Candidate selection is one of the core pillars that sets your business apart from others. Do it right and the benefits are seemingly endless ranging from fast business growth to a team of talent that would make your competitors envious everyday. This is why exercising smart decision making to recruit exceptional talent is not to be taken casually- assessing prospects should be a strategic, well-researched and intentional choice each time. So what are the best options available to execute better candidate assessments after shortlisting? Here’s our breakdown of solutions to get you started:

1) Skill Based Testing:

Companies pursue hiring because they are facing a talent gap; there’s a need for a skill set that’s coming in way of them reaching their business goals. This is why skill based assessments are important because they enable hiring managers to explore talent beyond what their resume and cover letter may state. Opting for standardizing testing, sharing questions based on the challenges that the company faces, and digging deep into the candidate’s thought process can provide powerful insights not just about their thought process, but overall aptitude as well. Testing multiple shortlisted candidates also helps easily identify which ones score the highest, in turn making hiring decisions seamless for the hiring team. Cost effective, quick to conduct, automatically graded, and providing vast geographical reach online, skill based testing has many many advantages to offer.

2) Video Interviews:

Before embarking on the mission to invite candidates to your office, making team introductions, and investing serious time into looking for clues that may indicate a great culture fit, video interviews are a smart path to identify top contenders in your shortlisted talent pool. This is why using video technology as an assessment strategy can take away a lot of guesswork from the talent acquisition process. Companies can share a link with shortlisted candidates asking them to record answers to a set of questions within a defined timeline of 10-15 minutes (or however long they may deem necessary). Then hiring managers can go through the video assessments to see which candidates have the best attitude, body language and examples of problem solving that they would like to explore further. Extremely efficient, cost effective, flexible and results-focused, video interviews is gaining preference as the go-to solution for employers all over the world. It’s no wonder that in a survey of 506 companies, 47% use video interviewing to shorten time to hire, and 22% said they’d use video interviewing to help them reach candidates from other geographic regions.

3) Phone Assessments:

If jumping directly to face-to-face interviews isn’t getting you the results you’ve wanted all this time, then phone assessments could be a viable way to inch closer to top performing talent. There is a growing trend of hiring managers sharing hypothetical situations and business problems as case studies, and asking shortlisted candidates questions relevant to them. Providing an opportunity to see how the candidates perform in real-time can be a reliable indicator of ability to cope with stressful work environments, ability to work with teams, and of course general acumen required to brainstorm solutions with impact on the company’s bottomline, productivity, growth and competitive standing.

Key Takeaways:

Assessing shortlisted candidates with precision can help your recruiters benefit from time and effort focused savings, and of course also save them the hassle of making poor hiring decisions. Whether you choose to share online assessments, test candidates via phone based exercises, or take the highly recommended video assessment route- there’s ample opportunity to add speed and quality to your hiring processes in order to inch closer to your ultimate superstars.