Today's hiring team is often overworked, understaffed, and caffeinated to the point of jitters. Candidate assessment tools make it easier to interview, test, and evaluate applicants efficiently and effectively. But, HR assessment tools can help! The basic premise of the top tools in today's marketplace is to make hiring evaluations easier for interviewers, hiring managers, and recruiters.

From the earliest days of hiring to the 1980s, human resources functions operated manually. Payroll was managed with punch cards and time tracking was done by hand. Employee information was stored in physical files and rudimentary spreadsheets. Then, in 1987, PeopleSoft introduced the first HRM platform, revolutionizing employee management. The advent of the World Wide Web, widespread email usage, and job boards, including Monster's launch in 1994, further transformed the recruitment landscape.

PeopleSoft's introduction marked a significant turning point, allowing companies to manage their workforce more effectively. The rise of digital tools in the following decades has only accelerated this transformation. The automation of mundane tasks, improved data accuracy, and enhanced decision-making capabilities have fundamentally changed how HR departments operate. These advancements have led to increased efficiency, better employee experiences, and more strategic HR practices.

Today there are more than 325 recruitment, assessment, and interview intelligence platforms listed on G2, 33 of them (around 10% of the market), are HR assessment tools for candidates. Assessment tools have become a significant part of the recruitment market due to the increasing complexity of today's roles and the skills required to excel in them.

The Benefits of The Best HR Assessment Tools

One of the biggest challenges companies face today is hiring. As we already mentioned, many HR departments are understaffed, flooded with resumes to review, and hiring so fast that they can barely keep up. Some are wishing they were that way. The best HR assessment tools were created to help hiring teams with both problems. If you're flooded with resumes, resume parsing platforms and applicant tracking software (ATS) can prioritize candidates that best fit your job description and move them to the top of your applicant funnel. Interview scheduling software can book them for interviews and interview intelligence software can help you assess them fairly and objectively.

If you're struggling to find candidates, AI-sourcing software can help you find them by searching through millions of resumes in seconds. That's something that would take a human days, or even weeks, to complete.

In addition to making the hiring process more efficient and effective, HR assessment tools also provide valuable data and insights. With a focus on objective evaluations, reduction in unconscious biases, streamlined recruitment, and enhanced accuracy through various tests - assessment tools for the modern workforce improve results while lowering costs.

Assessment Tools For Recruitment And Selection

Now that we've covered the purpose of assessment tools for recruitment and selection, let's talk about some specific platforms, outlining their features and benefits. The digital evolution of HR tools has created a "plethora" of options (Plethora was the word of the day, so I couldn't resist). Here are a few examples of popular HR assessment tools and their specific purposes:

1. Pre-Employment Screening Tools

Pre-employment screening tools are used to assess candidates' skills, qualifications, and overall fit for the job before they are hired. These tools can include employment tests, cognitive assessments, and behavioral assessments. They help employers identify the most suitable candidates for the job and avoid wasting time and resources on unqualified candidates. Proctor & Gamble's PEAK Performance test is a great example of a pre-employment test.

2. Video Interviewing Tools

Video interviewing tools allow employers to conduct interviews remotely, saving both time and money. These tools also provide valuable insights into a candidate's communication skills, body language, and overall professionalism. With features like recording options, video interviewing tools can also be used to review and compare interviews for better decision-making. Pillar's interview intelligence software is our favorite, mostly because we built it to be the best interview assessment tool on the market- but we're slightly biased!

3. Personality Assessments

Personality assessments are used to evaluate a candidate's behavioral traits and determine how well they will fit within the company culture. These tools can help employers identify potential conflicts or issues that may arise with certain personality types, allowing them to make more informed hiring decisions. 16Personalities and PredictiveIndex offer great personality tests to help you structure exponential teams!

4. Skills Testing Platforms

Skills testing platforms allow employers to test candidates' technical skills and knowledge in specific areas related to the job. These tools can save time and resources by quickly identifying candidates with the necessary skills for the role. HackerRank and Codility offer top software engineer and coding assessment tests- but there are versions of this for many fields.

