To align talent teams with talent strategies for 2024, the State of Recruitment Marketing in 2024 delves into every facet of the recruitment funnel — from awareness and connection to qualification and retention. This data-rich analysis offers a comprehensive view of challenges, opportunities, and future priorities for leading talent teams. Drawing insights from a survey encompassing over 450 HR and TA leaders, our four-part blog series dissects each stage, offering actionable strategies to stay ahead.
Related: If you missed it, catch up on part one, focused on attracting talent, and part two, focused on connecting with talent.
Let's delve into the third installment, the state of talent assessments and qualifications in 2024.
The impact of talent assessments
Industry experts anticipate a surge in hiring for 2024, especially among large enterprises (25k+ employees). Optimistically, 53% of C-level executives foresee an upswing in recruitment within their organizations. That means your team may be hiring at some point this year, even if you are not hiring today.
However, talent teams today struggle to find, screen, and hire top talent in a competitive market. Talent assessments can streamline hiring by providing a structured framework for evaluating candidates. This can help recruiters and hiring managers save time by quickly identifying top candidates and focusing their efforts on the best fit for the role.
The top trends surrounding assessing talent via talent assessments include:
- Create a better candidate experience. 60% of respondents note candidate drop-off as a top challenge when leveraging talent assessments.
- Hire best-fit talent. 73% of C-level executives cite higher quality hires as a benefit of implementing talent assessments.
- Increase retention rates. 53% of VPs cite increased retention rates as a benefit of implementing assessments.
The state of talent assessments: Benefits are clear, yet skepticism remains high
Most organizations are jumping on the talent assessment train in today's skills-based hiring landscape – 59% of organizations use talent assessments pre-hire. By leveraging targeted talent assessments, teams can gain unbiased and objective insights into their talent pool and employee base, enabling them to make smarter hiring decisions and retain more top talent.
Yet, many organizations struggle with talent assessments — the top challenges include candidate drop-off/Incomplete assessment, lack of bandwidth to administer, and lack of bandwidth to review responses.
Therefore, there’s a duality in whether talent assessments benefit recruitment processes. C-level executives see the value in the quality of hire when leveraging talent assessments in the process and push for its inclusion. In contrast, talent teams struggle to use assessments in a way that isn’t disruptive to their process and slows down their time to hire.
Both are true. However, when used correctly, talent assessment value far outweighs the potential extra time added to the hiring process. More importantly, when seamlessly integrated into the process, talent assessments provide tremendous ROI by increasing the quality of hire and reducing turnover rates.
Streamline candidate experience with talent assessments
Talent assessments can (and should) appear throughout the talent journey, from candidate to employee. In the early stages of the hiring process, talent assessments can gauge specific credentials, skills, and behaviors that can provide a unique and unbiased view of a potential candidate. This not only helps talent teams quickly and easily identify right-fit talent for open positions and predict job performance and culture fit, but it also provides candidates a greater understanding of the desired skills and competencies for the job and the value that the hiring team places in choosing who will be the best fit.
However, 60% of respondents cite candidate drop-off and incomplete assessments as their top challenge with talent assessments.
To avoid any unnecessary friction or assessment completion drop-offs, talent teams should prioritize infusing their employer brand and employer value proposition into the entire hiring process, including any assessments. This creates a seamless and consistent candidate experience through all touchpoints, helping to build stronger employer-candidate connections that lead to high-quality hires.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to assessing candidacy. A carefully curated, science-backed assessment strategy is key to reducing potential friction and candidate drop-off.
Hire best-fit talent with talent assessments
Recruitment, by nature, is a human-focused process that naturally includes some bias. Wherever there is an opportunity to eliminate bias, doing so can help talent teams make fairer, data-driven hiring decisions. Talent assessments are one way to do this and aim to measure whether a candidate is the right fit for a role — whether based on skills, personality, cognitive ability, or other variables.
By utilizing talent assessments, recruiters can go beyond the limitations of traditional interviews (and conscious and unconscious biases) and surface a comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s potential fit within the organization. In most cases, talent assessments — conducted virtually and demanding only minutes — provide valuable data and insights that help recruiters make more informed decisions regarding talent selection faster and with greater confidence.
- 73% of C-level executives cite higher quality hires as a benefit of implementing talent assessments.
- 55% of TA leaders cite higher quality hires as the top benefit since implementing talent assessments.
Talent assessments power your selection process with objective, data-driven insights. Your talent teams can choose the best candidate for the job by assessing skills, competencies, behavioral attributes, and cognitive aptitudes.
Talent assessments:
- Bring talent into focus. With objective insights into candidates and employees, talent teams easily gain a clear and complete picture of their talent network and staffing or skills gaps.
- Predict job performance and fit. Identify behavioral styles, cognitive aptitudes, preferences, and tendencies for engagement throughout the employee lifecycle.
- Enhance the candidate selection. Leverage assessments and realistic simulations to make the candidate selection process easier and more comprehensive.
Related: 5 benefits of virtual talent assessments
Boost retention rates with talent assessments
Not only do talent assessments provide a clear indication of candidates’ capabilities to do the job, but they can also help predict if they will be a good fit for organizational and/or team culture and, therefore, retention.
- 53% of VPs cite increased retention rates as a benefit of implementing assessments.
Finding and hiring the right employees is critical, but retaining them is just as important. After all, replacing talent is often more expensive than retaining talent. According to SHRM, employee turnover costs anywhere from 90-200% of an employee’s salary. At the same time, nearly half (46%) report an average of two to five years as the average tenure within an organization.
Organizations must hire talent for current openings and future growth to combat these high costs and quick turnovers.
Symphony Talent's Talent Assessments solution enables organizations to understand their talent and align it to the right roles within the organization both pre- and post-hire, helping to improve employee satisfaction and increase retention. Clients interviewed reported a 5% reduction in employee turnover.
“A lot of our turnover has come from a lack of cultural fit in our high volume roles, and we believe that the Assessments will help us evaluate ‘cultural fit,’ ultimately resulting in lower turnover.” – Talent Acquisition Partner
A talent assessment solution from Symphony Talent
The investment in time and effort for assessments is minimal for candidates and talent team members, while the return can be tremendous. Symphony Talent Assessments are easily administered, with clear guidance and an easy-to-use interface, removing much of the perceived friction and creating a seamless experience that delivers results. And, with a robust library available, Symphony Talent clients have even greater flexibility and can customize their assessment experience for any number of roles or career levels.
When talent assessments are implemented correctly and supported with a clear and consistent brand story, they can provide tremendous value to individuals and their respective employers. Talent assessments are a proven, science-backed method for evaluating candidates and employees to drive better performance, engagement, and retention. The impact of Symphony Talent's Assessment Solutions is strategic and measurable. According to a third-party research firm that conducted independent research, Symphony Talent Assessment clients generated a 1000% ROI in one year.
Learn more about how assessments can integrate into your talent acquisition processes here.
