In today’s competitive labour markets, studies show that the best candidates go off the market in 10 days, while it takes 27 working days to recruit a new hire. Assessments make candidate evaluation reliable, structured, and transparent, helping organisations on-board employees who are the right fit for the culture and growth needs of the organisation. It also reduces evaluation cycle time, minimizes human errors, and frees up the bandwidth of your HR team for more important tasks.

Considering the tight job market, the security of the assessment process is becoming even more important as fraudulent practices can result in poor quality hires and lower productivity. At the same time, it is important to keep region-specific challenges of digital assessment top of mind. For instance, the number of candidates applying for job openings in India is considerably larger compared to those in other parts of the world. Take the case of two of the world’s largest recruitment examinations held by the Indian Railways recently to fill over 18,000 vacancies. An astounding 96 lakh applicants submitted their candidature. How do you ensure digital evaluation security in such contexts?

A well-designed assessment solution combined with a proctored environment is the answer

Organisations are struggling to find the right balance between automation and ‘control’ over the assessment process with security and the candidate experience as key concerns. The evolution of digital assessment solutions makes finding the balance even trickier as they typically pose more questions than answers. A fully-automated solution that is effective for all scenarios is yet to be available. Remote assessments improve candidate convenience, but they can be used for potentially fraudulent behaviour. It is critical to design a solution by first defining the objectives of the assessment to ensure that the right balance is achieved.

A digital assessment solution should offer the following features to enhance convenience while ensuring security and reducing fraud across the testing life-cycle – from development to administration and storage of test items:

• Flexible assessment mechanism that helps define the right test delivery mode – classroom or remote.
• Flexible candidate authentication based on what is most appropriate for the testing organisation.
• Encryption and decryption of question documents and password-restricted access with centralised monitoring of workflows.
• Data analytics to improve the quality of assessments based on ‘item analysis’ and to enable detection of fraud for advanced assessment organisations.
• Digital self-service assessment to conduct assessments for virtually all hiring with anytime, anywhere access for candidates.

The right digital assessment solution enhances security and reduces cost of talent acquisition

A digital assessment system supplemented by the right design and appropriate level of human intervention minimizes the chances of hiring the wrong candidate and the resulting performance issues. Such a system provides candidates with secure access to assessments as well as hiring managers with the relevant evaluation and candidate data at the right time, while significantly reducing the evaluation cycle time. The result: simplified, cost effective, secure, and error-free online testing to significantly reduce your cost of talent acquisition.