In this article, we provide crucial questions to ask when choosing an assessment or interview for employee screening or personnel selection on behalf of your organization.  These questions pertain to psychometrics, equal employment opportunity law and common sense. 

In order to make your purchase decision, you should be comfortable finding out whether your New Hire Quality will improve if you use the assessment results to make decisions as prescribed. And, within what time frame will the supplier be able to use your actual New Hire information to evaluate the “correctness” of your hiring decisions. 

Here are some smart questions to ask your assessment provider:

1. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores be more productive?
2. Was the assessment developed with samples of people like your job applicants in terms of age, gender, race, prior job experience, and highest level of education attained? 
3. Will your job applicants understand the language used in the assessment?

Note: Interviews are one type of assessment.   If your interview does not provide reliable numerical scores, it should be replaced with one that does. 

As you do your research, you can also use your specific job description to ask more detailed questions such as:

1. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores treat our customers with greater courtesy and respect?
2. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores collaborate more productively with teammates? 
3. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores be more creative?
4. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores be better problem solvers?
5. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores be more efficient time managers?
6. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores consistently show up for work when they are supposed to?
7. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores be able to stay on task when there are distractions in the work environment?
8. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores work hard without constant supervision?
9. Will people who obtain higher assessment scores proactively seek out opportunities to learn on their own time? 

Your assessment or interview manufacturer has answers to all of these questions because they are critical to you making an intelligent purchase decision.  If your assessment provider cannot answer all of these questions, then you have valid reasons for putting their product quality under intense scrutiny.  As the customer and leader investing in the future of your organization, you need answers to these simple questions in order to make intelligent purchase decisions. 

Summary

When purchasing an off-the-shelf assessment for employee screening or personnel selection, please ask your assessment provider:

1. Will the interview/assessment improve my New Hire Quality?
2. Do you have documented evidence that scores from the interview/assessment are fair to male and female candidates, people 40 and older vs. people under 40, and people from different ethnic groups or race categories?
3. Will my job applicants be able to understand the language and examples used in the interview/assessment?

We hope you found this blog article helpful. For more information or assistance, please contact us at info@psychometric-solutions.com

Related Blog Articles

1. Do I purchase the assessment outright or do I license the product? 
2. Is a custom assessment solution better? Why?
3. How to accurately measure an Individual’s Job Performance. 

About the Author

Dr. Dennison Bhola has more than 25 years of experience working in the field of psychometrics creating validated instruments such as assessments, structured interviews and inventories.  With his teammates, he has developed more than 1000 assessments for use by organizations around the globe.  His expertise includes evaluating new hire quality, assessment effectiveness, source channel efficiency, time to hire, cost per hire, and other such metrics that are of critical importance to Human Resource Professionals.  He also specializes in fairness analyses and auditing compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity guidelines, such as the 4/5ths rule.