One of the biggest challenges facing HR professionals in the highly competitive and dynamic market of today’s business world is hiring top performing employees. Hiring “successfully matched” employees is a valuable asset for any organization.

The problem is, finding such top performing employees is more difficult than one might think. Many apparently great candidates have work style behaviors that may not be readily apparent. This is where cutting edge tools like employee assessments come into play. Professionally developed assessment tools can help you identify the top candidates who best fit your organization’s culture and job requirements.

According to the US Department of Labor’s report – Testing and Assessment: An Employers’ Guide to Good Practice, “The appropriate use of professionally developed assessment tools enables organizations to make more effective, employment-related decisions than use of simple observations or random decision making.”

With the help of a professionally developed assessment solution, you can better identify a potential candidate’s interests and abilities, values and work ethics, work style behaviors, and most importantly, the overall job fit.

Follow the best practices outlined below to hire the best candidates to meet your organization’s specific needs:

• Determine the Critical Job Requirements
• Formulate Relevant Job-Related Q&As
• Set Specific Goals to Manage the Interview Process
• Conduct a Behaviorally-Based Interview
• Have the candidate complete an Objective Assessment
• Make the hiring decision based on a “People – Job Match” Score

Once you make the final hiring decision based on the degree of fit score as indicated by the assessment process, you can be much more confident that you have hired a “successfully matched” employee who is going to yield value for your organization for a long time to come.

Tough economic times necessitate tough economic decisions. Economic conditions that would have been disregarded or brushed under the carpet when the going was good assume much greater importance when cost cutting becomes the norm in order to ensure continued growth and in some cases survival. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the Human Resource hiring process.

It is often noticed that organizations have a number of systems, standards, procedures and policies in place that are geared to optimize the work environment, but the hiring process is not necessarily always that scientific and systematic.

Although things are beginning to change, more often than not, many organizations still depend on only traditional guides like résumés, references, interviews and background checks to get all the required information about potential employees. Although these procedures are important as part of the selection process, unfortunately, time and again, these methods have proved less effective than when assessments are added to the above hiring processes.

According to Harvard Business Online, “The cost of replacing a “misfit” far exceeds the dollars in salary. Replacing an employee typically impacts morale, ongoing workload, and possibly re-training other employees. Be aware that the cost of replacing an employee could be two to three times the person’s salary in hours and recruiting.”

Making use of hiring assessments is vital to increasing the odds of making the right hiring choices. In fact, assessments become more of a necessity during tough economic times, as you don’t have the same luxury of making bad, or potentially weak, hiring decisions. The costs may be the same in good or in bad times, but the business implications in down times are much more devastating to the financial health of the organization. Using hiring assessments gives you a significant edge in your hiring process.

Assessments can provide you with a critical advantage so that you can hire top notch people and stay profitable during tough economic times and be well prepared to take advantage of the changing market conditions when the business cycle turns around. Assessments are the most scientific (and also economical) method for obtaining required information about an applicant, which can help you predict a candidate’s probability of success in any job role.

Using hiring assessments will ensure that you are able to correctly identify and evaluate a candidate’s behavioral work styles and competencies that are most useful and desirable for your workplace. You will be able to pinpoint and match how a candidate would fit into his/ her position, even before recruiting the person.

Recruiting on the basis of hiring assessments considerably maximizes the potential for productivity improvement in an organization over the long term. Also, when you consistently hire people who are a well matched to their jobs, there are various other possible advantages – increased productivity, less turnover, good employee relations, reduced stress, higher job satisfaction, fewer conflicts and substantial reduction in hiring expenses, all of which helps your organization succeed during both good and bad economies.

Assessment tools are increasingly being used by organizations to evaluate their employees’ knowledge and skills, interests, values, personality, work ethic and work styles to ensure a proper fit not only in a particular job role but also within the organization’s culture. But how can you be sure assessments will be useful and cost-effective for your organization?

Companies can measure the Return on Investment (ROI) of employee assessments in many different ways, but the basic formula for any organization is relatively simple:

ROI (Percentage) = (Total Benefits - Total Costs) x 100 / Total Costs, where

Total Benefits include money saved by the company, capital generated, and everything else that adds to the bottom line, both directly and indirectly. For example, if the use of assessments during the hiring process reduces turnover, savings would include the cost of replacing an employee (potentially up to 150% of their annual wages) multiplied by the number of bad hires avoided.

