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This article is a kind contribution from Chris Crawford. 

No matter how large or successful a business may be, every company struggles with finding and hiring the right people. Every business also tends to have a different philosophy regarding how to find the “right” people. On the positive side, businesses are becoming more aware that skills alone do not create a great fit. Culture plays a huge role in every business, so they need to find individuals that not only have the right skills, but also fit in well with the culture.

To that end, businesses often look for ways to streamline the process, to find employees that not only have the right skills but have demonstrated an ability to work in a similar culture. This may include looking for graduates from a certain school or certain small group of schools, looking for candidates with a certain type of experience or having spent a certain amount of time working in the same field or industry. Unfortunately, none of these methodologies are really a guarantee that the prospective employee will really be a good fit.

A Good Fit Is Just As Dependent On Culture As On Skills

Fitting in well in a company or on a specific team actually depends on a wide variety of factors. These includes personality, work styles, their own individual peak production times and even the management styles of their superiors. In many cases, a candidate may have thrived in their last position because of the management style of their superior, but may flounder under a different management style. An extensive interview process will tell you a great deal about a candidate, but no matter how extensive an interview process may be, it will just never be able to tell you how an individual will perform under real-world conditions.

This obviously presents a problem for most businesses because hiring an employee that doesn’t work out is a costly process. In some cases, it can also even open a business up to potential litigation. Many businesses turn to placement services for help, but that can also be a costly route. Thankfully, pre-employment assessments can help business get to know a great deal more about a prospective employee than any resume, interview, previous experience or even references can. The problem with all of these methods is that they are all dependent on someone’s perspective of the candidate, which may or may not be accurate. Even interviewers themselves may be looking for qualities that may or may not be a good fit for the team the individual will actually be working with.

Most Traditional Screening Methods Are Dependent On Perspective, Which May Not Be Accurate 

Candidates who are actually somewhat incompetent can still sometimes exude confidence, while highly-skilled candidates can actually doubt their own skills. If a candidate lacks confidence in their own abilities, it can leave interviewers questioning it as well. On the other hand, if a candidate seems highly confident in their abilities it can set interviewers at ease. The person who lacks competence but exudes confidence may get the job over someone who possesses a high degree of competence but lacks confidence. Even checking with references or previous employers does not always give you an accurate picture of a candidate’s true worth, value or measure or how well they will do in your company culture.

Pre-employment Assessments Can Tell You What Candidates Themselves May Be Unaware Of 

In many cases, candidates themselves may be totally unaware of what kind of conditions they actually work best in or the type of environment they actually thrive in. This is particularly true of younger employees who do not yet have a wealth of work experience to learn these things from. Pre-employment assessments test candidate on a wide range of metrics. From personality profiles to problem-solving skills to even their ability to take direction or act independently.

Part of the problem is that businesses often need very different soft skills from their employees. Some businesses need employees to act independently and make a good number of decisions on their own, but they also need those decisions to be sound. Other businesses actually need employees to wait until they are given instruction, so they need employees that will not charge ahead and simply make their own decisions -no matter how sound they may be. These are not generally qualities you can interview for, but they are qualities you can test for. These are the types of things pre-employment assessments help you discover.