Lengthy Assessments only Put-Off the Lowest Performers

Candidate attrition is the bane of HR professionals world-wide. Nothing is more frustrating than losing high potential candidates, especially after investing significant time and effort into attracting them.

Therefore, it’s no surprise that HR professionals can be apprehensive about adding online assessments to their selection processes.

That being said, the benefits of online assessments are numerous. Ability tests, personality questionnaires, and situational judgement tests predict real-world workplace performance, and rank among the most powerful tools available in recruitment (McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel & Grubb, 2007; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998).

These benefits are tremendous to employing organisations, but if these tools cause high-potential candidates to drop out, their real-world utility will be limited.

However, recent research into this topic has reached two fascinating conclusions,

1)     Lengthy assessment processes do not cause greater attrition than shorter ones, and

2)     Of those who do drop out, they are disproportionately the lowest performers.

But why would this be the case, and how can HR professionals use this to their advantage?

Assessment Process Length and Attrition

Common sense suggests that longer assessment processes should see greater levels of attrition. But the evidence in fact shows the opposite. A 2017 study (Hardy, Gibson, Sloan & Carr, 2017) showed that longer assessment processes actually show lower levels of attrition than shorter ones after controlling for extraneous variables.

Moreover, of those who do drop out, they almost always do so during the first 20 minutes of the process, and thus would likely have dropped out regardless of the process’s length. There are some possible explanations for this observation.

Firstly, selection processes with more assessments are perceived as fairer, as they give candidates multiple opportunities to perform. This provides a compensatory effect, whereby candidates will persist with the selection process even if they feel that a specific assessment has gone badly.

Another explanation is the so called “sunk-cost fallacy”. Candidates that consider dropping out after committing significant time may think to themselves “Well, I have made it this far, I may as well finish”. As a result, the longer the assessment process, the more compelled they feel to finish the process and justify their initial effort.

Research shows that lengthy assessment processes aren’t detrimental when preserving applicant pools.

Whatever the reason, this research shows that lengthy assessment processes aren’t detrimental when preserving applicant pools. Indeed, there seems to be a slight advantage to having longer assessment processes, which show less attrition than shorter ones.

Attrition Among Low Performers

A 2021 study (Hardy, Gibson, Carr & Dudley, 2021) suggests that specifically the lowest performers are more likely to drop out. This finding is particularly important to HR professionals designing selection processes because in reality candidate attrition only matters if high potential candidates are de-selecting themselves.

Since low-performers will be rejected eventually anyway, it may be preferable for them to de-select themselves early on, saving everyone (including themselves) considerable time, effort, and expense. But why do low performers (and not high performers) disproportionately drop out of selection processes?

One answer is the ability to identify criteria (ATIC), defined as an individual's ability to accurately perceive performance criteria in evaluative situations (Kleinmann et al., 2011). During the assessment itself, if candidates realise they do not have the requisite abilities, traits, or knowledge for the role, this may reduce motivation to take part.

Similarly, low performers might abandon their assessments due to frustration. Research suggests that perceived difficulty is an important predictor of candidate experience (Hong, 1999), and low performers often find even simple assessments to be excessively difficult. As a result, low performing candidates may miss questions, make random guesses, and get frustrated, which culminates in them “rage-quitting” the assessment process.

Lastly, low performers could be prone to giving up on tasks in general. Research shows the personality trait of conscientiousness to be ubiquitously relevant to workplace performance (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998) and is thus commonly included in selection processes. People who lack conscientiousness may have difficulty with motivation, self-discipline, and persistence, and generally give up on tasks sooner (Sansone, Wiebe & Morgan, 1999). This tallies with the traditional HR maxim which holds that “If they can’t be bothered to complete the assessment, they probably wouldn’t have made a good employee anyway! “.

Conclusion

The realisations that A) assessment length doesn’t negatively impact attrition rates, and B) It’s the lowest performers who tend to drop out, have wide-ranging implications.

Firstly, this means that organisations can feel comfortable implementing rigorous assessment processes, maximising assessment validity and ensuring the best possible quality of hire.

Second, they can stop thinking of candidate attrition as a wholly negative thing. Indeed, if low performers deselect themselves, that has time, effort, and cost saving benefits to the employer, especially if they are buying assessments from a psychometric test publisher on a per-assessment basis.

Lastly, self-deselection could well be more palatable to low performers than being screened out. Research suggests that rejection from selection processes makes candidates less likely to engage with that particular brand (Miles & McCamey, 2018), resulting in real-world losses for major B2C companies. But if candidates deselecting themselves, this may grant them a greater sense of personal agency and avoids the awkwardness associated with rejecting candidates.

Final Thoughts

Now just because you can implement lengthy assessment processes without risking your high-potential candidates, doesn’t mean you should go all-in and force candidates to complete hours and hours of assessments.

Organisations must recognise that their candidates’ time is valuable, and they owe it to their candidates to ensure that selection processes are rigorous, but not onerous. In particular, organisations should avoid the strategy of incorporating an excessively wide range of assessments, purely to see who has the persistence to finish them. Instead, employers should respect their candidates’ time and be mindful of their circumstances, measuring only what matters to real-world performance and person-job fit.

Employers should respect their candidates’ time and be mindful of their circumstances, measuring only what matters to real-world performance and person-job fit.

References

Hardy III, J. H., Gibson, C., Sloan, M., & Carr, A. (2017). Are applicants more likely to quit longer assessments? Examining the effect of assessment length on applicant attrition behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(7), 1148.

Hardy III, J. H., Gibson, C., Carr, A., & Dudley, N. (2021). Quitters would not prosper: Examining the relationship between online assessment performance and assessment attrition behavior. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 29(1), 55-64.

Hong, E. (1999). Test anxiety, perceived test difficulty, and test performance: Temporal patterns of their effects. Learning and Individual Differences, 11(4), 431-447.

Kleinmann, M., Ingold, P. V., Lievens, F., Jansen, A., Melchers, K. G., & K?nig, C. J. (2011). A different look at why selection procedures work: The role of candidates’ ability to identify criteria. Organizational Psychology Review, 1(2), 128-146.

McDaniel, M. A., Hartman, N. S., Whetzel, D. L., & Grubb W. L. (2007). Situational judgment tests, response instructions, and validity: A meta‐analysis. Personnel psychology, 60(1), 63-91.

Miles, S. J., & McCamey, R. (2018). The candidate experience: Is it damaging your employer brand?. Business Horizons, 61(5), 755-764.

Sansone, C., Wiebe, D. J., & Morgan, C. (1999). Self‐regulating interest: The moderating role of hardiness and conscientiousness. Journal of personality, 67(4), 701-733.

Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological bulletin, 124(2), 262.