The days of relying on recruiters or resume keyword scanners are over. As hiring and retention remain the top priority for most HR teams, professionals across industries are turning to candidate assessments tools.
Why? Beyond finding qualified candidates that fit a company’s culture, these assessment tools can evaluate whether a candidate’s behaviors and traits are advantageous for a specific position.
However, not all candidate assessment tools are created equal. That’s why we’re sharing the four key features your tool must have in order to effectively select top talent for your organization.
1. Assesses work traits vs. personal traits
There are a variety of candidate assessment tools out there today, examining a range of areas such as personality, physical ability, skills, compatibility, and more. As hiring practices continue to develop, personality assessments in particular have grown in popularity. Tests such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® or the DiSC Assessment may sound familiar.
The fundamental issue with many of these tests, however, is that they test for the wrong things—namely, general traits rather than personal traits in a workplace context. GoodJob’s PATH Assessment® doesn’t determine how you’d interact with others in a social, non-work setting like the Myers-Briggs test might. Nor does it spit out your strongest personality traits such as “loyal” or “driven.” And it definitely doesn’t tell you who you’d be compatible with in a romantic relationship or whether you belong in Gryffindor or Hufflepuff!
After all, what does it matter if a personality test identifies a job candidate as “driven” if you don’t understand what motivates them? As a manager or even a colleague, it would be more effective to know, for example, whether that candidate is driven by achieving individual goals, quenching their desire to learn, or supporting their teammates around them. That’s why the PATH Assessment goes beyond the scope of typical personality tests and evaluates a candidate’s personality traits and behaviors in terms of who they are in the workplace.
2. Given to candidates at the right point in the process
Typically, employers administer candidate assessments at the end of the hiring process rather than at the beginning. However, this is far too late to provide value. Oftentimes, at this stage, employers have already invested a significant amount of time and resources and made up their minds regarding a candidate, leading them to downplay or even ignore the results of an assessment. In this way, many employers end up using a personality assessment as a “gut check” on culture fit rather than a data-driven tool to predict on-the-job behaviors and potential.
In contrast, administering an assessment earlier in the process to a wider pool of candidates can unpack this tool’s full potential. Employers can ensure they don’t eliminate perfect candidates before interviews start and can use the results to prioritize next steps with only the most promising people, saving time and resources.
Since many candidate assessments are priced per person, this often deters employers from administering them on a wider basis to find the cream of the crop. That’s why we don’t charge for the PATH Assessment by the head — so that you can compare your entire pool of candidates.
3. Accurately predicts success
Many of the popular personality tests used today rely solely on psychological concepts, making it difficult to accurately predict job performance. The PATH Assessment, however, not only comes from 40 years of data science and behavioral studies and was created by scientists at Harvard and Stanford but also leverages data science and artificial intelligence (AI) for more accurate results. In addition, the test is getting smarter over time, finding out how candidates actually perform in the jobs it recommends.
By measuring four modes—Purpose, Approach, Thinking, and Habits—and their different traits, the PATH Assessment uncovers who a person is in the workplace and can identify their potential. Purpose is what gets you out of bed in the morning, and when you’re using purpose as a tool at work, you likely encourage your colleagues in a way similar to how you like to be motivated. Approach is how you talk to, work with, and relate to other people. At work, you’re likely to interact with your colleagues in a way you’d like them to reciprocate. Thinking is how you process the world, evaluate problems, and generate solutions. When you use your way of thinking as a tool at work, you likely try to get your colleagues to walk through challenges the same way as you approach them in your head. Lastly, habits are actions you take to solve problems, which can vary a little bit from your Purpose, Approach, and Thinking traits since sometimes the way we think and the way we act don’t perfectly align.
The PATH Assessment is a powerful alternative to trying to gauge who someone is based on their resume. It reveals who a candidate is in the workplace—what drives them, how they interact with coworkers, how they think about problems, and how they take action—so there’s no guesswork when day one comes and they need to hit the ground running.
4. Lets you compare candidates to your most successful employees
Let’s say you’re hiring a new salesperson. Wouldn’t it be a game changer to know what traits your best salespeople share — and then see which candidates have those qualities as well?
GoodJob’s Job Role DNA lets you do exactly that so you’ll know whether a candidate will be right for both your company and the role. Here’s how it works: in the scenario outlined above, all of your best salespeople would take the PATH Assessment. Then, based on the results, GoodJob would create what’s called a Job Role DNA, which is a compilation of the overlapping traits of the most successful people in the role. And since we’re using your own employees, the Job Role DNA for that role is bespoke to your organization. We’re not shoehorning your candidates into a one-size-fits-all profile.
Reimagine Your Hiring Process with the PATH
Are you sorting through hundreds of resumes, trying to find the perfect candidate for an important position at your company?
GoodJob’s PATH Assessment® and unique platform can help you create a seamless hiring process that quickly finds top talent for your organization. Created by scientists at Harvard and Stanford, the PATH Assessment is far from the average personality test. While most personality assessments test irrelevant areas or use poor logic to analyze responses and draw conclusions, the PATH Assessment places a person’s personality, motivations, values, and traits within a relevant workplace context. It then organizes employee traits and behaviors into four modes—Purpose, Approach, Thinking, and Habits—so you know exactly what drives them, how they interact with coworkers, how they problem solve, and how they take action. The PATH Assessment also leverages data science and artificial intelligence (AI) to match candidates for the traits most advantageous to specific roles.
Job candidates sign up for GoodJob’s platform and take the assessment first, all for free. After an employer posts a job with a short description and key details, GoodJob instantly matches them with vetted, talented applicants on their platform based on their comprehensive recruitment system, without any human bias. Employers can then sort, filter, and rank all of their applicants and choose the best fit without ever combing through a giant stack of resumes.
Ready to find qualified job-seekers and get back to the high-impact work more deserving of your attention and focus? Our platform bubbles up the candidates that best match your team’s DNA to the top of the list, so you never waste your time slogging through resumes, interviewing candidates who aren’t as good of a fit, or relying on recruiters. Click here to learn more.