Employee Profiling: Everything You Need to Know!

While searching for talent, recruiters find candidates who have great qualifications on paper that may not translate to a good job. At the same time, they may find a real talent hidden in the paperwork that they didn’t look through. In an interview, technical interview questions may help you gauge a candidate’s expertise in the domain. But it will not let you know how the person will work in a team. The solution to this issue is employee profiling.

What is Employee Profiling?

Employee profiling is a method that is used during the hiring process to identify the right candidates for a particular job profile. You can do this profiling process with new candidates or existing employees. For the employee profiling process to be successful, the evaluation process needs to be fair and unprejudiced. This method of shortlisting candidates or identifying talent has come under the microscope many times. It is because a lot of people feel that such a profiling method is invasive. Sometimes, if the candidates are familiar with the tests and the kind of results you’re looking for, the answers can be faked. So, at the end of the day, you will not get the kind of candidates you’re looking for. That’s why many companies prefer to use third-party platforms and solutions for unbiased employee profiling.

Employee Profiling Tools

These tools help evaluate if a candidate matches the requirements for a job profile. A few of the commonly used employee profiling tools are

Psychometric Tests

These tests are designed to profile a candidate’s behavioural style and mental capabilities. Psychometric tests also evaluate a candidate’s cognitive skills to check if they match the job requirements. These assessment tests also give you an idea, if the candidates will work well with their team members.

Personality Tests

One kind of personality test is where a candidate rates himself/herself based on the statement or question. Another kind of personality test involves giving a situation and asking the candidate to respond. These tests will give recruiters a better idea of the candidate’s personality and if he/she will be the right fit for the role.

Social media profiling

Many recruiters find that it is easier to know more about a candidate on his/her social profile. However, there could be privacy invasion problems in using this profiling method. So, it is not very recommended.

How to do Employee Profiling?

You’ve received a request for candidates for a particular role. The steps of employee profiling are:

1.Understand the role and its requirements

Before you start looking for candidates for a particular role, it is extremely important to first understand the skill and ability requirements for the role. The manager would have given you a job profile. But you need to analyse the profile and see how the requirements translate to skills, abilities, and capabilities.

2. Check your internal team to check if there are any matches

First, check to see if there are any current employees who may be a perfect fit for the new opening. If you have already conducted psychometric and cognitive tests in your organisation, then you can use those results to see if there’s a match. Else, now would be a good time to conduct these online assessments. If you don’t want to do it for everyone in the company, you can let the employees know about the opening and ask interested ones to take up the tests.

3. Share the requirement on job posting sites

If you’re not able to find the best match internally, go ahead and share the requirement for the new position on online job posting sites. You need to create a profile that includes qualifications and expectations.

4. Create an online assessment test

Once you post the requirement online, you may get hundreds of responses. Ask candidates whose profiles meet your basic requirements to take up an online assessment. Psychometric and personality tests will give you a fair assessment of the candidate’s profile. These tests will give you more information about candidates than what you can garner from the resume.

5. Set up an interview

Shortlist candidates who meet the criteria for the job profile based on the results of the assessments. Call these candidates for an interview, maybe online or in person. Preferably ask open-ended questions that will allow the candidate to talk more about their experience, skills and abilities.

When to do Employee Profiling?

• When you’re hiring candidates for a new opening
• When you’re looking to promote an employee
• When you’re looking for an internal transfer

Benefits of Employee Profiling

• Find the best candidate for the job profile
• Makes your hiring process more effective and successful
• Improves efficiency as you have the right candidates for the job
• Enables unbiased and unprejudiced hiring

Drawbacks of using Employee Profiling

• Could be an invasion of privacy
• Answers may be faked, so you won’t get the right results
• Using only one profiling method or the wrong profiling tool may not give you the desired results

Conclusion

There’s the good and the bad of using employee profiling to identify the right talent. It is important for organisations to toe the line between profiling and privacy invasion. If you are able to find this balance, then you will definitely find the best talent for your team. Else, you will have to keep going back to your search for the right candidate. The best solution is to use profiling tests and tools prepared by experts of an external agency. You will then get unbiased and reliable results. MeritTrac is an online platform that offers assessment solutions for recruitment, domain assessment and workforce development. Leave an enquiry to know more about the assessment and employee profiling tools of MeritTrac.