Automated Assessments for Better Hires

Automated pre-employment screening tests provide a variety of efficiencies,saving time and money in comparison to the traditional pencil-and-paper route.They can also reduce the expense of high turnover by helping to determine whowill do well in a particular job on the front end of the interviewing process.The assessment capabilities can be used as well to size up the existingworkforce for the purposes of team-building.

The large company in our case study, Capital One (more than 17,000employees), moved to online testing mostly in response to the logistical demandsof staffing its 8,000 call-center operator positions.

For the small company, City Garage (under 500), and the medium one, NewHorizons Computer Learning Centers, the main benefit is analyzing applicants tomake smarter hires. (Typically, a medium-sized company is categorized as 500 to5,000 employees.

We fudged a little with New Horizons: it has 7,000 employees worldwide, with1,109 in the United States.)

Workforce, December 2000, Volume 79, Number 12,p. 102 SubscribeNow!