interview time to answer the question, "Which of the candidates who fit the job can do the job best?"