There is no question that making the right hire is important for companies of all shapes and sizes. While bringing the right people onboard can provide a significant boost to your company, hiring the wrong person can be devastating. In fact, 41% of HR executives estimate that a bad hire can cost a business thousands of dollars in lost productivity and replacement expenses.
This is especially true for small business hiring, as margins tend to be thinner. This makes it difficult to deal with the costs of a bad hire. 50% of small business owners report that they had difficulty filling their open positions with qualified candidates, which means that developing strategies to identify high-quality potential hires is critical.
There are a number of strategies you can take to ensure that you find good candidates for your open positions. One of the most valuable tools for any small business hiring employees is skill testing. eSkill’s vast library of testing material is a great solution for companies who are figuring out how to find good candidates—in many cases, those candidates are already there.
Covering the Basics
When it comes to finding qualified candidates to handle important roles in your company, there are a few boxes you should check to ensure that you attract a broad range of applicants. These steps will produce a deeper hiring pool, raising the chances that you will find your ideal candidate.
- Create a clear, concise job description that’s written to attract the right candidates
- Remember that perks and high pay rates bring better candidates
- Use your network to find referrals
- Hone your company’s image as a place that people want to work
- Use digital technology to your advantage, especially ATS software
While these basic steps are important, they don’t fully cover all of the strategies that small businesses employ to attract top candidates. However, they should provide you with a well-rounded pool of applicants.
Read also: How Modern Sortation Systems Can Boost Your Productivity
Make Skills Tests Part of Small Business Hiring
While attracting applicants to your job openings is a good first step, it creates another problem—you need to be able to vet candidates quickly and efficiently. With skills testing, you not only reduce the amount of time it takes to hire, but you also end up saving money in the process.
With eSkill’s Talent Assessment Platform, it is easy to incorporate skills tests into your small business hiring process, allowing you to take advantage of more than 800 pre-made tests that are organized by job and by subject. These tests can be seamlessly integrated into most ATS software packages, which means that you can have candidates take these tests as they complete their applications.
Depending on the job you are hiring for, you may decide to focus on hard skills, using something like the Financial Analysis test, or you may prefer to assess candidates’ soft skills, using tests such as Logical Thinking or Spatial Reasoning. And with eSkill Author, you can create your own customized assessments, picking from the bank of existing questions and even uploading your own material that’s tailored for your company.
Skills testing offers a number of benefits. Each test provides you with a snapshot of a candidate’s skill level, allowing you to quickly remove candidates who lack the baseline skills necessary for the position. Each report also breaks down a candidate’s performance, so you can see how they performed on questions of varying difficulty levels. If a potential hire possesses advanced skills but struggles on basic knowledge, they may be a strong hire, requiring only basic remediation to succeed.
Finally, because these tests provide quantitative data, you can use this information to compare candidates without worrying about implicit bias. Since you are simply comparing numbers, you can avoid unconsciously judging candidates based on other factors, as is demonstrated by eSkill’s sterling compliance track record.
Skills Testing Can Identify Internal Candidates, Too
Small business hiring relies on finding candidates with the best JobFit. While many HR teams tend to focus on external candidates, skills tests can also be useful for identifying internal candidates for promotion, especially when it comes to ensuring that they are well-suited for a new position.
You can continue to administer skills tests to your employees over time, which will give you snapshots of an employee’s current skill levels and point out any existing gaps. This can help you to determine which employees should be considered for promotion and provide guidance on the ways that you can help those employees to develop the skills they will need in the future.
Although they are often overlooked, internal candidates have a number of advantages, including familiarity with the company and a long-standing professional relationship. With the help of skills testing, you can make sure that you do not miss out on a quality candidate simply because they already work for you!
Interested in Learning More About How to Find Good Candidates with Skills Tests?
Find out how eSkill’s Talent Assessment Platform can help any small business hiring employees to identify the best JobFit, both inside and outside of their companies. Request a demo today.