You’ve been searching for a candidate for months. Your job spec is well-written, you’re selling your company to the candidates, but the candidates aren’t quite hitting the mark. They’re either too junior, too expensive, or just not that excited about your company.
And suddenly that singing, dancing unicorn finally presents itself. You find a candidate who is within budget, very keen on your opportunity, and sold herself to the moon & back in the interviews. Now they just need to complete a psychometric assessment (as a formality) since HR now requires everyone to do them before joining.
This happened recently. A client with a tough role came to us with a couple of caveats that took out about 85-90% of the talent pool for this skillset, including it being a 6-month independent contract. They also only wanted people who were immediately available.
The unicorn meets the process
After sending about 10 candidates, we found the one. Nailed the interviews and immediately available as she’d recently been retrenched. And just when it seemed solved, the process got in the way… then the top-down mandate landed. All candidates, regardless of the vacancy, now need to go through psychometric testing before being considered for roles.
For reference, an independent contractor is not an employee, they are not joining the company even if they get the role. They’re specialists providing hourly consulting services on a fixed-term basis (6 months, in this example). They’re being parachuted in to deliver, then move on six months later.
So this candidate goes through 9 hours of psychometric testing. We’re assured it’s no more than a formality. The manager has already said that she really likes the candidate and wants her onboard but must follow the process as it comes straight from the company’s HR Director.
And then the email comes through: please decline the candidate based on the psychometric results. No specific reason as to why they’re declining or what the candidate could possibly have done in the 9 hours of testing that deterred the company.
Process over people
Psychometric tests exist to provide insight into how someone thinks, how they’ll respond to environments, and essentially how to get the best out of them. All of these are long-term benefits, and I may be impatient but, even in my head, 6 months isn’t a long time. While it can be argued that there’s a time and a place for this form of testing, the bigger issue here is hiring managers/HR departments using it as a form of risk management and unfairly declining candidates based on their results.
The real cost of ‘the process’
The client is now going to miss deadlines for the next few months. Their work is responsible for hundreds of thousands of people’s financial health; do you think my client’s clients care about whether a delivery team member liked red instead of blue? Red means the candidate must get angry when things don’t go her way, but blue must mean they’ll calmly fix the problem, right?
So now we have a resource who would have been parachuted in and would have delivered from day one. This person has over 15 years of industry experience, an amazing track record, is highly qualified, and is now still unemployed. Mind you, this resource wouldn’t have been a team member in legal terms, and the contract terms allow either party to terminate on short notice without a reason. So the risk has already been managed.
When process replaces judgment, great people slip through the cracks. When great people slip through the cracks, deadlines get missed. Clients cancel contracts, and the domino effect begins. ‘Testing’ someone so easily becomes an unfair test. What if their car broke down before they started their psychometric test? What if English isn’t their first language?
In recruitment, the process should enable better decisions, not replace them. Somewhere between compliance and common sense, we’ve lost sight of why we hire in the first place.
The takeaway
Hiring decisions should be made by those who understand the real impact of not hiring (not those who simply fear making a mistake).
The best leaders know when to trust data, when to trust people, and when to trust their own judgment. Because at the end of the day, the best hire isn’t the one who scores perfectly on a test, it’s the one who gets the job done.