Engagement Is Visible!

Posted in Hirepayoff News

“Candidates who score higher on the Eager to Engage employment test have a better chance of impressing a manager enough to get hired,” says Dr. David Jones.

January 28, 2014 – Recently, Dr. David Jones, author of Million-Dollar Hire: Building Your Bottom Line, One Employee at a Time, and founder of HirePayoff™, described how using the firm’s Eager to Engage employment testing tool to find employees with high levels of engagement can reduce the effort needed to grow engagement. (See Engagement is Predictable! and Finding the Right Candidate Reduces an Employer’s Cost of Growing Employee Engagement.)

Jones described how the HirePayoff™ online employment test’s Eager to Engage scale screens candidates to predict both employee engagement levels and on-the-job performance. “Using data collected from tens of thousands of candidates, as well as engagement and performance data collected from thousands of new hires, the Eager to Engage scale is based on hard data, rather than theory and opinion,” says Jones>

Recently, we found the Eager to Engage scale predicts something entirely new… who gets hired,” adds Jones. Working with recruiting and employment outsourcing company (RPO), the HirePayoff™ online screening test was used to pre-screen candidates for retail store positions; mainly sales associates. All candidates were held to HirePayoff™ qualifying standards before the RPO reached out to execute its interviews, complete reference checks, and decide whether each candidate would be forwarded for final client interviews and hiring decisions.

“In addition to finding top-performing new hires, RPOs and their clients, drive for efficiency,” says Jones. Sending too many candidates who end up being rejected by the employer doesn’t help an RPO’s reputation. Interviewing and rejecting high
percentages of candidates wastes an employer’s time. Pre-screening needs to help both parties ‘find hits’ and ‘avoid misses’ from the very start,” says Jones.

As part of the HirePayoff™ commitment to data analytics and continuous improvement in driving employer efficiency, steps were taken to explore how the HirePayoff™ assessment scores might improve the ‘hit rate’ in forwarding candidates for employer interviews. “This is where analyzing candidate scores on the Eager to Engage scale showed that a candidate’s inclination to bring employee engagement to the job actually appears to be ‘visible’ during the employer interview,” says Jones.

“We reviewed more than 1,100 candidates who met the HirePayoff™ qualifying standards, succeeded in their RPO interviews, and were forwarded for employer interviews and hiring decisions,” says Jones. “None of the Eager to Engage assessment scores were shared with the employer prior to their interviews,” Jones adds.

“When we examined final employer decisions, the finding was clear, statistically significant, and laid the path for a solid improvement in hiring efficiency,” says Jones. Candidates who scored in about the top one-third on the Eager to Engage scale were more than 20 percent more likely to receive an employment offer.

In effect, qualities measured by the Eager to Engage scale appear to actually ‘be visible,’ and impressive, during the employer interview. “Bottom line – the Eager to Engage scale not only predicts a new hire’s job performance and future level of employee engagement, it actually predicts who the employer is most likely to hire!” says Jones.

“With this knowledge, the RPO screens candidates more efficiently prior to choosing which to send for final employer interviews. The goal – raise the employer’s ‘hit rate’ in making employment offers by more than 20 percent! Pretty important, when thousands are interviewed every year,” Jones adds.

“This is clearly a ‘one plus one equals three’ finding,” says Jones. “Based on hard, analytic data, we can screen candidates more efficiently, both we and our clients can save time interviewing and, with higher Eager to Engage scores, those hired will even perform better. That’s what drives success,” Jones adds.

About HirePayoff™

David Jones, PhD, author of Million-Dollar Hire: Building Your Bottom Line, One Employee at a Time, published in April, 2011 by Jossey-Bass, is among the few Business Psychology professionals to found and grow a major international consulting and HR recruitment and selection process outsourcing business. Today,
Jones is president of Growth Ventures Inc., whose HirePayoff™ division works with employers to tap candidates’ ‘Can Do / Will Do’ competencies. HirePayoff™ helps companies re-invent their online recruiting and hiring process. The target – find new hires with employee engagement, strong performance, solid retention, and bottom-line drive. All HirePayoff™ online recruitment and selection tools are supported by sound test validation and uniquely driven by Six Sigma continuous improvement. For more information, visit www.hirepayoff.com.

Media Contact:

Dr. David Jones
President & CEO
HirePayoff™
231-675-1500
davejones@hirepayoff.com