The Problem(s) with Recruitment (and how the right assessments will solve {most of} them).

What are the problems with Recruitment?

1. 66% of employee turnover is due to poor recruiting decisions¹
2. 56% of applicants lie on their resumes ²
3. 51% of interviewers decide about a candidate within 5 minutes ³
4. 54% of interviews for technical roles don’t consider soft skills⁴
5. 18% of interviewers don’t know the best questions to ask ⁵

Why does this happen?

• Anyone can omit details from/ lie on their CVs (and most checks don’t pick it up).
• Most candidates can put on a good performance for a 45-minute interview.
• Less experienced interviewers (and sometimes experienced ones) can be caught out.
• Most people (interviewers included) struggle with some level of unconscious bias.
• Technical skills and experience are relatively easy to evaluate. Soft skills not so much.
• Inexperienced interviewers will often struggle to ask meaningful questions.

Why does it matter?

Because every time an organisation hires someone that isn’t the best fit for the role:

• If they leave, it will cost at least 50% of their annual costs to replace them. Even for minimum wage roles this can cost up to £10,000. 
• If they stay, they will probably underperform, reducing the ROI on the investment the employer makes in employing them.
• If they underperform to a small degree, identifying performance gaps means their employer will need to try and develop them to an acceptable level but;
• If they underperform to a high degree, they may have to be dismissed with the cost of 50% of their annual costs to replace them.

Poor hiring is expensive – but the more information an organisation has, the more likely it is to hire well.

And at a business level….? 

• Few organisations measure the cost of getting it wrong.
• Accepting underperformance means not having to admit you made a wrong decision.
• Managers/organisations accept too easily that average/poor employees are a fact of life in their business or industry.
• Many organisations don’t understand what makes their top performers so good so have limited ability to select top performers based on current evidence

But we use assessments – why aren’t they helping?

or

We don’t use assessments because they don’t work

• Many assessments measure the wrong things (or many people use/are sold assessments that measure the wrong things).
• Many ‘assessment tools’ are not able to identify the key criteria and ensure future recruits have them. 
• Many assessment tools are too complex for the role and can’t be varied to fit simpler roles.
• Organisations don’t use assessments for more junior roles because they are too expensive, even though the bulk of employee spend is there (and, by definition, the bulk of the cost of getting it wrong).
• Not all assessments are validated to predict a candidate’s ability to do the role (but are sold to do that anyway).
• Many assessments measure candidates against ‘industry/market’ profiles that have undefined origins. If you don’t know where they came from, how effective will they be at helping to recruit top performers?

ALL of these problems exist with assessment tools currently available in the UK Market. 

Don’t let a lack of information sabotage your recruitment. Well-informed Managers make better people decisions.

1. Oracle NetSuite July 2022
2. Society for Human Resource Management SHRM March 23
3. CareerBuilder 2022
4. Forbes Dec 2022
5. LinkedIn Talent Blog, Jan 2018