What is a Talent Assessment Tool?

Making the wrong talent decisions can be quite costly for organizations. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) estimates that a bad hire or promotion decision can cost 6 to 9 months of an employee’s salary. Unfortunately for talent acquisition and talent management functions, there are many factors that determine whether an employee will be successful or not. Because of this, they often turn to talent assessment tools to take as much guessing out of the process as possible. These tools are instrumental resources that unlock insights into candidates’ and employees’ skills, abilities, and potential compatibility within organizations. By leveraging these insights, employers can make more informed and positively impactful talent decisions.

What are Talent Assessment Tools?

Talent assessment tools are any software or applications designed to measure and evaluate various aspects of an individual's skills, abilities, and potential in a work environment. They provide organizations with valuable insights into the capabilities and suitability of candidates or current employees for specific roles or responsibilities.

The goal of using a talent assessment tool is to secure the right fit between individuals and their job roles. Through these tools, companies can make informed decisions about recruitment, talent development, and talent mobility (i.e., job changes and succession planning).

Talent assessment tools provide several advantages to organizations. They help identify how individuals align with the necessary skills and attributes for a particular job. This allows businesses to streamline their recruitment process, save resources by focusing on the most promising candidates, and identify areas for development among existing employees. This information can be used to develop personalized coaching plans, leadership development programs, or mentoring opportunities, leading to improved performance and employee satisfaction.

Talent Assessment Tool Features

Talent assessment tools systematically measure the knowledge, skills, abilities, and/or preferences of people based on what is related to job success. Let’s look at the main features of high-quality talent-assessment tools:

Systematic measurement – This means that talent assessment tools should capture information about people in a way that is planful and consistent. This is important because it helps create an even playing field and makes it more likely the tool will yield trustworthy results.

Job-relatedness – In order for a talent assessment tool to be useful, it should measure something related to job success. For example, imagine a sophisticated device designed to measure running speed. While this device would likely be useful for assessing athletes, it wouldn’t help at all in assessing talent for a desk job. The job-relatedness of a talent assessment tool is typically helped by a process known as job analysis. In a job analysis, the various duties and expectations for a job are looked at and the things required to fulfil each duty and expectation are determined. Then, talent assessment tools are chosen or created to measure these things.

Knowledge, skills, abilities, and/or preferences – These are all the things that people carry in their heads that influence the type of work they will enjoy and be good at. Talent assessment tools often focus on one or more of these things to help leaders and talent professionals make more informed talent decisions. Sometimes these decisions relate to whether to hire or promote a person; sometimes they relate to identifying the training or development needs of the person.

• Knowledge – Learned information a person needs to possess in order to do their job. For example, a phlebotomist needs to know proper blood drawing techniques, and a retail worker needs to know how to operate a point of sale machine. Some talent assessment tools are designed to measure how much job-specific knowledge a person possesses, often to identify the amount and type of training they need.
• Skills – Learned capabilities people use to perform a job. For example, call center workers often use computer skills to quickly navigate between different software systems while speaking with customers. Some talent assessment tools measure the level of skills a person possesses, sometimes to determine if the person is qualified to be hired and often to determine the training needs of the person.
• Abilities – Lasting capabilities that enable or help a person to do a job. For example, an engineer needs to be able to quickly process numbers, while a warehouse worker might need to be able to easily lift and carry heavy loads. Since abilities take a long time to develop, talent assessment tools that focus on measuring abilities are most often used as part of the hiring process.
• Preferences – Lasting interests, motivations, and values people have that determine the type of work they will most enjoy. For example, many salespeople enjoy competition and seek opportunities to feel that they have won, and nurses tend to feel a sense of service and be drawn to opportunities to help others. Like abilities, preferences tend to change very little over the course of a person’s career. For this reason, talent assessment tools focused on measuring preferences tend to be used most often as part of the hiring process. However, they can also be quite useful in helping identify why a person might be struggling in a certain area of work.

How do Talent Assessment Tools Improve Talent Decisions?

Employing a talent assessment tool can significantly boost the quality of talent decisions. These tools are designed to help organizations assess individuals’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and/or potential accurately; align them with the requirements and demands of job roles; and reduce bias through objective evaluation.

Evaluating individuals’ knowledge, skills, abilities, and preferences accurately is a crucial part of any talent evaluation process. Traditional methods, such as resumes and interviews and even supervisor judgment, may not provide a holistic picture of a person’s capabilities. However, a talent assessment tool can evaluate individuals based on a more complete view of their talents, tendencies, and preferences. This objective evaluation helps ensure that talent decisions are made with as much information as possible.

A key benefit of talent assessment tools is the ability to align individuals to the requirements and demands that will be placed on them in specific job roles. By objective assessment methods, organizations can gain valuable insights into a person’s fit to a specific role. This comprehensive evaluation of alignment and potential equips organizations to make informed decisions by understanding where a person will likely succeed and where they may experience obstacles. Organizations are better suited to support their employees when they can predict potential pitfalls and prepare accordingly. 

Moreover, talent assessment tools play a significant role in reducing bias in talent processes. By relying on objective evaluations, these tools mitigate subjective judgments that can be influenced by personal biases. By contrast, common tools such as resumes and interviews provide distracting information, such as candidates’ appearance, address, and where they went to school, rather than simply how likely a person is to succeed in a given role. Well-constructed talent assessment tools promote fairness by ensuring that individuals are evaluated solely based on their qualifications and abilities. 

In summary, a talent assessment tool is a valuable resource for organizations aiming to enhance the quality of their talent decisions. By accurately measuring individuals’ talents, preferences, and tendencies to better align people with roles and reducing bias in the process, these tools empower organizations to make informed decisions and build high-performing teams – all of which are contributing factors to your bottom line.

The Infor Talent Science Assessment Tool

When it comes to talent assessment tools, Infor Talent Science stands out from the crowd. Our innovative tool is designed to help businesses streamline their talent processes and make more informed decisions about the selection, development, and growth of their talent. Here are some unique features and advantages that set our talent assessment tool apart:

Comprehensive Assessment: The Infor Talent Science assessment is primarily focused on ability and preferences. Specifically, it measures cognitive ability and a set of 24 different motivations, interests, and values related to work. We chose to focus on these areas because they are the most difficult for leaders and talent professionals to learn about without the help of an assessment and they remain important for employees’ full careers.

Advanced Analytics: Our talent assessment tool utilizes advanced analytics to provide in-depth insights into candidates’ and employees’ abilities and work preferences, as well as how they uniquely align with the demands and expectations of jobs in your organization. You can easily interpret the assessment results and make actionable decisions, saving you valuable time and resources.

Tailored Assessment: We understand that every organization has unique jobs, demands, and culture. This is why we use a patented Custom Performance Profile creation process to statistically identify and maximize the relationship between success on the job and each of the ability and preference factors measured using our assessment tool. This leads to a better alignment of talent to jobs and better business results. 

With the Infor Talent Science talent assessment tool, you can make smarter talent decisions and create lifelong talent journeys for your team.