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Behavioural Testing – Delve Deeper Into Your Candidates

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A common issue among both Recruiters and Hiring Managers is conducting an entire recruitment process, identifying and placing the perfect candidate, and then finding out too far down the track that they are not performing as well as expected. A costly and dangerous mistake to make for organisations, this will often occur if the screening process relies only on resume screening and first impression interviews.

Candidates’ resumes may not have the qualifications and industry experience needed for the position, and they may present well in a 1 hour interview with the hiring manager, however there are many other determinants that will contribute to their actual performance in the job. Measuring and assessing these before you’ve invested in an onboarding process will help to reduce the impact of a bad hire.

At Employment Office, we use Behavioural Testing to gain a deeper understanding of your candidates and what you can expect from them, beyond their experience and skill-set.

Behavioural testing Testing helps to identify the answers to questions such as:

  • Does the candidate prefer to work collaboratively with others or independently?
  • What kind of leader are they?
  • Are they naturally inclined to stick to the rules, or do they prefer to think outside the square?

Of the many types of Behavioural Testing, Employment Office chooses to use The McQuaig System, as it is specifically designed for recruitment., and the reports that are generated can be used by Hiring Managers without having to attend a 3 day interpreter course.

At what point is the right time in a recruitment process to introduce Behavioural Testing, and how do we best utilise this information?

Before you Interview

We have identified that the best time to behaviourally test your candidates is directly before you bring them in for a face-to-face conversation. Most testing tools are quite streamlined and can be accessed through a link included in the confirmation email sent to candidates, alongside the details of their interview. This allows Hiring Managers to walk into their interviews with a behavioural report to utilise alongside the interviewee’s CV.

These recruitment tools also allow insight into candidates’ engagement with your organisation and recruitment process. Applicants who are serious about your position will take the time to complete this step, and you may find that those who choose not to complete the testing may not be as engaged in your job opportunity.

As you Interview

With a behavioural report in hand, you are able to ask questions that delve much deeper into their a candidate’s suitability for your role. If a key behaviour for your vacant rolevacancy is sociability and the ability to empathise with others (e.g. a Social Worker or Customer Service Officer opportunity), knowing that the candidate in front of you is naturally inclined to those behaviours is incredibly powerful and important when considering role fit.

Conversely, if they have indicated that they are not naturally inclined to those behaviours, you can delve further into their motivations for applying to your position, and how they have performed in previous roles. Ask them to give examples of times where they have had to be sociable or empathise with a client, and double check that their answer aligns with what you would expect from them in your position.

Behavioural Testing also explores candidates’ leadership ability, selling style, motivating factors, management tips, developmental considerations, and more.

With so many tools available on the market and the ease with which they can be administered, now is the time to integrate behavioural testing in to with your recruitment process. Once you have gained the capability to understand how people will behave in your role before you have hired them, you will wonder how you ever recruited without it.

Gain more insights through our webinar; Behavioural Testing and How To Use it. Don’t stay in the dark about your candidates. Bolster your recruitment process and use Behavioural Testing to shine a light on potential employees’ suitability, future performance, and motivation – things that can be otherwise hard to measure during a routine interview.

Shortlisting on a Shoe String

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Your Pocket Guide to Shortlisting on a Budget.

Recruitment can be costly – in terms of time and money. Finding the right person can take up to 68 days, according to a 2015 study by management consultancy company, CEB. Regardless of the process, recruitment costs can reach up to two-thirds of an employee’s annual salary, according to WorkplaceInfo.

At Employment Office, we believe the recruitment process is an exciting opportunity to discover your next star – and should not be seen as a burden to your bottom line!

With this in mind, we have put together a little pocket guide to shortlisting on a budget – a guide to finding the right people for your organisation, minimising the time and cost impacts, and without compromising the quality of your recruitment process.

Read on as we share with you the most efficient way to conduct shortlisting – a six step strategy focusing on getting recruitment right from the get-go, that promises to keep your hip-pocket happy.

  1. Conduct a detailed job analysis

It is essential that you identify, and get all stakeholders on the same page regarding; the aim of the role, the position description, the selection criteria, and the vision of your ideal candidate.

Organise a single meeting with all staff involved in the hiring process (Recruiter, HR team, Future Leader) to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Be sure to brief each staff member on the aim of the meeting beforehand and inform them to bring any relevant material (previous job descriptions, hand over notes and an exit interview transcription). This simple but critical step will minimalize email-tennis and set the ball in motion for the next stage of recruitment, helping condense the time to hire.

  1. Seek the right information from applicants

With certain competitive roles attracting hundreds of applicants, it is simply not viable to read every resume and cover letter. ‘Screening questions’ refers to a series of questions determined by you that will immediately ‘knock out’ unsuitable candidates, and equally, draw attention to outstanding candidates.

75 to 88 per cent of applicants are screened-out when the recruiter first glances at their resume.

Screening questions help accelerate the recruitment process as you no longer need to sift through hundreds of irrelevant resumes that recruitment software will automatically identify as unsuitable.

