7 Common Challenges While Using Assessment Tools

We tend to look for talent in the same old places or follow trends of the “ best hire ” as the “ best fit ”. There's no one- size- fits- all approach, but these trends can undermine efforts to boost diversity and hinder creativity and innovation. This article outlines 7 challenges in assessment that HR teams face when it comes to using psychometric assessments.

When building a business, your primary asset is your people. But how do you determine if they're the right fit for the role? That's why psychometric assessments can be a critical tool for your organisation, regardless of levels failing which you can expose your association to several risks

• Lower- quality candidates
• Employees without the requisite skills
• Unchallenged, unhappy, or underestimated workforce
• Unreliable backup planning
• High turnover

Any of these obstacles can weigh an organisation down, especially while the demand for talent is stronger than ever. And like any other strategy, there will always be challenges in implementing a successful talent assessment process. This article outlines seven challenges that your HR teams might face when it comes to using talent assessment tools.

Talent Assessments in a Nutshell

The ability to holistically understand an individual, unlock their potential, and determine the right employee for the right part, is crucial to running a top- notch team. As the name implies, talent assessments are tools, such as tests, surveys, interviews, and simulations, that help companies to identify candidates with the best fit, predict a new hand’s work performance, and evaluate their retainability in the long run.

A 2022 Talent Report by Wonderlic showed how pivotal talent assessments are in a company’s talent strategy. further than 85 of talent professionals said assessments helped them identify the potential ofnon-traditional candidates; 84 said assessments helped to quickly identify top candidates, while 83 said assessments can help to reduce turnover.

7 Challenges While Using Assessment Tools

1. Hassle of dealing with multiple assessment providers

Each assessment tool is fit for purpose, and frequently organisations end up using multiple tools for different requirements. A low- cost game- grounded assessment may be more suited for hiring graduates, but for executive leadership, one might prefer a more robust and insightful tool.

On average, organisations use between 3- 5 assessment tools, and the problem lies therein. Each vendor onboarded means a different procurement process, with different legal agreements, price accommodations, and time frames, not to mention dealing with multiple stakeholders from each vendor.

All these results in additional tasks for HR, legal, procurement and finance teams, which can add up to significant administrative time commitments while also causing delays in implementing the organizational talent strategy.

2 High time commitment for learning each tool

There are many different types of talent assessment tools in the market today, such as video interviews, simulations, and psychometrics. It doesn't stop there as more companies are also considering bringing in various kinds of tests to ameliorate the validity of their talent decisions.

While using assessment tools is an effective way to assess a broad range of candidate skills, learning how to use each one correctly isn't without its challenges.

Technical proficiency – each assessment tool requires users to become familiar with their functional flow, user interface and navigation.

Training and support – effective use of assessment tools bear proper training and support, which can be time- consuming and precious.

Reports interpretation – understanding the assessment scores and other talent data can be difficult for users who are unfamiliar with the assessment tool.

3 Challenges in interpreting reports

Each assessment tool comes with its own unique report, with its jargon, interpretation, and design.

It's a monstrously grueling task for HR and directors to get trained in each report, often requiring specialised certification to do so. Every time a new tool is onboarded, a new member joins the HR platoon, or there's a new manager who needs to use the reports, there's a need for additional training.

Assessment reports frequently use sophisticated technical language and terminology thatnon-experts may find difficult to comprehend. For example, an assessment report may use terms similar as “ psychometric validity, ” “ factor analysis, ” or “ normative data. ” These terms can be confusing and delicate to understand without prior knowledge or explanation.

The assessment data presented can also be complex and subject to different interpretations depending on the context in which they're presented. Finally, assessment tools can create further difficulty when attempting to compare results across different reports.

4 Consolidating assessment data

frequently, assessment scores from multiple tools need to be consolidated for meaningful and convenient analysis. This opens another set of challenges for HR teams, leading to manual analysis of spreadsheets, documents, and presentations.

For instance, to make the right decision, a hiring director may bear results from a psychometric, a simulation, a case study, and an interview. To assist the hiring manager, HR teams must manually combine the different scores and analysis into a consolidated document. Or there may be a need to combine 360 data with a psychometric to take critical decisions around race planning. To enable this process, HR teams would need to do the consolidation on a spreadsheet, a document, or a presentation.

Read More: What are the challenges of assessment