29 Apr Understand and Optimise your Assessment Data

Here at Talegent, we are all about data – we can’t get enough of it. With our assessments, everyone in the hiring journey gets access to candidate performance data. And this insight is great for selecting the top candidates, but what happens when they aren’t trained to understand the assessment data?

Digital assessments are a great tool to optimise your hiring process as long as they are used correctly. They can help you find the best candidates quickly, hire a more diverse workforce, and gather more objective candidate perfomance data.

While our interactive reports can be easy to understand, if people are not properly trained, they can be misinterpreted. As you can imagine, this becomes an issue when recruiters are making hiring decisions based on incorrectly interpreted facts.

Training on the assessment data you are interpreting is not only important, so you hire the right people, but so you give your candidates the best chance.

Compare ‘apples with apples’ rather than with oranges.

Part of using the data correctly is knowing what your candidates are being assessed against. We need to always compare candidates to an appropriate comparison group. When hiring for an executive role, it’s much more useful for you to know how a candidate’s results compare to other executives than to entry-level or graduate candidates. 

The comparison group should always be chosen based on the role. This group should be used for all candidates that apply for that role, even if their experience or background differs. This ensures we are comparing ‘apples with apples’ rather than with oranges.

Consider role-relevance and proof for future performance.

Next, when choosing your assessments, remember to ask yourself what’s actually relevant to the role.

Cognitive ability is important for many roles, but different roles need different core skills. Verbal reasoning will be extremely relevant to say, a lawyer, however, numerical reasoning may be less important. On the other hand, a software engineer probably won’t need a sky-high verbal reasoning ability, however logical reasoning is likely to be key. Consider the support around the role, as well as the time pressure involved when it comes to working with different types of information on the job.

Different jobs also require different core competencies & traits. Personality Questionnaires provide insight into how a candidate is likely to ‘fit’ the job requirements. Scores on competencies indicate the likelihood of the candidate displaying that behaviour in the workplace and preferences they may have.

Ultimately, digital assessments are a great tool to predict behavioural tendencies and preferences, and identify potential strengths and weakness. They should be part of a robust selection process and shouldn’t be considered a guarantee of future performance on the job.

Align with industry best practice through training.

The State Services Commission agrees. With a recent PSA on psychometric assessments, they said:

“It is really important that if you are administrating and giving feedback on psychometric tests that you are trained and qualified to do this.”

Our PATH Certification Course is designed to provide the knowledge, skills and confidence to administer and interpret tests according to best practices, enabling you to make better hiring choices with all the data available.

For more information on PATH Certification, have a look at our Certification page.