How to Assess Employee Performance Before You Hire

One of the biggest challenges of hiring new employees is assessing employees before you hire them. While you can often get an idea of an employee’s personality during an interview, it’s much harder to gauge how well they will perform on the job and how they’ll fit in on your team. One fix for this problem is a hiring assessment. But which type of assessment is best for your business?

Types of Employee Assessments

Pre-Screening Assessments

One of the most popular type of assessment is an employee pre-screening. These mostly automated assessments can help determine which candidates have the skills, experience, and personality your position requires. Most pre-screening systems are fully automated, which makes it easy to sort through candidates. However, be careful of relying on them too much. Some “soft” skills don’t translate well to automatic testing, and you could be leaving good candidates on the table if you’re too stringent.

Personality and Emotional Intelligence Testing

In some industries and fields you need to hire people with certain personality traits, such as empathy, discretion, or perseverance. Personality and emotional intelligence tests can help you with this. These assessments are designed to measure a person’s feelings, reactions, and ability to read and respond to emotions. They can be a valuable tool for hiring when you have particular employee needs.

That said, you should know that not all personality tests are the same – and they aren’t always 100% accurate, either. For instance, many people who take the famed Myers-Briggs Type Indicator more than once get different results each time. Instead of basing your hiring decisions entirely on these assessments, use them to get a better sense of a potential hire overall.

Work Samples

One of the best ways to get an idea of how a potential employee will perform on the job is to have them actually do some of the expected work. Sample work evaluations give you a great overview of the candidate’s experience level, their willingness to learn and adapt, and how they handle themselves as an employee.

The only difficulty with work sample assessments is that it can be hard to break a complex job down into test-sized bites. For these cases, hypothetical work assessments can be a good substitute. First you will need to develop a set of questions directly related to the job, like  “What would you do in this situation?” or “How have you handled this type of work in the past?” Then, you’ll need to ask these questions to each candidate and measure their answers against each other. While the setup can be time consuming, the results can pay for themselves.

Temporary Hiring

For many businesses, running a battery of assessments and tests on candidates sounds great but just isn’t practical. Time constraints, budget limitations, and unexpected changes can make it impossible to set up these assessments for every hire. In these cases, there is a solution: temporary hiring.

Instead of hiring employees on directly, Neese Personnel can send you qualified temporary employees that you can then choose to hire permanently. In effect, this gives you a “zero-risk” evaluation period where you can assess performance and fit through real, on-the-job work.

Work with Neese Today

At Neese Personnel, we pride ourselves on offering fast, dedicated service and individual solutions. Our agency can help you through every step of the hiring process, and we always provide you with qualified candidates for your positions. Call 405-942-8551 today to learn more about how we can help your business succeed.