Total Costs include development costs, loss of work time, materials required, administration and coordination costs, promotion costs, meals/ refreshments, and cost of job coverage. Online courses will include certain additional costs like pre-production, graphics, servers, post-production, web development costs. When using online assessment tools, these costs could be as low as a few hundred dollars or less per employee.

In order to calculate the monetary Return on Investment, you need to identify all the various financial benefits your organization is drawing for the use of the assessment tools, and then subtract the total investment required for developing, producing and delivering the assessment program.

Initially, you may find it difficult to quantify each and every element associated with the process, particularly when you first begin using assessments. Once you do, however, you can easily check the total benefit you are getting from the use of the assessment tools on a regular basis. The savings is often quite substantial.

Assessment tools can be used for both hiring and developing employees. These tools can cut down on mistakes made during the hiring process and keep current employees engaged in their roles. When mis-hires occur or employees fail to live up to their potential, everyone suffers. The employee has to leave the organization and start their job search all over again and the organization must begin the costly process of replacing the employee.

The good news is that assessments can significantly increase your odds of making the correct hiring decisions. Assessments add valuable information about a person’s strengths and weaknesses that is not likely to be gained by any other selection tools.

Many of today’s assessments are easy to implement and very cost effective. In fact, assessments have been shown to more than pay for themselves and give your organization a leg up on the competition by consistently hiring top quality people who are likely to be successful working for your organization.

You can’t run a successful business without the right employees.

Whether you’re big or small — especially in the present business environment — even one “bad fit” employee can quickly grow into a seriously expensive mistake.  Fortunately, there are several excellent ways to soundly evaluate and judge a prospective new hire.

5 Steps to Avoid Costly and Preventable Hiring Mistakes in Your Organization

1. Use Employee Assessments: While recruiting, companies generally tend to focus on the technical abilities and qualifications of the candidate. What is overlooked is the fact though a candidate may have all the qualifications for the position, he or she may not measure up on the non-technical aspects of the job. In order to make sure that a prospective employee is in sync with the objectives and values of the organization, you should consider the use of employee assessments, which are based on surveys that focus on the suitability of the person for the particular position. By assessing your candidate’s style of work, personality, and workplace behavioral patterns, these assessments help identify gaps between job requirements and the employee’s work style, and can also help with employee development and coaching.

2. Conduct a Thorough Background Check: Cases of resume falsification are not uncommon. According to a recent study, it was revealed that almost 10% of job applicants misrepresent their educational qualifications, work history, and responsibilities, and even their reasons for having left their previous jobs. Carrying out a careful background check can go a long way in preventing problems later on.

3. Get an Unbiased Judgment: All too often, employers rely heavily on the candidate’s self awareness. While it is true that an applicant may be extremely talented and skilled, it has also been noticed that more often than not, one is biased about his or her knowledge and experience. Thus they may project an incorrect idea of their actual abilities and aptitudes. It is therefore advisable to always get a professional, objective evaluation of an individual’s work style behaviors and competencies. And ask for project samples or demonstrations as evidence of the candidate’s proficiency.

4. Provide a Realistic and Clear Job Preview: During the hiring process for a particular position, care should be taken to ensure that position description and deliverables are explained in detail to the candidate. The requirements should never be exaggerated or modified in an attempt to make it the “dream job”. Neither should a candidate be left guessing about the respective job responsibilities. In either case, a candidate may develop his or her own ideas about the role requirements, and after on boarding, any negatives or unanticipated responsibilities may lead to a resignation. This would be very costly and entail starting all over with the hiring process.

5. Do Not Hire Mismatched People: Often, in a desperate situation, an organization may hire employees who are not qualified enough to meet the demands of the job role or whose work styles are simply not a good match for the job requirements or the organization’s culture. This is often done with the idea that even a marginally employee can be trained to deliver the same outputs. However, this can be a dangerous decision not only for the organization’s finances, but also for its reputation. The money, time, and energy invested in training under-qualified and mismatched people are hardly worth it. It is always advisable to take any steps necessary to make sure a person is a good “fit” for the requirements of the job and the organization’s culture.

Mis-hires can be very costly and have a negative impact on the morale of your organization and on the overall level of employee satisfaction.

If you follow the 5 Steps you see above you’ll increase your chances of getting the right people in the right jobs the first time, and avoid the costly and preventable hiring mistakes that result in financial loss and lost opportunities.

And you’ll be on your way to creating a much healthier, more effective organization–and ultimately–a more successful business.