Ever feel like you spend more time hiring people to work than actually completing work yourself?

If so, you're not alone. We hear frequent complaints from the professionals we meet about how time-consuming recruitment is. And while the problem is worse in some industries than others, it affects every business from fast food to high-tech.

Why?

There are two primary causes.

One: For very good reason, companies invest a great deal of energy and thought into recruitment. After all, organizational performance is largely dependent on employee performance, and those workers represent a major investment. By one estimate, most companies spend approximately 70% of their operating budgets on workforce expenses.

Because the stakes are so high, it's no surprise that businesses employ a rather exhaustive process. According to the Society for Human Resource Management,

"The hiring process for most organizations encompasses multiple steps and various practices, including the use of application forms, interviews, pre-employment testing, reference and background checks, employment offers, and, in some cases, employment contracts. Finally, there is the process of organizational entry, referred to as on-boarding or orientation."

Second, recruitment is such a major time-suck because, frankly, many organizations are simply not as efficient as they could be. Take the traditional job interview. As Ben Dattner, an executive coach and organizational development consultant, wrote in the Harvard Business Review, research has found that "only one in five interviews increases the baseline odds that a hired candidate will be successful."

In other words, too many companies are stuck on a hiring hamster wheel, filling the same positions over and over again.

Invest in Knowledge

That's certainly the case when it comes to hiring.

Perhaps the most valuable piece of knowledge you can obtain about job candidates is an understanding of who they are, beyond their work history and skill set. What truly motivates them? What kind of work ethic do they possess? What kind of work environment suits them best?

With such knowledge, the opportunities to save time without sacrificing the integrity or quality of the process are numerous. For example, there's no reason to start your interviews with job seekers whose personalities are poorly aligned with the daily demands of a job or who are not well-suited to your organizational culture. If you need to hire dozens of high-energy "people persons" for customer service jobs, you'll save time by focusing first on candidates whose high extraversion makes draw satisfaction from engaging with people throughout the work day. Likewise, extraverts who will have to work in solitary environments might not be happy, nor will you likely be happy with them. Taking these important personality factors into account can promote wellness for everyone by avoiding mismatches that become challenging not only for managers, but for the poorly-matched workers themselves.

That's the kind of insight that will reveal itself through a good personality assessment. Not only that, the assessment results will help you get much more out of the interview. You'll go into that meeting with some of the knowledge you had previously sought through verbal questioning. Plus you can ask more informed questions that focus right away on the personality dimensions of highest importance for the role.

There are other potential unexpected benefits from personality data. For example, let's say you have an applicant who applied for one job, but you believe she is a better personality fit for a different opening that you have that requires a similar skill set. Would you have known that without the assessment? Sure, you could have arrived at this during the interview. But now you can come to the meeting prepared to discuss this possibility right away.

All of these time savings add up - and in more ways than the one I just covered.

By improving your success rate of identifying and hiring good fits, you'll almost certainly see less turnover. Engaged, fulfilled workers are more likely to stay on board longer, reducing your need to regularly find replacements.

Millennials are quickly becoming the largest active segment of the workforce. They, and the upcoming Gen Z, don't like the laborious, time-consuming hiring process any more than you do. In fact, they'll look for a lower barrier to employment entry if they deem yours too high.

That's why a mobile-friendly assessment that requires only about two minutes to take will substantially increase your completion rate, and therefore your pool of talent.

We've seen all kinds of companies make great use of personality assessments, saving them time and the trouble of having to sift through applications on a near-constant basis. Just request a demo to see how our own unique visual personality assessment can help.