When designing screening questions, consider which factors are ‘make or break’ in terms of legal requirements and the candidates’ skills.
Legal necessities: If your role requires a heavy vehicle licence or re-assignment to a remote location, be sure to flag these in your screening questions. It sounds simple, but all too often recruiters forget to ask candidates about key criteria, resulting in time being wasted by sorting through resumes of candidates who legally cannot do the job.

Qualifications: Many competitive jobs have non-negotiable requirements – you can set the bar high with screening questions, weeding out candidates who haven’t yet reached the required number of years of experience or level of education that the role demands.

In-depth insights: Design open-ended questions with the key requirements of the role in mind. Your questions could include anything from ‘Describe what you have learned from other leaders, and how this has shaped your leadership style,’ to ‘Discuss a time when you had to deal with a serious customer service issue – how did you handle the situation?’

  1. Screen with phone or video interview

Before investing time and energy in face to face interviews, it’s essential to communicate with candidates in real-time to get a sense of their personality and verbal communication skills. A phone interview, or better, a recorded video interview as conducted at Employment Office, will help you arrive at a high-quality shortlist with new intel that you can use to guide inform your questions in the final face-to-face interviews.
When resources are tight, every minute counts, so be ready with a list of questions at hand and know what you are looking for in terms of essential, desirable and undesirable responses. 15 to 25 minutes should be sufficient for you to decide whether to continue the candidate to the next stage.

  1. Conduct Face to Face interviews

Structure and standardise the interviews – Have a clear plan of how your interview should go and keep an eye on the clock to stay on track. This will get easier each time. Secondly, ensure all interviews follow a similar structure to make it easy to compare applicants later.

Involve others – Having multiple interviewers reduces bias and enables recruiters to focus on one or two skill sets each, rather than one interviewer looking for all qualities in the candidate. Alternatively, one recruiter could ask questions, while the other HR representative takes notes.

Address what’s important: the behavioural and theoretical – To craft your interview questions, revisit the job description and consider the key selection criteria. Ask questions that address experience, skills, values and desired behavioural tendencies.

The best questions challenge candidates to share an anecdote with you – perhaps a time when they overcame pressure or made a significant change to processes within their company in the face of unyielding resistance. Telling a story makes it easier for the candidate to relax, and gives you the opportunity to tease out the candidate’s skills, rather than the candidate simply listing their attributes.

Compare apples with apples – Many recruiters assign ratings to each response in order to have a numerical figure that will enable them to quickly identify outstanding candidates. To reduce the margin of error, ensure all interviews have the same idea of what a ‘10’ and ‘0’ looks like.

Consider cultural fit – The face-to-face interview represents a critical opportunity for you to consider if the person would adapt to your work environment and feel comfortable among your team. Does the candidate prefer to work independently or with the team?

  1. Consider a Group Assessment Day (GAD)

For organisations hiring in bulk or testing a number of strong applicants for a competitive position, a Group Assessment Day is a popular alternative to multiple interviews. GADs afford recruiters the benefits of an individual interview (as some recruiters choose to conduct individual interviews during the GAD), and the opportunity to observe candidates in teams, and in role-play situations relevant to the role.

Observing candidates for two hours or more for both behavioural and skills qualities means that you improve your chance of uncovering the best match for the role, compared to only analysing a candidate in an individual interview.

In the short term, GADs save HR managers, who are hiring in bulk, from hours in the interview room. In the long term, GADs lead to higher quality hires and thus, reduced turnover.

  1. Give your candidate the all-clear

Remember, more often than not, outstanding candidates are also applying to your competitors. Thus, at this late stage of the recruitment process, your candidates are a ‘flight risk’ – they are time sensitive, so you must be too. We recommend conducting background and reference checks as efficiently as possible.

Background checks– Keep your workplace safe and protected from legal nightmares by conducting thorough pre-employment checks. This could include police checks, education verification checks, medical checks and visa checks.

Skills testing– A simple online skills test could mean the difference between an outstanding hire and an incorrect hire. A skills test is an easy way to ensure candidates have the skills they claim. Skills testing could include Microsoft office testing, typing, numeracy and literacy, and attention to detail, technical writing and business communication tests, or more comprehensive tests relevant to particular roles.

The Key Take-Away

Ultimately, the key take-away is that you can only save time and money in the long term by implementing high-quality recruitment practices today. A streamlined recruitment method as outlined above will save your team hours in manual labour and will cut-out non-essential communication. This means your candidate-attraction strategy will be lean in terms of resources but mean in terms of hire-power.

 

Editor’s note: In celebration of the holiday season, Employment Office is delighted to offer clients our Candidate Video Star Special. Book by 5pm Thursday 21st Dec and we will:

  • Rate and rank your candidates according to your criteria
  • Record up to 10 video screening interviews (each approx 10 minutes duration)
  • Tailor the interview questions to your needs
  • Accelerate the screening process, getting you to the best candidates quicker and without hassle
  • Handle all candidate care over the Christmas period
  • Assist with scheduling your face to face interviews

Contact us today and mention ‘Christmas Special’ to take advantage of this fantastic offer.

