How to use AI for pre-employment assessments to transform your hiring process

Technology has been evolving at a breakneck pace, and one of the latest technologies revolves around artificial intelligence. These advancements have started trickling into different industries, and human resources can benefit greatly from AI. One way that AI aims to streamline hiring procedures is by supporting and expediting the pre-employment process, which includes pre-employment assessments. Keep on reading to discover how you can streamline your company's hiring process with AI pre-employment assessments.

What are pre-employment assessments?

Pre-employment assessments are questions or tests that aim to understand a candidate's skills and level of proficiency as they relate to a particular role. They vary between positions, companies, and industries, meaning there's no one set way to test candidates, making it essential to reflect on the role and the company's goals when developing these assessments. As these tests take time and add in the potential of human error, many companies are looking toward using AI for pre-employment assessments to remove any possible errors and streamline the hiring process.

How AI can enhance pre-employment assessments

AI can greatly enhance pre-employment assessments, as you can use the results to rank candidates based on their competency. Here are some of the major benefits of integrating AI into the pre-employment assessment step:

Reduce time-to-hire metrics

Pre-employment assessments require time from the hiring team and the candidate. When hiring managers take the time out of their day to ask candidates a host of pre-employment questions, it can slow down the overall hiring process. Hiring teams already have many tasks on their plate when it comes to filling roles.

Using AI to give these pre-employment assessments allows the candidate to complete them on their own time rather than having the hiring team arrange for both parties to be available. This means no more back and forth to find a free moment, which slows down the hiring process.

Enhance candidate experience

An unbiased review of a candidate's application and skills provides an equal chance of employment for all candidates. That, together with a faster hiring process, can make the hiring process more enjoyable for candidates.

Boost employee morale

No one wants to feel like they're drowning in an insurmountable pool of tasks. Never having downtime can negatively impact employee morale. Around 90% of employees believe that regularly having breaks or downtime every day can help boost their mood. Integrating AI into the hiring process can allow teams to have bursts of downtime, which can boost morale and enhance the company's culture.

Improve hiring team productivity

AI enables teams to analyze the information of a large number of candidates quickly. AI pre-employment assessments also score candidates, disqualify unsuitable applicants, and provide a list of the best options for hiring teams to choose from. Having all these steps automatically taken care of takes a big chunk off the hiring team's plate, allowing them to complete other things and use their time more efficiently. This then has a positive impact on productivity, as the team and AI can complete more tasks in a day than the hiring team alone.

"Using AI to give these pre-employment assessments allows the candidate to complete them on their own time rather than having the hiring team arrange for both parties to be available."

How to use AI pre-employment assessments

Understanding the benefits is just part of integrating this technology into your hiring process. Here are some steps to help you determine how to best incorporate AI pre-employment assessments into your company's current hiring process:

Analyze your current hiring methods

Before any AI integrations, it's important to analyze your current pre-employment assessments. This can help you trim the process down, update questions, or complete other changes to make your pre-employment assessments the best they can be before handing them over to AI. Some other things to think about before adding AI include:

Considering what roles the company most often hires
Determining the skills that different roles require
Deciding on what personality traits are valuable

Determine the level of AI integration

You can choose how much or how little AI you want to integrate into your hiring process. From chatbots to fully automated evaluations, your team can customize your pre-employment assessment process to fit your team's needs. There's also technology that searches and matches candidates with your company's job description, such as that offered by CareerBuilder. This can improve the effectiveness of your AI pre-employment assessments, as you have more relevant and qualified candidates to send through this stage of the hiring process.

Research different AI technologies

Various companies offer different types of AI technology. Some have a single choice that automates much of the hiring process, while others have many smaller features that allow the company to pick and choose what the business wants to automate. Reviewing a company's whitepaper that details the different AI technologies it offers can help you determine which one to integrate into your pre-employment assessments.

Test your new hiring process

After automating your procedures, it's crucial to test your new hiring process. Testing can help your team get a feel of how the automated pre-employment assessments work and make any adjustments to questions or scoring features. This can improve the effectiveness of these assessments and generate lists of highly qualified candidates.

Reevaluate regularly

As with any process, setting aside time regularly to reevaluate the hiring strategy can improve its effectiveness. The only constant in the world is change, and a company's needs change too. This means your pre-employment assessments might lose their relevance over time, so revamping them every so often can ensure they can still effectively score and rank candidates accordingly.

Tips for using AI for pre-employment assessments

As with any new process or technology, there are several things to account for when integrating AI into your team's pre-employment assessments. Here are some tips that can help you get the most out of these assessments:

Retain human interactions

With only 28% of U.S. adults favoring AI reviewing job applications and 30% still unsure, retaining the human element in the hiring process can help recruitment teams cater to those who prefer human engagement over AI. Having a mix of AI-assisted tasks with your physical hiring team making the final call on essential decisions, you can find that top talent and keep them engaged, even with AI processes.

Customize for different roles

Each role has different skill, knowledge, and experience requirements. So, each AI pre-employment assessment should also reflect these differences. This can ensure that the scoring and results will accurately reflect the candidate's alignment with the role.

Consider the entire application

While the pre-employment assessments are valuable parts of the hiring process, they're still portions of a whole. There's more to the hiring process than the pre-employment assessment. AI technology is still evolving, so it's a good idea to include this stage of the hiring process as one factor when choosing which candidates to move forward in the recruitment funnel.

AI has made its way to hiring processes, and one way to embrace this technology is through AI pre-employment assessments. This can streamline aspects of the hiring process, allowing your HR teams to allocate their time to other essential tasks. Retaining that human touch in the process while also finding ways to integrate this technology into your company's hiring strategy can keep top-tier candidates flowing in and converting into successful hires for your organization.