5. Gamification Tools

Gamification tools use game-like elements to assess candidates' cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills, and critical thinking. These tools provide a fun and engaging way to evaluate candidates and can also help in identifying top performers. Pymetrics offers gamified assessments for various roles, including entry-level positions.

6. Cultural Fit Assessments

Cultural fit assessments are used to determine how well a candidate aligns with the company's values, beliefs, and culture. These tools help employers hire individuals who will not only excel in their jobs but also contribute positively to the overall work environment. 16Personalities and PredictiveIndex also work well for assessing culture fit, but there's also HighMatch and TestGorilla.

7. Reference Checking Software

Reference checking software streamlines the process of contacting and collecting information from a candidate's references. These tools can provide valuable insights into a candidate's past work experience, performance, and character.

8. Background Screening Services

Background screening services help employers verify a candidate's background information, including education, employment history, and criminal records. Checkr, ClearChecks, and GoodHire are three of the top players in this space with resources to help you ensure you're getting great people.

Finding the right tools requires a thorough needs analysis and a deep understanding of the best HR assessment methods for your organization. Looking at a market of more than 300 solutions can be overwhelming - assessing your budget, recruiting needs, and the desired outcomes will guide your decision-making process when choosing which HR assessment tools are the best fit for you.

HR Tools In Employee Assessment

As you've probably seen, whether you're flooded with resumes, or fighting for talent, the best talent assessment tools are key to making great hiring decisions. Fair, objective, and comprehensive HR tools in employee assessment and evaluation are fundamental to modern hiring ecosystems. They save time, and costs, and help you make data-driven hiring decisions that mitigate the mistakes of subjective candidate evaluations.

Assessing Talent with HR Tools

Let's look at an example role to showcase how talent assessment tools can speed up the process. We all aspire to hire that exceptional individual—you know the one. The person who exceeds performance metrics seamlessly integrates into the team, and, most importantly, positively enriches the organizational culture. But, finding that person is a challenge.

To identify the right candidate, you can use pre-employment screening tools and cultural fit assessments to evaluate a candidate's skills and qualifications, video interviewing tools to evaluate their communication skills, personality assessments to determine culture fit, and skills testing platforms to test their technical abilities. Several of these you can have them complete before their first interview which means you've saved time and gathered valuable insights without using bandwidth.

Hiring the right candidates will never be easy, but assessing talent with HR tools is incredibly simple. The best tools offer a structured approach to measuring everything from how well a candidate's past experience will indicate future success, to how well they will fit in with the company culture - and they're easy to use!

Predictive Insights into Employee Performance

Artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), and natural language processing (NLP), offer the greatest leap forward in predictive analytics and interview insights since candidate scoring began. By evaluating a candidate's skills, many of these tools can give you a realistic perspective of an applicant's future performance on your team.

Utilizing talent assessment tools such as psychometric evaluations, skills assessments, and personality tests, you can nearly predict an individual's capabilities and potential. While these systems are not perfect, they're getting better every day. Psychometric tests, for example, measure cognitive abilities and mental processes, offering insights into how employees think and solve problems—crucial for roles that demand creativity and innovation. Skill assessments evaluate a candidate's specific job-related skills and knowledge, providing an understanding of their technical abilities and potential to excel in the role.

Incorporating these assessment tools into your overarching hiring strategy not only helps identify strengths and areas for improvement but also ensures that employees are placed in roles where they can thrive. This contributes to higher win rates and boosts team morale.

In conclusion, integrating HR assessment tools into the evaluation process guarantees a more objective and comprehensive understanding of employee performance. This data-driven approach facilitates informed decision-making and fosters a culture of continuous improvement and personal growth within the organization. By leveraging these tools, companies can make better hiring decisions, enhance employee retention rates, and ultimately drive organizational success.

To discover how Pillar's interview intelligence software and talent assessment tools can help you drive meaningful change in your hiring processes, book a demo today!