Recruitment Process

Best Practices in Recruitment Assessment

A Positioning Paper by Harrison Assessments Int’l By Dan Harrison, Ph.D.

Assessment is the essential foundation for organizational success because high quality assessment used at the point of hire enables you to have the greatest impact on performance, productivity and retention. To be effective, assessment must comprehensively assess both eligibility and Suitability and provide an overall score. Eligibility factors include previous experience, education, certifications, skills, abilities and reference checks, and aptitude. Suitability factors include attitude, motivation, interpersonal skills, task preferences, interests, and work environment preferences.

Assessment… is the essential foundation for organizational success.

Some jobs such a computer programmers require a stronger emphasis on eligibility while other jobs such as customer service usually require a stronger emphasis on suitability. However, regardless of the emphasis, it is essential to assess both eligibility and suitability in order to obtain an accurate overall assessment. Otherwise, you will only be looking at about half of the factors that create job success. If you fail to assess the other half and take both into consideration, it is very unlikely that you can make good hiring decisions. In order to be effective, assessment must provide a score for eligibility, a score for suitability and a total score. This requires pre-defining how each of the suitability factors and each of the eligibility factors will impact the total score. Otherwise, each interviewer will guess at how each

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factor will impact job success and consequently, the value of the assessment will be compromised.

Integrating Eligibility and Suitability Scores

In order to achieve an integrated assessment, eligibility must have a scoring system. Screening out applicants who fail to meet the minimum eligibility requirements only eliminates...