Candidate assessments are increasingly used early in the hiring process to determine in a fair and neutral way which candidates are best qualified and suited to a position. There are various types of assessments, including personality or behavioral assessments and skills assessments. Some assessments are better than others, and can not only assess candidates with a reasonable level of accuracy, but can also be used to make a positive impression on the candidate. Going Beyond Self-Assessment Behavioral self-assessments are less effective than other types of assessments because they are typically biased and are often not answered honestly or accurately. Behavioral assessments that are evidence-based and have a scientific basis are more helpful in finding out about candidates and weeding out potential bias. Template: Creating Ideal Candidate Personas – Our free persona template will help you improve your talent acquisition by identifying who your ideal candidates are and how best to reach them. Making Assessments Candidate-Friendly There are a number of ways to make assessments more candidate-friendly and to encourage candidates to participate and stick with the hiring process. In this way the assessment process is not only helpful in making a hiring decision, but also helpful in encouraging top talent to stick with the process and give your company a fair shake. What can you do to make assessments more palatable to your candidates? Try these strategies: –Make it mobile-friendly. Assessments that can be completed on mobile devices are convenient and accessible to candidates to take when they have time, no matter where they are. Professionals are increasingly turning to mobile devices to find jobs, apply for jobs, and get updates on the process. –Be brief and to the point. Nobody wants to spend hours answering hundreds of multiple choice questions just to be considered for a job. Stick to assessments that can be completed in a few minutes if you want applicants to remain engaged. –Avoid discriminatory and invasive questions. Many of the longer assessments meander into questions that can make the process less neutral by asking about race, ethnicity, or other applicant characteristics that could inject bias into the assessment. Stick to questions about skills and other traits that are more neutral (and more relevant to the position as well). –Project an interested, positive tone. While the point of an assessment is to find out about the candidate, it can also be a tool that reveals a lot about your company. Making the assessment interesting and giving it a personality that matches your corporate culture can keep candidates engaged and get them intrigued about your company and what its culture is like. The strength of your candidate assessment can be instrumental in the fairness, accuracy, and attractiveness of your company’s hiring process. All of these factors can go into creating a hiring process that will yield the best possible talent and fill positions more quickly and efficiently at the same time. Thrive TRM offers integration of assessment results into its analytics to support a fair and accurate hiring process with positive outcomes for your company. With Thrive TRM, the entire process is laid out before you from first contact to onboarding and beyond, giving you complete awareness and control at all times. Discover Thrive TRM’s many features today!