Employment Office is the leader when it comes to uncovering top talent. Click to learn why we are not a traditional dinosaur recruitment agency, and how we can give you bang for your buck.

Sources:

 WorkplaceInfo, Recruiting Costs, accessed 2017,

http://workplaceinfo.com.au/recruitment/problems-and-challenges/recruiting-costs

Signature Staff, The True Cost of Hiring New Employees, 2016

https://www.signaturestaff.com.au/blog/true-cost-hiring-new-employees/

CEB, Recruiting Slowdown Hurts the Bottom Line, 2015: https://www.cebglobal.com/human-resources/recruiting/accelerating-recruiting.html

Ideal, Shortlisting Step-By Step Guide For Candidate Recruitment, accessed 2017, https://ideal.com/shortlisting/

 

 

 

 

 

Office Overtime Reduces More Than Just Your Sleep-In

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Sunglasses over tired eyes, espresso in hand and ten-minutes late to work. Sound familiar? No, we’re not talking about the effects of a mid-week hangover, this is the morning snapshot into the lives of more than a third of employees who work overtime every week.

While late night desk jockeys might impress some managers, meeting urgent deadlines may be at the expense of employee health.

A recent poll by recruitment firm Employment Office found 37% of people work an average of 2-5 hours overtime every week and 22% clock up an additional 10 hours every week.

Although short-term benefits might be tempting, including fuller pay cheques, prolonged periods of overtime actually aren’t beneficial for employers or employees.

A study published in UK medical journal The Lancet last month revealed staff who work 55 hours or more per week have a 33% increased risk of stroke and 13% higher risk of coronary heart disease compared to people who only work 40 hour weeks.

The results led by scientists at University College London reviewed 42 studies from across Europe, the US and Australia. While they couldn’t definitively say long hours give people strokes, the study shows a clear link between working long hours and these serious health conditions.

Putting significantly long days in at work can also result in a number of less serious issues for staff, including increased levels of stress and fatigue, with these complaints often leaving employees feeling burned and  resulting in decreased productivity.

Employment Office Managing Director, Tudor Marsden-Huggins says employers can mitigate negative effects of excessive overtime by implementing an overtime policy which is regularly assessed.

“It’s essential to document an overtime policy, particularly for organisations who deal in shift work or extended opening hours. Establishing a formal rotation of overtime within a team or department will see extra work distributed fairly and won’t leave one person feeling like they are overworked.

“Long stints of overtime can lead to increased absenteeism and high employee turnover. Encouraging employees to turn their emails off over the weekend is a simple way to reduce the desire for staff to be contactable at all hours, and to have a real break away from work when they are out of the office,” he said.

So while it might seem enticing for your people to clock in more office hours, kerbing the chained-to-the-desk mentality will see happy, healthier and more productive staff in the long run

For further information or to arrange an interview please contact Brooke Chapman, Employment Office Publicist on 0407 163 876.

Why to Perform Some Type of Test on Applicants

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At Employment Office, one of our most sought after and successful services is our behavior testing service. We also offer skills assessment, and other forms of testing that can have a profound impact on your recruitment success.

But why is testing necessary? Testing is certainly not a part of traditional recruitment, where most employers simply focus on the resume and interview. What is it about testing that makes it so valuable as a method of evaluating and collecting talent?

Benefits of Testing Applicants

There are actually many different benefits of testing – beyond even the information that you gather from the test itself. The process of testing is, in its own way, beneficial, and can help you greatly improve your own employment practices. Some of these benefits include:

  • More Information – You can’t legally put someone to work for free, see how they do, and then decide to hire them. So barring that, you’re working with limited information in most recruitment settings. Testing gives you more information, and more information is always better. No matter the test, whether it’s behavioral testing, skills testing, etc., you’re gaining information on the applicant that you would not have otherwise, and that information can help drive decisions.
  • Commitment and Ambition – Testing is also a form of self-selection. How badly does someone want to work for your company? How willing are they to put in hard work? These are important qualities in a great applicant, and any type of test or additional work helps show that the individual has that drive and motivation that is going to make them a good employee.
  • Driving Questions – Finally, generally you’re going into interviews fairly blind. Skills testing, behavioral testing, etc. – these types of tests provide you with more ways to ask questions. If you see someone is lacking in a specific skill, for example, you can ask questions to get a better idea of whether or not that person can learn the skill, or if they have the talent to make up for not having it.

Testing applicants may seem like an extra step, especially when compared to traditional recruitment practices, but there are a lot of reasons that it can be valuable as a part of your recruitment strategy. At Employment Office, we have testing solutions that are extremely affordable and will help you collect a lot of valuable information on your applicants. Check out our testing services today, and start integrating them into your recruitment strategy.

For your recruitment and branding concerns you can contact Employment Office at info@employmentoffice.com.