Question  1.  Do you feel that the worst of the recession is behind us?

Answer 1:

Yes: 56.3%

No: 43.8%

Question 2: Have you shrunk, maintained or grown your business in 2010?

Answer 2:

Shrunk:  37.5%

Maintained: 40.6%

Grown: 21.9%

Question 3:  Do you see 2011 as a growth year?

Answer 3:

Yes: 68.8%

No: 31.3%

Question 4:  How would you rate your overall satisfaction level with Prevue Assessments, with one (1) being very unsatisfied and five (5) being extremely satisfied?

Answer 4:

1: 0%

2: 0%

3: 28.1%

4: 43.8%

5: 28.1%

Question 5: Please explain the reason for the rating you gave in question #4.

“Assessments have always provided us with an accurate of the candidates that we have interviewed and are considering hiring.”

“Quick response time, informative results, great customer service.”

“Good response on questions; the software works consistently, and when it’s being upgraded, you keep us informed on delays or possible issues; and the product is useful to our clients”

“The assessment is solid, but the report could use a bit more sizzle.  Lesser assessments turn prospects heads more, requiring a bit of education on why the Prevue is so good.”

“Combined with our own testing of skills, Prevue gives us a good profile of the candidates we are interviewing.  It is usually apparent whether they will be a good fit for us.”

Question 6: How Have you used Prevue Assessments in 2010?

“Recruiting/Selection – 95%; Personal development/succession planning – 5%”

“Making selections on college recruits”

“All candidates must complete the Prevue online.  Hiring teams use the results to assess job fit.

“Hiring and development in mid-to-upper-level positions; team building primarily with executive and management teams.”

“In 2010, I used the assessments the same as in previous years…as part of Training and Coaching programs.  This past year saw a return of other consultants’ businesses that access Prevue through me, which helped me, in essence, ‘sell’ more assessments.”

Question 7: Do you see your use of Prevue Assessments changing in 2011?  If so, how?

“Similar volumes unless we can get new reports and industry specific reports for an area such as health care.  This is a growth area in recruiting yet we do not have anything industry specific.  Clients have asked for “what does the industry do?””

“Succession Planning (more proactive; less reactive)”

“Possibly – would like to use it more in team and development vs. hiring which was a bulk of 2010 business.”

Question 8: If you could change one thing about the Prevue Reports, what would it be?

“Your changes seem to be ahead of the curve.”

“Show a composite graph page with multiple scores without having to generate a benchmark report.”

Question 9: What do you need from the Team at Prevue that currently is not available?

“Industry specific benchmarks for health care.”

“Quick users guide and some easy to understand reference material.  Every hiring mistake could have been avoided if we had a better understanding of the Prevue tool.”

“Comparison tool to allow us to show groups their complementary strengths.”

“You could offer some tele seminars on interpretation; unique applications for Prevue; marketing tips”.

Based on the feedback received, Prevue will take away the following action items to incorporate into our 2011 planning:

• Continue to develop tools to support hiring efforts;
• Develop a Benchmark Library;
• Develop industry specific offerings; and
• Prevue Reports will undergo upgrades.

WHY ORGANIZATONS ARE USING ASSESSMENTS

Over 80% of study participants use assessments in the hiring process. The following graph identifies the top 5 business outcomes or improvements that are sought by companies from the use of pre-hire assessments:

While almost all companies use assessments during the hiring process, only 50% of survey participants use assessments for current workforce management.  Nonetheless, the interest in using assessments for internal human resource management is increasing and particularly for the following applications:

WHAT ASSESSMENTS ORGANIZATIONS ARE USING

The most common types of assessments used by business continue to be personality, skills and cognitive abilities assessments.  New developments in testing such as simulations and bio data analysis are getting a lot of press but seem to be limited in the uptake.

The hiring process used by most organizations also continues to be following the classic steps of resume review, reference checks, prescreening questions, testing, interviews and background investigations. Although 70% + of respondents use or plan to use social media sites for sourcing job applicants, only 20% or so believe such sites are effective tools for determining candidate fit or will have a major impact on how talent is recruited, measured and managed.

ASSESSMENT USAGE BY JOB TYPE

Although assessments are used for virtually all types of jobs, organizations are using assessments more commonly in hiring for the following positions:

• Managerial/supervisor positions at the entry and mid level
• Technical/professional (particularly for knowledge and skills testing)
• Sales
• Customer service
• Administrative

ASSESSMENT EVALUATION BY ORGANIZATIONS

Despite the fact that most organizations (over 70%) pay lip service to proving the return on investment (“ ROI”) or effectiveness of the hiring tools and processes they use, only 50% of organizations actually do anything about it.

Those companies that do evaluate their use of assessments primarily focus on turnover/retention metrics and supervisor ratings to measure the effectiveness. Although companies can measure all of the desired business outcomes or improvements outlined above (as well as training effectiveness, legal compliance and financial metrics like sales revenue per hire), few companies actually do so.

So why is there such a gap between good intentions and practice?  Both the surveys reviewed in this article and our experience at Prevue Assessments suggest the primary cause is the unwillingness of organizations to commit the time and personnel required to gather and analyze data necessary to prove ROI.  Prevue Assessments will be endeavoring to bridge this gap in the future by creating new online data gathering facilities to simplify both the collection and analysis of ROI data to prove the effectiveness of using Prevue products. If you have interest in this subject we would appreciate your observations and suggestions.

The surveys reviewed in this article cover a wide range of subjects beyond those highlighted in this article.  Complete copies of the surveys can be obtained by email request to support@prevueassessments.com.

Bibliography

1. 2009 Rocket-Hire Pre-Employment Assessment usage Survey, Mark C. Healey and Charles A Handler Ph.D.
2. 2010 Global Assessment Trends Report, Sarah S. Fallaw, Ph.D., Andrew L. Solomonson, Ph.D., Previsor Talent Measurement.

The results of the December 2009 Prevue Newsletter survey are now in and have been tabulated. There were 70 respondents to the survey who provided over 100 suggestions.

The question given the most consideration by respondents was, “What HR topics are you most interested in hearing about?” The responses were both diverse and interesting. We divided the responses into the following subject matters:

SUBJECT MATTERS	PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL RESPONSES
Recruiting/Selection	21%
Talent management (general)	11%
Legal matters and issues (presumably relating to testing)	10%
Return of investment (approving Prevue works)	9%
Retention	8%
Engagement	7%
Compensation/benefits	7%
Coaching/training	6%
Hot topics (book reviews, etc.)	6%
More about using Prevue – various uses and administration	6%
Leadership development	4%
Teams and team development	4%

The responses to the other questions in the survey were statistically less significant but did provide the following direction:

• The responses were generally favorable towards the form, content and direction of the newsletter.
• There were several requests for more product information webinars addressing subjects such as understanding Prevue scales, interpreting Prevue scores, other applications for Prevue Assessments and more case studies and examples. You will see that our 2010 webinar series will put more emphasis on these types of subjects.

You will no doubt remember that we offered prizes to one out of every 10 respondents to the survey. The winners chosen at random are Leonard Wood (Canadian Natural Resources Limited), Derek Cunningham ( No Sleep), Kieran Killick (Shore Gold Inc.) , Paul Vandenberg ( Elgin St. Thomas Public Health), and Bob Wark (Assante Capital Management).

Finally and on a lighter note, a couple of responses that gave us a smile were:

• To the request for additional feedback - “I adore Mary and will do whatever I can to support her business”
• To the request for webinar suggestions – “Whatever Bob comes up with”.

Thanks to all of you who did participate. We will put your advice to good use.