Screening and skills testing are now commonplace and the systems used are increasingly advanced.

Jeremy Pemberton –Pigott, Director of ASE says: "Nowadays, nearly all major recruiters use on-line screening to ensure that they identify and capitalize on the potential of job applicants quickly and conveniently. By pre-screening online, organisations can ensure that only the most suitable candidates progress through the selection stages and that hiring managers' interview time is focused only on the best candidates.

Online pre-screening matches candidates' suitability for the role. For example, candidates applying to the police force are asked whether they hold a criminal record, have any visible tattoos or they have been declared bankrupt.

Candidates who do not fit the criteria will receive an email informing them of their rejection and the reasons for this. Successful candidates, who have passed pre-screening, are normally asked to complete an online application form. This may be scored to help recruiters with their selection decisions.

Talent screening, situational sifts and application based skills testing are also common and can be effectively adapted to most if not all roles.

Skills assessment solutions are designed and used primarily, to help employers find and retain the right people pre and/or post employment. These solutions are growing and they tend to fall into two categories; "Hard Skills" assessment such as typing, aptitude and the working knowledge of workplace applications and; "Psychometric" assessments which help establish areas such as personality traits, cultural fit and suitability for roles or environments.

Online tests and questionnaires, when properly validated, are robust, objective and error-free. They have been known to deliver improvements in candidate quality by up to a third. Online tests have the benefit of being quicker and require less administration. The marking is automatic and immediate. Results can be displayed as soon as the candidate has completed the test. By automating the selection process, by allowing it to take place outside the office thus removing test administration, online testing has delivered significant savings and reduction in time-to-hire. Candidates have the advantage of knowing sooner whether they have been accepted for a job or not and the reasons why, helping to improve the candidate experience overall. Employers on the other hand, get to choose the candidates they want to recruit into their organisation far quicker with less administrative burden on HR or resourcing teams. The consistency of the recruitment process is improved through online testing and, furthermore, online tests have even been known to drive improvements in business performance.

James Meachin, Business Psychologist at Pearn Kandola says the key benefits for candidates centre on insight: "Firstly, well developed tests allow candidates to gain self-insight, by thinking about their preferences, motives and actions. For example, Situational Judgement Tests ask candidates to think about how they would deal with important work-based situations such as managing people, organising work, taking decisions, and working with clients. Secondly, these tests also provide the candidate with important insights about the employer. These can include the key challenges of the job, the working environment, and culture."

David Beer, VP of European & Middle East Operations at IKM says online screening and skills testing is a very simple yet powerful solution to improving HR initiatives. He says: "An incorrect hire can cost an organization up to four times the annual salary, not to mention the down time in productivity. Adopting pre-hire testing into the hiring process can take only moments for the administrator –yet save the organisation a lot of time and money. Likewise, conducting pre- and post-training assessments can prevent unnecessary training and improve training effectiveness. Through the simple incorporation of pre-training testing into a training program can save over 22% of the training budget.

Laurie Dobson, CEO of the ISV Group feels that agencies have been reluctant to switch to online testing for several reasons, but mainly the costs of upgrading to higher specification computers which would be needed, and the old "Why fix it if it's not broken?" view. He says: "Underlying these reasons is the deep rooted one relating to remote testing of not knowing if the candidate is actually the testee. On this last reservation remote testers should not be concerned. ISV has over 15,000 remote tests being done from its website monthly and statistics reveal that only 1.07% are not done by the candidate. These pretenders will soon be found out when called to interview. The major benefit of remote testing is a reduction of talentless job seekers in agency offices. Conversely, where recruitment is done directly by the employer we have seen a move to 100% of skills testing product sales being online."

Jason Pierce, Managing Director of Skillsarena Ltd suggests the trend in candidates applying online continues to increase and the adoption of online tools and methods to support them is more mainstream.

Online, for the job seeker, means ease of use, availability, ability to compare, as well as it being far less intrusive. The cost effectiveness of the internet along with the tools available to support online skills assessment, marketing and job posting has led to access to more candidates and a more efficient and cost effective business.

What does it give you? Using testing and assessment solutions to establish training needs allows more focused training and better ROI. Whereas, using it for pre employment screening enables a business to make informed and impartial decisions, minimising the time consuming task of qualifying the validity of a well written CV and the subsequent interviews.

The cost of discovering a new staff member doesn't have the skills required costs a business a minimum of 6 months in lost productivity alone without any direct costs.

Jason Pierce also comments - I feel for the candidates sometimes, they often get bad press and this is unfairly used during the sales process to help "get rid of the bad eggs" - this is a valid use of these tools in some cases, but not as a blanket for all. Candidates are not all blatant liars as often made out. It is a fact that some applicants blatantly cheat and lie on CV's, but these are not the majority by a long way. What the majority will do is enhance their CV's, embellish a little and exaggerate their experience - Lets face it, we have all done it at some point!

So what is the point? Try not to use the tools to "Filter Out", use them to facilitate "Best Fit". Some agencies have niche areas to recruit for and they may want to filter candidates out and these tools are great for just that. However, many recruitment agencies cover a significant spectrum of industries and types of roles. Just because a candidate's results don't match the particular role they applied for does not mean they won't match another perfectly. With their skills identified, recruiters are in a much better position to make a "right first time" placement. The customer comes back, the candidates tell their friends.

Everyone has talent; it's just a matter of identifying it.
Recent surprises

Felix Stroud-Allen Hiring Management Systems (UK) First Advantage feels that the big surprises in the last twelve months have been the speed at which certain industry trends are accelerating, notably:

• Both temporary and permanent employment organizations are using a combination of skills and behavioural assessments to create complete profiles of job candidates

• Assessment is being integrated into increasingly sophisticated online hiring automation products, such as applicant tracking systems which automate the workflow from employees submitting an online application or resume to the on-boarding process and beyond. More and more frequently, assessments are being delivered to job candidates as part of a fully automated process with applicant tracking systems providing recruiters a dashboard that allows them to track all candidates through the entire screening and hiring process.

Chris Buckley from hr smart also recognizes the potential of new systems: "Using a Talent Management System with integrated skills and screening tests a manager is able to view the skills and competencies of their high performers, and can use that data as a benchmark to identify new recruits that fit the same mould quickly easily and for little cost. Moreover they can change the profiles required of groups of people who perform ever changing roles within a constantly changing and growing organisation. Companies can for example easily access this information to identify WHERE the good applicants are coming from and more efficiently use its attraction budget to tap into the pool of 'excellent' as well as 'right' candidates."