What do you really care about when hiring someone?
Is it their degree, or their work ethic?
Their previous experience, or how well they get along with people?
Of course degrees and experience matter. But lots of people have them. That’s the easy part of hiring. All you have to do is look through a huge pile of resumes. Okay so it’s notthat easy.
But the much harder part is – how do you choose between all the people who are qualified on paper?
That’s where skills, personality, and aptitude testing come in, and it’s why PainLess Hire puts so much emphasis on these. Only by exploring the person and not the papers, getting past all their experience and degrees, can you make an informed hiring decision.
‘Behind the Curtain’ of a Personality Test
Here’s an example of just one of our tests. This one evaluates workplace personality – what it’s like to be around this person, and what it’s like to work with them. We have a large bank of tests, and use different ones depending on the position.
This one measures 12 personality qualities, with the extremes on both ends:- Achievement
- Assertiveness
- Competitiveness
- Conscientiousness
- Cooperativeness
- Extroversion
- Managerial
- Motivation
- Openness
- Patience
- Self-Confidence
- Stress Tolerance
Here are the “extremes” for two of these traits:
- Achievement rates a person as somewhere between Impulsive and Goal-Oriented
- Conscientiousness rates them between Spontaneous/Laid Back and Dependable/Self-disciplined
When all 12 of these qualities are scored, a strong picture emerges of what kind of person this is, and if they’re suited for the role you are hiring for. Spontaneity is a valued trait in some jobs. In others, it’s a deal-breaker. You need to know this kind of information!
One candidate who applied for a Director position for one of our clients scored in such a way that they could be described like this:“This person is even-tempered, reliable, and cares about the quality of their work. They will be good at working with other people, and will improve the culture of cooperation and focus in your company. They would make a great manager or supervisor.”
Have you ever been able to describe a job candidate like that – with certainty and not gut feelings?
The depth of knowledge from just this one test – and we have many others – is so far beyond anything you could ever find on a resume. This is why we repeatedly say that resumes alone are a terrible criteria for making hiring decisions. They just don’t tell you enough.
And if you expect interviews to “fix” that, you’re still using the resume to decide who to interview!
So if you have 50 qualified resumes, and want to pick 10 of them for a first round of phone interviews, you have no reliable criteria for choosing who those 10 people will be.
When you use PainLess Hire’s system, we score each qualified applicant on a number of personality and skills tests. And from the pool of people who score the highest in relation to what your job description requires – those are the people we call.
That first phone interview allows us to narrow it down even more, and we then send you only the very cream of the crop.
The result?
You get 3-5 people to interview. And ALL of them, not just one lucky number pulled out of a resume hat, are highly qualified for your position.It’s like choosing the best player from an all-star team.
If you want to hire well for your key positions, you simply can’t do it without skills and personality pre-testing.
P.S. Did you know we have a special introductory rate for first-time clients? If you’ve never used our hiring consultants before, there’s no better time than with your next open position.