Why does your small company need pre-employment testing?

Unlike big organizations, small-to-medium-sized businesses (SMBs) struggle to recover following a bad hiring decision. Whether that employee was consistently late, quit before a year was up, brought down efficiency levels or was a malicious office presence, SMBs may be skeptical to risk hiring someone new following a negative hiring experience.

Mindflash, an online training platform, created an innovative infographic with CareerBuilder survey data that dives deep into the costs associated with a bad hire and how companies can avoid making hiring mistakes. Of those surveyed, 41 percent said that a bad hire cost their company at least $25,000, while 25 percent said they wasted $50,000. While lost profits alone is a significant problem facing SMBs across the country, a poor hire can cause a decline in productivity levels, morale, client solutions, collaboration and much more.

Why do companies make poor hiring decisions?
As detrimental as most businesses know most bad hires are, why do they continue to make poor hiring decisions? One of the main reasons this survey found is that 38 percent of respondents explained that they had to fill the position quickly. If only a handful of people run your SMB, losing just one individual can have serious ramifications. This is why you, along with many others, may rush the hiring process to onboard an extra set of hands as soon as possible.

While sometimes these efforts prevail, the odds are that the new employee may fail to meet your expectations. This is because 34 percent of those surveyed said the new hire just didn’t work out, leading to their dismissal. Most troubling, however, was the 21 percent of employers who didn’t adequately research their applicants’ skills or the 11 percent who didn’t follow up with their references.

Large corporations can afford to onboard a poorly performing employee every now and then, but your SMB cannot. If you are not effectively vetting potential candidates and making sure that they have the necessary skills and experience to do well, you may be setting your company up for failure. This, is why you need to implement pre-employment tests into your hiring process.

How can pre-employment tests revolutionize the hiring process?
Pre-employment tests allow hiring managers to spend more time interviewing applicants who possess the necessary skills needed for the job, not wasting time speaking with candidates who are entirely unqualified. They save countless companies time, money, worker turnover and avoid lowering office morale levels. Forbes reported that an American Management Association survey discovered that “almost 90 percent of firms that test job applicants say they will not hire job seekers when pre-employment testing finds them to be deficient in basic skills.”

So why aren’t more SMBs considering pre-employment testing? As most SMBs are cash strapped and cautious about any investments they make, you may be hesitant to use skills testing to screen initial candidates. However, the costs associated with making bad hiring decisions far exceed those of a few pre-employment tests.

Meanwhile, these tests take care of the exhaustive vetting process where hiring managers meticulously go over resumes, applications and work samples, hoping that their applicants are as good in person as they are on paper. While not used as a replacement for resumes or other traditional hiring methods, they will show you which applicants actually have the skills to back up their application claims. Therefore, hiring managers can refocus their efforts toward the interview to determine whether or not they would be a great fit for their company.

Essentially, pre-employment tests help SMBs hire smarter. Instead of wasting company money and time interviewing bad applicants, they can issue these tests and rest assured that they will only be onboarding the best of the best to their business. Contact EmployTest today to learn more!