After finding your ideal hire, the worst outcome is for them to decline your offer. They might have been unhappy with the interview experience, or your competition could have got to them first. To prevent unwanted outcomes like these, it’s important to optimize your employee offer acceptance rate.
And we’re going to explore how skill tests can help you achieve this goal.
Why your offer acceptance rate is low
Offer acceptance rates can be low for a number of reasons, but here are the most common ones.
Poor candidate experience
Hunting for a job and going through the recruitment process is stressful for applicants. After their efforts, if the candidate feels their time, talent, and value aren’t appreciated, they are more likely to decline your job offer.
Roles and responsibilities weren't what they expected
In a survey by Glassdoor, 61% of recruits said that their roles and responsibilities for a new job differed from the expectations set during the interview process.
So if candidates get one impression from your interview process and a different impression from the job offer, they might decline your offer.
So, it’s important to clearly outline the role’s responsibilities and expectations beforehand.
Negative experiences with humans
According to one source, the most common reason for a candidate declining a job offer is a poor experience during the interview process. And while the candidate experience is a broad term, some applicants have a specific negative experience with humans in the interview process. They might feel a recruiter is biased, isn’t asking the right questions, or does not value their time.
You can mitigate these problems by hiring good HR personnel or training your existing team, but unfortunately, it might not be enough. Many hiring biases are unconscious, so wherever humans are involved in the interview process, errors are possible.
Slow recruiting process
Slow recruiting processes don’t only damage the candidate’s experience, but also increase the likelihood of your competition swooping in. If you’re too slow to make an offer, but your competitors aren’t, you’ll lose the best talent to them.
Unfortunately, many companies struggle to find the right middle ground between comprehensive and candidate-friendly evaluation processes. A less-thorough evaluation could provide a faster candidate experience, but your assessments may lacking, resulting in unfit hires.
Conversely, if your evaluation process is thorough and the decision-making process is lengthy, applicants may grow tired of waiting and accepting another offer.
Unreliable recruiting process
If your recruiting process is unreliable, the results are not necessarily accurate. You might end up offering a position to an applicant that has passed your checks but isn’t ideal for the role. In this case, even if the applicant accepts your offer, your organization may suffer in the long run.
Thus, it’s crucial to optimize your recruiting process and make sure evaluations are reliable. You can then confidently invest in the selected candidate by making them a compelling offer.
How skill assessment tests increase your offer acceptance rate
Skills assessment is an effective tool for increasing your offer acceptance rate because they add value to different stages of the recruiting process.
They improve the candidate experience
Skill assessments give candidates the confidence that you’re hiring based on merit, confirming that you value their skills. The tests can also be taken online, making it more convenient for candidates and eliminating the need for tedious commuting.
Objective hiring metrics are another vital way that skill assessments improve the candidate experience. Candidates appreciate knowing that your hiring decisions are objective and data-driven, and skills tests are designed to be fair with measurable results. Organizations compare candidates on their performance and scores against predefined criteria – there is no guesswork involved.
Candidates get a flavor of the role's expectations
Skill assessments align the expectations and reality of a role’s requirements. By designing a custom, role-specific skills test, you can give applicants practical insight into their working day requirements.
You can further tailor the skill tests to see how the candidates perform under time constraints, giving them a realistic idea of your workplace’s pace. Additionally, you can assess how well candidates perform in a team by leveraging team project tests or pair programming exercises (specific to tech).
Unconscious bias is minimal
We made the case earlier for the need to minimize human involvement, primarily because it introduces bias into the recruiting process. And while eliminating human involvement isn’t an option, leveraging skills assessments reduce human intervention at vital touchpoints.
So while humans can still design the custom, objective tests, organizations use automated scoring systems to reliably assess applicants. You don’t need to rely on subjective grading criteria and can compare applicants on objective metrics alone.
With a more objective recruitment process, you can improve the candidate experience and the accuracy of your hiring. Thanks to the latter, you can confidently make job offers to the best talent.
The recruiting process is streamlined and efficient
Skill assessments simplify the recruitment and hiring process through bulk technical skills testing and automated grading (provided you’re using a skill-testing platform like WeCP). Multiple candidates can take the tests simultaneously, accelerating the hiring process overall and reducing your time to hire.
With a streamlined, efficient recruiting process, employers can make hiring decisions faster and with more confidence. This means you’re not losing applicants to fast-moving competitors anymore. Additionally, candidates have a better experience because you can respond to them quickly.
Conclusion
Improving your job offer acceptance rate requires structural changes and adopting better hiring practices, but it’s an attainable goal. If you want to learn more, you might find our blog post on ‘how skills assessments secure the best talent‘ helpful.
And if you need some one-on-one insights, schedule a demo with WeCP today.
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