A message came through to me from a client seeking help with an Allied Healthcare Search, “Unfortunately our candidates have not been completing the assessments (in a timely manner) and they have been no call, no show to their interviews.”
The roles in question pay about $20/hour. According to a recent Hirehive post; Nearly half of respondents said they didn’t like the pre-hire assessment process because the process took too long (47%). An interesting insight provided by Amy Lowrey’s piece in The Atlantic titled The Time Tax, a time tax describes in part an administrative burden —a levy of paperwork, aggravation, and mental effort imposed on citizens in exchange for benefits…in this case, the benefit is the benefit to continue with an application process.
Why would that be a problem for an Allied Healthcare candidate? It makes sense that they have less time! A recent post on Econofact.org found that Allied Healthcare Workers tend to have more than one job, their jobs are in person – so they commute, their jobs are usually in a facility or hospital setting – so no way can they do things from a desk while at work, and daycare is a huge issue, so when they are home their Time is precious.
We should think of it this way if you need an assessment to reduce the number of applications you have to review, save Assessments for the second round of an interview. If you see a significant amount of your applicants are not filling out the assessment, then you are using a bad assessment, or the application process is not transparent enough.
Candidates will simply move to a one-button application process that doesn’t require a Time Tax before they interview with the company! For those that do fill out the assessment, but then do not show, that is likely because the hiring manager at your competitor responded to them faster. Remember for this group of professionals time really is money.
If nearly half of your applications are not complete, review the application and monitor how it changes when tweaked over time. We would also benefit from a survey of recently hired staff, ask them how we can improve the hiring process.
Kompendium – strategic Human Resources for small and growing businesses.
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