Pre-employment skills screening: more important than ever for small business

For many small to medium sized businesses, pre-employment screening may seem like something only big companies do. But in today’s tight applicant market, no company – large or small – can afford to make a poor hiring decision. The cost of recruitment is too high to run the risk of onboarding a candidate that’s doomed to failure. Training a new hire that simply doesn’t have the skills or talent you need is a drain on time, resources and coworkers. And the probability that you’ve lost out on another candidate, who was more qualified, is all too real.

The numbers don’t lie…

Recruiters and hiring managers know how costly and labor intensive every new hire can be: advertising costs, time spent sifting through resumes, hours spent in interviews and more drain resources. An unfilled position drains resources from within: forcing coworkers to pick up the slack, diminishing their own productivity and lowering morale for the entire company. When you simply must fill your vacancies, it’s critically important to fill them right the first time.

…but job seekers may

Pre-employment skills screening is a low-cost, high return investment for SMBs. Using a skills assessment tool before you review even a single resume cuts down significantly on valuable time wasted screening resumes. Research reveals companies can receive up to 250 resumes for each opening. Of those, only 4 to 6 will be called in for an interview. Why bother reading 250 resumes when only 5 actually have the skills you requested?  Additionally, of the 5 resumes you think have the qualifications needed, assume at least some are false. A staggering 85% of candidates lie on their resume – deliberating including misleading information either to bypass applicant screening software algorithms or in the hopes they won’t get caught. One-third of job seekers lie about their educational credentials, yet only 49% of employers verify them.

Costly mistakes

At an average cost of over $4,000 per hire, and an average of 39 days from advertisement to first day on the job, can you afford to waste time on unskilled candidates?  More often than not you will: 62% of small businesses admit to making a bad hire in the past.

Getting it right the first time

Large corporations can absorb the cost of a bad hire, but for small to medium sized business, the impact can be significant. Consider any of the hiring mistakes you’ve made in the past: wouldn’t it have been easier, faster, and cheaper to have the information you needed about their skill set before you called them in for an interview? How much time, effort, energy and expense could you have saved knowing they were qualified before you even read through their resume?

For SMBs particularly, knowing the job seeker meets your minimum standards of qualifications before you take the time to meet with them is a time saver that returns your investment immediately. Rather than wasting hours poring over resumes that likely have misleading (at best) information, only qualified candidates get through the recruitment pipeline. The additional time and expense saved after the initial recruitment steps is like money in the bank.

When you can’t afford to make a bad hire (and who can?) or lose an outstanding candidate to the competition, skills and qualification pre-screening is the solution. Rankdone allows you to pre-test every candidate, before their resume hits your inbox. You only see the resumes of qualified applicants – saving you time and money. Our testing verifies they have the skills needed – regardless of what their resume says.

In a tight applicant market, it pays to prescreen. In today’s applicant market it’s a must. Make sure every hire you make is the right hire with skills qualification testing from Rankdone. Contact us today.