At this point, it should come as no surprise: The COVID-19 health crisis has changed the business and talent acquisition landscape indefinitely. From the normalization of remote working to the sudden acceleration in the adoption of digital hiring solutions, recruiting and hiring looks far different in 2021 than it did in the days before the onset of the pandemic.

Keep up with today’s tidal wave of innovation in the talent acquisition space. Below we share the latest insights and best practices for hiring in 2021.

Top Employers Move Toward Skills-Based Hiring

Today, leading organizations are moving away from rigid prerequisites for positions and rapidly shifting toward skills-based hiring. Employment skills assessment tests that leverage recent advancements in automation and predictive analytics have improved the accuracy of skills identification. Thanks to these technology-powered job skills tests, skills-based hiring is increasingly used as a replacement for using academic degrees as a way of evaluating candidates’ job fit.

Using skills assessment tests to identify qualified candidates opens the door to a much larger talent pool. Too often, candidates with the potential to succeed in a role are overlooked or never even seen because they do not fit the "perfect candidate profile." Perhaps they do not have the required education credentials, or maybe they do not have what traditionally has been considered the necessary work experience. For whatever reason, there is a pool of skilled workers who have been forgotten by the majority of employers for some time.

As IBM and many other industry giants have proven, a skills-based approach to hiring is a far better predictor of on-the-job success than relying on subjective measures of fit like a college degree or work history. These leading organizations have dropped traditional prerequisites for most of their positions. Instead, they now rely on job skills tests to verify job-relevant competencies.

Bolster and Leverage Remote Hiring Capabilities

The shift toward skills-based hiring is increasingly driven by the sudden move to remote hiring. At a time when many organizations have begun hiring either entirely, or at least in part, remotely, implementing a skills-based hiring method has become simplified. When organizations partner with online job skills testing providers, they can quickly assess job-relevant skills remotely. eSkill, a leading pre-employment testing provider, offers a suite of cloud-based candidate screening solutions that organizations can use to accurately and rapidly hire highly skilled employees.

Include these three tech-driven tools in your 2021 hiring strategy for a streamlined and effective approach to identifying top talent:

1. Pre-Employment Skills Assessment Tests: Research shows that using pre-employment skills assessment tests increases the likelihood of hiring the right candidate by 30%. Configure a skills-based pre-employment test to align with the required competencies of any job across industries. eSkill provides hiring teams with the most extensive library of customizable job skills tests in the HR industry.

On eSkill’s user-friendly platform, hiring teams can select, customize, and automatically administer job-relevant Skills Tests to every applicant. The results of eSkill's pre-employment assessments provide employers with the quantifiable data needed to make efficient and accurate hiring decisions.

2. Video Interviewing Platform: eSkill’s on-demand video interviewing platform enables hiring teams to put the interviewing process on autopilot. It eliminates the need to schedule interviews, sends automated notifications to candidates and recruiters, and keeps hiring managers and recruiters notified about the status of each candidate.

eSkill’s cutting-edge on-demand video interviewing software allows hiring teams to streamline the interview process. On-demand video interviews do not require a member of the hiring team to be present. Instead, candidates self-record responses to a predetermined set of questions. In addition to saving time, an on-demand interview provides consistency. When candidates view prerecorded questions, the wording and the order never change. This standardized process provides the framework for a more structured and objective assessment of candidates’ responses.

eSkill’s on-demand video interviewing platform provides employers with the tools needed to accurately and consistently grade candidates’ responses. Hiring teams can choose to utilize either the Simple Scoring feature or the Team Scoring feature. Using the Simple Scoring feature, any member of the hiring team can rate candidate responses on a scale of 1 to 10 stars, with the option to add a comment for context.

On the other hand, the Team Scoring feature provides hiring teams with a more robust process for evaluating interviews. When using the Team Scoring feature, multiple members of the hiring team can score the same interviews with the option to add more than one scoring criteria per question. A designated administrator then approves the reviewers' scores, and eSkill automatically averages the scores to produce a final total.

3. Applicant Tracking System: eSkill’s intuitive platform easily integrates with existing applicant tracking systems (ATS) and learning management systems (LMS). eSkill’s end-to-end integration capabilities enable hiring teams to manage the entire hiring process from one application seamlessly.

eSkill's customizable job skills tests, on-demand video interviews, and ATS integration capabilities give hiring teams the tools to create a streamlined and accurate evaluation of candidates even when working remotely. As we enter a new era of hiring, make sure your organization is adopting the latest hiring solutions.

Interested in Using Skills Assessment Tests for Hiring?

Learn more about the benefits of using eSkill’s customizable job skills tests, behavioural assessments, and on-demand video interviewing platform to find qualified candidates quickly.

Request a demo today.