Pre-Employment Testing in 2024: What You Need to Know

The Current Landscape of Assessments

As of 2024, there’s no shortage of options available in the assessment market, with each one making similar promises: find better candidates, screen more efficiently, and reduce turnover.

Pre-employment testing consistently delivers on these promises, which has led to a notable increase in organizational awareness and widespread adoption of assessments in the hiring process. The steady growth of the assessment industry is a clear indicator of this upward trend.

This growth can be partially credited to the rise of remote work, which currently accounts for roughly 28% of full work days. As more jobs move online, employers require more flexible tools in order to evaluate candidates remotely. 

The growth of the assessment market has also led to a higher level of scrutiny from governing bodies. Regulating organizations are concerned about the use of pre-employment tests, their validity, and the potential adverse impacts against marginalized groups. Current regulations can be found here.

Finally, the value of assessments is also rising. Accelerated by the rapid changes brought about by the pandemic, turnover has seen a sharp increase in the last few years. Employees are more comfortable switching jobs now than ever before in history. Consequently, pre-employment testing— which is proven to reduce turnover— delivers even more value to organizations than in the past.

Off-the-shelf vs. Personalized Assessments

Pre-employment assessments sit on a sliding scale, with generalized off-the-shelf assessment solutions on one end and fully consultative solutions on the other.

Off-the-shelf solutions are often cheaper and faster to implement, and the assessment provider typically has an online assessment platform for easy deployment. However, as off-the-shelf solutions are not personalized to your specific roles and culture, their insights may be less accurate and may not solve your specific challenges.

Fully consultative solutions involve a collaboration between the assessment vendor and your organization. In this approach, the vendor customizes a new assessment tailored to your organization and its challenges. Although these solutions offer more relevant insights, they are often significantly more expensive and often pose greater deployment challenges. There are also no assurances that the vendor will provide an online platform for hosting the assessment. While the insights are more in-depth, considerable time is required to thoroughly analyze and create the assessment.

Sitting between these two approaches are personalized assessment vendors. These vendors partner with subject matter experts at your organization to identify the best approach for your specific challenges, building an assessment specifically for your roles, culture, and challenges often in partnership with Industrial-Organizational psychologists. This approach provides the benefits of an off-the-shelf solution in terms of cost and implementation timeframe, while also providing the relevant, in-depth insights of a more consultative solution.

Types of Pre-Employment Testing

Tips for Choosing a Solution

While there are no inherent advantages or disadvantages for the different types of assessments, there are two key questions to ask yourself when choosing a vendor: 

• Is this assessment appropriate for addressing this specific challenge?
• Is this assessment being thoughtfully implemented to address this challenge?

Conclusion

Pre-employment testing provides hiring managers with a way to assess candidates for a variety of specific traits, competencies, and abilities. Additionally, assessments provide a great ROI to the organizations that deploy them successfully. However, with the market’s heavy saturation and developing regulations, it’s important to pick a vendor with a proven track record of success that will help you solve your organization’s specific challenges.