Candidate Assessment Methods

By Frank Mulligan, Talent Software

Shhh!. It’s our little secret; the fact that many of the tools used in the hiring process cannot predict success on the job.

But maybe it’s also a general lack of faith in assessment tools. One that is derived from not knowing the relationship between each assessment tool and performance on the job.

It’s an old adage, but a true one; what gets measured, gets done. So if you don’t know the value of the metrics for the assessment tools you are using, how can you be sure you are doing the right thing?.

It’s simple. You can’t.

A recent poll by Cranfield School of Management in the UK finds that 86% of HR managers who take up written references do not find them useful predictors for on the job performance. The poll was done with 800 HR Managers in the UK, but the result are clearly applicable to any country in the world.

78% of respondents use panel interviews and 67% use CVs as a means of assessing people. They don’t find these to be useful indicators either.

Which begs the question as to why they use them in the first place!. The figures for the correlation between any given assessment method and on-the-job performance are freely available on the internet, and some method clearly do work.

Strange that none of the respondents use this knowledge.

Comments to: frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com