Are your candidates leaving you in the dust once they find out you have a take-home assessment? How can you avoid getting ghosted by talent with just a few key improvements in your recruitment process? Here are effective tips to make sure you don’t drive the people you want away with your take-home evaluations.
There are few things more frustrating in the recruitment journey than losing a candidate mid-way or because of small details like take-home assessment management or miscommunication.
To prevent you from losing talent in an ever-increasingly competitive market, there are a few things you can do, like.
- Asses what are the major issues
- Create template explanations and responses to answer candidates' questions
- Say on top of communication with organization and tracking tools
Why are take-home assignments necessary?
Even if they can cause some prospects to fall out of the process, it cannot be denied that the right type of assessment can help prevent companies from hiring the wrong candidate.
Take-home assignments are a necessary part of many hiring processes. According to a Criteria study, nearly half of resumes contain lies (46%), and up to 74% of candidates have tampered with facts.
So, it's safe to assume there can be gaps in candidates' skills and it's better to have proof they meet minimum skills requirements. This type of evaluation also allows junior but talented applicants to access higher positions.
Why are you losing candidates' interest mid-process?
The first question you need to answer to address the problem is why you are losing candidates with your assignments. This will lead to identifying causes and coming up with solutions.
Applicants can have some justified doubts about take-home assignments, including time and privacy concerns. All of these are justified and you can work around them to make the candidate feel more comfortable and open to continuing the process.
The problem with take-home assessments in recruitment
There are many issues that stem from exaggerated, invasive, or exploitative take-home assignments. These can not only make your candidate exit the recruitment early it can also affect your brand image.
According to research 64% of people share their negative hiring experiences, and up to 27% actively discourage peers from applying to the same company. So, keeping your candidate journey manageable not only helps you hire people it also protects your image.
When building your take-home assignments you need to consider all the factors that come into play.
- Time
Is it possible for a candidate with a full-time job, family, and friends to finish this in the time given?
- Accuracy
Is this a skill or problem that they will actually work on in their day-to-day job? There is no need to make the test ten times harder than the position demands.
- Impact
What are the skills you truly need to test to make sure the person is compatible with the role and what can be taught in the onboarding process?
What are candidates' concerns when it comes to take-home assessments and how to address them?
One of the best ways to keep candidates involved and interested in positions is to anticipate their needs. So, it helps to know the most common problems that they have with this type of assignment.
As you can imagine with a high rate of up to 60% of candidates quitting role applications because of complex and long processes, there are a lot of issues to address here, we are going to focus on the specifics of take-home assessments.
Why do companies need this assignment?
The first question is “why do they need me to do this?” when they have access to my resume, LinkedIn profile, and more.
You can nip this in the bud quickly by sending a detailed explanation when you send the test to the candidate.
Tell them why you need the assignment and how it benefits them.
- You can better assess skills and aptitudes
- They get better placements and onboarding
- Junior talent can have a chance at higher positions
- Compatibility to workflow is achieved determined early
These points can help answer most of the questions for the candidates, put them at ease with the test and move the process forward.
Sharing solutions without receiving credit
Reassure candidates that you are not trying to take advantage of the situation but instead are hoping to make a better match for both.
Make sure to introduce a privacy policy and answer questions regarding what the test will be used for. Try to get a technical asset to explain the aim of the test and to create your assignments from problems that are already solved.
This way, you can send out tests without the suspicion of a conflict of interest.
That it goes unnoticed
Everyone hates working for nothing, and candidates do too. One of the reasons they might reject an assignment in a recruitment process is the belief that it will be seen and evaluated by no one.
It's part of the hiring party's responsibility to clarify how the assessments will be evaluated and by who.
Make sure the candidates are aware of the importance of the test, give them feedback even if they don’t succeed, and make sure they know it was noticed.
It is a waste of time
Some prospects may feel like the decision on the hire is already made, that it will come through referrals or internally.
Again, making sure they know the importance given to the assignment and the benefits it could have for them in getting the job will help reduce this feeling.
Will it be an accurate representation of their skills
Another issue that candidates may have with assessments in recruitment processes is whether these will be a true representation of the value they bring to the table.
The bottom line is if you are applying for a job, you want to be given a fair chance to prove that you are a good fit and that your skills are up to par.
To assure candidates that assessments are to be used fairly, make sure to share with them how the take-home assignments are going to be evaluated and used in the process.
Assignments that are too difficult
You want to challenge candidates to get a good evaluation of their skills. However, you do not want to discourage participation by sending impossible or difficult tasks as part of your hiring process.
At any step in a recruitment process, you need to remember the talent has other responsibilities and limited time to tackle your take-home assignments.
Unless you have a highly competitive package to incentivize, you should adjust your test to meet both the job skills and the constraints of applicants.
Sometimes they just forget
We are just human and sometimes we just forget to complete or hand tasks over in time. There are so many candidates that are excited to continue with recruitment and find themselves cast out just by missing a deadline.
The best part about this problem is how easy it is to fix it! Using preflight check resources like TalentKit software, you can get your candidates aware and on track to complete tasks with just a few clicks.
Make tools like this part of your recruitment software so you are automating solutions and getting ahead of issues like this.
Get talented candidates through the door and enthusiastic about your hiring process
Yes, it is true that take-home assignments can be the cause of a lot of candidates dropping out of your process. It is also true that there are simple and effective solutions for you to prevent this from happening as often.
Let’s recap what can help you:
- Explain aspects of the test to candidates thoroughly, like privacy, evaluation, and reasoning
- Reassure candidates that take-home assignments are valued, evaluated, and their efforts will be noted
- Create tests that are balanced and consider candidates' other responsibilities
- Add preflight check tools like TalentKit to your resources