How smartphone assessments benefit talent professionals

In recent articles, we presented data that showed how smartphone-delivered assessments are largely equivalent to their laptop-delivered counterparts. An adjacent, but equally important factor is how such assessments benefit talent professionals in their everyday work.

In today’s article, we discuss four main ways that smartphone assessments benefit talent professionals in their selection projects.

1. Improving candidate experience

Research conducted by Aon’s assessment services suggest that up to 88% of assessment candidates who have a favorable experience of selection assessments are more likely to buy from that company and brand.

Conversely, poor selection experiences can have a similar negative effect on candidates’ consumer choices and recommendations for that brand.

For talent professionals, improving candidate experience of recruitment and selection processes should be high on their to-do lists this year. Increasingly, companies will be challenged by talented prospective hires in terms of candidate experience and perceived professionalism of their hiring process.

Living, as we do, in a recommendation-based consumer economy, the perceptions of candidates during a selection event ought to be a key metric of interest for talent professionals.

Studies conducted by Aon and TTS suggest that there are benefits to candidate experience in using smartphone-delivered assessments. Partly, this may be due to the alignment between selection method (i.e. advanced, adaptive assessments) and company brand (e.g. technology-forward).

Also noteworthy is the normative expectation of Millennial candidates to be able to complete assessments on the device of their choice: which is mostly a smartphone.

In addition, evidence points to the freedom of movement allowed by smartphone assessments as a major contributing factor in improved candidate experiences: The ability to choose where and when to complete an assessment results in a more positive assessment experience.

2. Improving time-to-hire

Time-to-hire is an ever-present bugbear for many talent professionals. There is a constant tension between the need for high-fidelity assessments that are predictive of job performance and fit, versus the need to reduce the time taken to fill critical positions.

Indeed, traditional approaches to assessments that emphasize face-to-face assessment and fixed-location completion of assessments (i.e. using laptops) can slow down time-to-hire substantially.

By using smartphone assessments, talent professionals can quickly reach a wide potential talent pool, and because candidates can choose to complete their assessments in a place and time of their choosing, results are commonly obtained far quicker than traditional methods.

To this point, Aon’s recent research on time-to-hire suggests that using smartphone assessments can reduce time-to-hire by as much as 40% (while also increasing new hire tenure by as much as 24%!).

3. Enhancing organizational ROI

Given that smartphone assessments are fully adaptive to whichever platform the candidate chooses to use (i.e. laptop or smartphone), the same benefits that accrue to online assessments are true for smartphone assessments as well.

In this regard, research shows that by using objective, smartphone-compatible assessments, talent professionals can have a substantial impact on their organizations’ performance. For instance, studies done in Aon’s mid-sized client companies using such assessments show:

  • Increases in effectivity of sales staff hired, which in turn improved annual sales by $200 Million.
  • A reduction of $8.7 Million in turnover costs ascribed to more effective selection of new hires.
  • A reduction of $9.6 Million in training and selection costs
  • An increase in profit in selected business functions by as much as 50% due to better hiring practices

4. Better candidates, more of the time

Ultimately, talent professionals strive to deliver the best candidates to their organizations. Hiring top talent can benefit an organization in multiple ways, not least of which is the competitive advantage gained by employing the lion’s share of talent in a specific industry.

Additional research conducted on companies that use smartphone-delivered, objective assessments reveal that candidates thus selected are:

  • 58% more likely to be identified as “great leaders” by the organization within the first few years of their tenure.
  • Four times as likely to be identified as top talent by their managers than candidates hired using other forms of selection.

Final Thoughts

Smartphone assessments benefit talent professionals in their everyday work and in multiple ways. Not only do they confer advantages in candidate experience (a vital metric in contemporary recruitment), but they also help to reduce time-to-hire.

In addition, using such assessments can benefit organizations by helping them select better talent, more of the time. As a result, benefits such as improved profitability, sales effectiveness, and cost reduction in selection and recruitment processes are realized.

For talent professionals who want to benefit from smartphone assessments, TTS offers several best-of-breed options, sourced from the leading assessment product developers in the world.

Why not contact us at  info@tss-talent.com for more information on how smartphone assessments can be used in your talent processes?

Source: Recruitment Reloaded (2019), published by Aon/Cut-e assessment services.