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Hiring tools to help you and your team hire smarter

Hiring decisions can be costly. You need more to go on than a few interviews and simple affirmations from a candidate’s references. We help you get data-driven, insight on a candidate’s past performance on the skills and competencies that matter for the job.

Here’s a snapshot example of the report from the SkillSurvey Reference Pre-Hire 360 workflow. It helps recruiters and hiring managers better understand their job candidates and there are additional hiring tools we to prep for interviews and compare candidates at a glance.

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Predictive talent analytics

When you interview references, you’re often left with more questions than answers. With SkillSurvey, you get more reliable data through online surveys designed by our I/O psychologists. The surveys are job-specific covering competencies and critical soft skills. 85% of references typically respond and complete the online survey, and most do in under 2 days.

And that leads to one of the most critical parts in the report. We call it “Predictive Analytics” because our research indicates that this data is predictive of whether a candidate will have a successful first year on the job.

  • Overall Rating Across All References
  • 85% Reference Response Rate (4 of 5 References responded)

Surveying the skills that matter

We present a summary of the references’ ratings for each of the job specific behavioral competency areas:
Managers Only
All References
  • Professionalism
6.6
6.7
  • Interpersonal Skills
6.8
6.9
  • Problem Solving and Adaptability
6.9
6.8
  • Personal Value Commitment
6.9
7
Related reading: See our data-driven hiring eBook to learn what’s behind these numbers

Reference feedback is confidential

That makes them more comfortable providing honest and objective feedback. With the SkillSurvey Reference Pre-Hire 360 workflow, no one can see an individual reference’s ratings, and we group the ratings by relationships.

Candid feedback

But the report doesn’t simply tap the quantitative ratings data. Candid comments in response to open-ended questions on strengths and areas of improvement can be invaluable, too.

Strengths:

Kathryn is extremely dependable with no issues with tardiness or absenteeism.
Her attention to detail is very strong!
Extremely customer driven. She developed a loyal customer base who were willing to wait specifically for her.

Could Improve:

Remember that everyone’s mood is contagious – good and bad!
Not always as confident in her abilities as she should be.
Express concerns before they have time to build up. Tends to hold in and tries to deal with it on her own.

Would you work with this person again?

What could be more straightforward – and revealing – than the response to: “Would you work with this person again?
83.3% responded “Yes”

5/6 or 83.3% of references responded “yes” when asked if he or she would work with this person again.

16.7% responded “No”

1/6 or 16.7% of references responded “no” when asked if he or she would work with this person again.

What else do we report?

Plenty.

A candidate’s success in a position is based on many factors. We break them down to four key Competency Clusters and give you feedback for each:

1. Professionalism
2. Interpersonal Skills
3. Personal Value Commitment
4. Problem Solving and Adaptability
A) Gather information from relevant sources to effectively resolve problems
B) Make high quality decisions based upon facts and business priorities
C) Tailor recommendations of company products and services
Related reading: See how we assess the soft skills that relate to job success
For management or leadership roles, there are two additional competency areas:
1. Leadership
2. Managing Others
A) Build a strong and diverse team by continually attracting and selecting competent and talented people
B) Provide important and challenging projects to enhance team member’s development
Different positions and industries require different sets of skills and competencies (we have hundreds of job-specific surveys):
This one’s for a sales manager:
Consistently meet or exceed sales goals
And this is for a registered nurse:
Stay up-to-date with trends and apply this to the job

Checks and balances

Our software pinpoints attempts to ‘game’ the system. We flag duplicate or matching IP addresses; it’s a fraud protection process we suggest our recruiting and hiring managers pay attention to.

Hiring tools to prep for interviews and easily compare candidates

Our Hiring Manager Summary provides behavior-based interview questions that guide the candidate to relate to real-life situations that demonstrate their ability to perform on the job.
Tell me about a time when you reviewed someone’s work, and found it to be unsatisfactory. What did you do?
The Candidate Comparison Report consolidates reference feedback for all candidates applying to your open position, so pinpoint your top contenders at a glance.
  • Sandy Smith
  • Patrick Thomas
  • Nancy Adams

View a sample report

SkillSurvey offers hundreds of job-specific surveys for roles of every type which provide feedback on the critical soft skills and core competencies that are the true predictors of job success.

Select from one of the sample reports to see what kind of feedback you can get from a data-driven, predictive approach to reference checking.

Please get in touch to see our full survey library or if you’d like to view a sample report not listed here!

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