If your hiring processes are in dire need of a refresh, we have the ideal solution; add a cognitive assessment. Find out more about your potential recruits, make better hiring decisions, and reduce your cost of hiring with this excellent tool. These tests can make the process of employing new staff far simpler.

What is a Cognitive Assessment?

A cognitive assessment is a type of pre-employment test organizations use to test the skills of potential job candidates. They are designed to determine the mental capabilities of applicants in certain areas. Find out how your job applicants learn new skills and how they can critically process information.

There are many types of cognitive assessments. One example is verbal reasoning, which determines the applicant’s comprehension skills. Numerical reasoning measures how accurately candidates can work with numbers and analyze numerical information. This covers topics such as ratios, percentages, and sequences of numbers. Logical reasoning is another common test type that is used in recruitment. This test measures how well respondents understand patterns, shapes, and number sequences.

One of the best-kept secrets is the learning agility test. This assessment uncovers how well applicants can learn from past experiences and apply those learnings to future situations. This skill is so necessary for many work environments. Of course, employees will make mistakes, but it’s whether they can learn from them and act differently next time that is really important. Learning agility tests are most often used for positions higher up the career ladder. For roles that entail more responsibility, learning from your mistakes is even more crucial.

When is A Cognitive Assessment Used?

Cognitive assessments are usually implemented during the hiring process before the interview stage. They are useful for organizations that have many candidates vying for available positions in the company. Easily create a shortlist by using a cognitive assessment on your most qualified candidates. The ones who perform the best are likely the ones that you will put forward to the interview stage.

8 Advantages of Using Cognitive Assessment in Hiring

• Predict Job Performance

The number one reason that many recruiters implement a cognitive assessment in the hiring process is that these tests can predict the success of the hire. A valid test is a good predictor of on the job performance. If you want insight into how well a new recruit can learn new skills, follow instructions, and communicate with others, then a cognitive assessment can help with that.

• Easy to Administer

Many hiring techniques are costly and time-consuming to administer. A cognitive assessment, on the other hand, is extremely easy to add to your recruitment process. Using an online platform, simply send the selected applicants a link to complete the test online. You will get back the data from these for easy comparison.

• Inexpensive

Recruitment processes are expensive enough without adding additional steps into the mix. However, when you consider that a cognitive assessment can improve the quality of your hire, these are a relatively inexpensive recruitment tool. The cost is offset by how well the new employee may perform in their role.

• Hire Based on Data

The main issue that recruiters face is unintentionally biased hiring. It can be challenging to prove that you hired in an objective fashion, but data-driven recruitment can change all of that. You’ll have more data and information on the candidate to base your decision on. By being able to show that you hired based on the data from a cognitive assessment, you can take much of the subjectivity out of the hiring process.

• Avoid Unsuccessful Hires

One of the best outcomes of using a cognitive assessment in recruitment is that you will make better hiring decisions. The cost of a bad recruit can be as much as a third of the salary of the position. By gaining data on relevant factors, you can make better hiring decisions and avoid employing someone who may be unsuccessful in the role. Save yourself time and money on recruitment by avoiding making the wrong decisions in the hiring process.

• Reduce Time to Hire

Recruiters are always trying to find new ways to reduce the time to hire. For some reason, hiring processes can be extremely lengthy and drawn out. This means that you may have no one in the vacant position for some time, causing issues amongst the wider team. By using a cognitive assessment, you can speed up the recruitment process. These tests make it easier to cut down your shortlist quickly. Then you will be ready to interview and offer the job to your chosen candidate.

• Improved Retention

Some level of turnover in a business is to be expected. Everyone leaves a job at some point, after all. However, when many people start resigning, there must be a reason for this. One of the most common reasons for people leaving a job is that they were not a good fit for the role. If you want to reduce turnover in your organization, you need to start making better hires, and a cognitive assessment can help you to do that. By hiring people who perform well on these tests, you will be hiring people with good job-fit and the skills required for the role. Over time, as you keep using this tool, this can reduce your turnover rate.

• Help Your Company Succeed

The data you gain on the cognitive ability of your candidates is extremely powerful. Hire not only for the skills your organization needs right now but the ones it will need in the future. Hire people based not only on what they can do, but on their potential to learn, and you can set your company up for future success. Adding a cognitive assessment into the recruitment process can be an effective way to achieve organizational success. Hire people with the potential to lead your business into the future.

By asking job applicants to complete a cognitive assessment, you can gain far more insight into their skills than what you can obtain from a CV. Try using one in your next recruitment process, and you will understand why so many recruiters use these tests to help them make better hires.