3 Reasons to Use Skills Assessment Testing to Drive Diversity in Hiring

Research has clearly established the benefits that organizations reap from diversity, including broader perspectives, more thoughtful decision-making, and even better bottom lines, according to research from McKinsey. But how can you effectively increase diversity in hiring so you can build a better company? 

The answer is with skills assessments. Here are the top reasons you should use skills assessment testing to increase diversity in your hiring process. 

1. Skills Assessment Testing Reduces Implicit Bias 

As humans, we naturally gravitate toward people who are similar to us, which is a tendency called implicit bias. In the hiring process, this tendency has obvious downsides for diversity, which is why using skills assessment testing is helpful. 

With skills assessments, you’re not choosing candidates based on their previous experience or education, which can simply translate to them attending the same schools or working at the same companies as everyone else in your organization. You can hire people instead based purely on the skills they possess that are critical in their new role. 

2. It Increases Fairness in the Hiring Process 

A typical interview process is often the enemy of diversity in hiring. Hiring managers and recruiters ask questions that follow from the natural flow of an interview conversation, and so all candidates for a role might be asked very different questions. That’s why bias-free tools like structured interviews and skills assessment testing can bring more fairness to your hiring process. 

Standard assessment tests mean all candidates for a role will be evaluated based on the same criteria because they’re answering the same questions. And you can more clearly evaluate the applicants side-by-side since they all were asked the same questions on the skills test. 

And increased fairness also provides a better candidate experience for your applicants, even if they ultimately don’t get the role. Another very human trait is our love of fairness—it feels better to be rejected from a role because there was an objectively better-qualified candidate in a fair hiring process rather than losing out to someone who only shares the same alma mater with their interviewer. 

3. It Widens the Candidate Pool 

If you’re using the right kind of skills assessment testing tool, you can even use these tests to widen your potential candidate pool. (And in such a tough hiring environment, that’s especially critical.) How? Because you can use the results of assessment tests from one position across all your open roles. 

With Cangrade’s skills assessment tests, for example, your applicant for one role will take a skills test and you can cross-check their skills automatically against the skills needed in any of your open positions. You might uncover a candidate who applied for one job but is actually better-suited for a different role, and can easily get the right candidate into both of the positions with just one test. 

Since people from underrepresented groups may be less likely to apply for positions they don’t think they’re qualified for, a traditional hiring process may cause your organization and your applicants to miss out on the perfect fit. Skills assessment tests bridge this common gap and widen your applicant pool to everyone who is truly qualified, leading to more diverse and better-fitting hires. 

Try it for yourself—explore Cangrade’s talent screening and hiring solutions today!