Although it depends greatly on the nature and funding of the organizations, many nonprofits do not have the consistent financial and organizational resources necessary to recruit using the same methods as the private sector. Even if it isn’t obvious during every recruiting cycle, these disadvantages can become more evident over time, as your organization deals with smaller pools of applicants, longer lead times to hire, and less performant hires. This has led many organizations like yours to be more open to alternatives to “traditional” hiring.
Because of the resourcing issue, hiring a candidate who isn’t a good fit can be a much bigger issue at a nonprofit. Your ability to drill down to the qualities you want, find them in a qualified candidate, and make the determination to hire them depends on a number of factors, particularly the resources and time allotted to the process. Many nonprofit human resources (HR) professionals are starting to experiment with the growing ecosystem of aptitude tests, personality tests, and other pre-screen examinations. If you’re looking to shake up your approach to hiring or you are dealing with persistent lag time during recruitment, you might want to consider experimenting with testing. Here are some of the key benefits as well as the risks:
The benefits of testing
Pre-hire assessments are becoming more common across all industries, with 80% of Fortune 500 companies relying on them for at least some roles. Here are some of the key reasons for their rapid growth in popularity:
- Trust the data: The most obvious advantage of testing is that it takes some of the arbitrary, non-empirical decision-making out of hiring. The inventor of the Wonderlic personality test said that he encountered many hiring managers who relied on their “gut feeling”, and sought to create an alternative based on data. Credible tests follow this formula, attempting to give you an accurate assessment that is based on extensive research, and not a gut feeling.
- Potential to avoid implicit biases: As data-based tools, tests focus on the performance of a given candidate, rather than other areas that might lead to biases in their consideration.
- Test skills, not networking: Skills-based testing can give hiring managers a much clearer idea of the candidate’s basic competency, rather than just their ability to create an impressive-looking resume, interview well, or use their network effectively. Great candidates might not shine in these areas, while someone who is a confident interviewer might not be the ideal fit in ways that don’t come across in a single conversation.
- Increase efficiency: Aptitude tests can be done asynchronously, freeing up your HR team to schedule more interviews or other tasks. They also can be done relatively quickly, allowing your team to use them as a non-labor-intensive way to zero in on the best candidates. Because hiring and retention, if done inefficiently, can be a drain on an organization’s finances and time, the significant performance increases offered by effective use of tests can save those resources for use somewhere else.
The risks of testing
While the benefits are obvious, there have been significant criticisms of testing from both HR professionals and applicants.
- Ethical concerns: Despite the emphasis on data as an absolute, unbiased measure of someone’s aptitude, numerous studies have shown that these sorts of tests can in fact replicate bias while discouraging hiring managers from addressing it. Test-taking is a skill and questions can hide biases as well. Research has shown that people from affluent backgrounds are more confident test-takers, irrespective of their actual skills and intelligence.
- Misuse of testing: Positioning testing as the final word in the hiring process can create numerous problems, including avoiding interpersonal and collaborative skills, culture fit, and other key factors. Some also don’t calibrate their tests for different roles, teams, or experience levels, and may miss out on a driven and committed worker who can grow into their role. This is especially challenging for nonprofits, as they need their team members not to just be skilled but also committed to the organization’s mission.
- Legal risks: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has specific guidelines on the use of testing during a hiring process. They are also under the remit of the federal government to investigate any potentially discriminatory testing or hiring practices. Misuse of test data, lack of transparency, or other mistakes, intentional or not, could embroil your organization in a costly legal case or settlement.
How to use tests at your nonprofit
Hiring, especially at nonprofits, is not something that can be reduced to an automated function. You will always need to combine an empirical approach with some “soft skill”-based assessment, and even then, you’ll sometimes get it wrong. Testing, then, shouldn’t be seen as a panacea, but as one tool of many that you can choose to use on a role-to-role basis. While the increasing technological sophistication of testing and the popularity of it as a tool might lead your team to view it as a “plug and play” solution, you should ensure that testing is part of a bigger process, one which requires you to check for test performance, potential bias, and other issues.
If you’re thinking of incorporating testing into your hiring motions, you should make sure that your team has the time and resources to research and understand the theory and practice of testing. You should also ensure that you create ways to gather feedback and make empirical assessments of the testing programs themselves. These can focus on everything from applicant performance, which informs you of potential issues with attracting skilled applicants, to new hire retention, which could indicate an over-valuing of testing instead of interest in the organization and mission.
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For more than 40 years, 501(c) Services has been a leader in offering solutions for unemployment costs, claims management, and HR support to nonprofit organizations. Two of our most popular programs are the 501(c) Agencies Trust and 501(c) HR Services. We understand the importance of compliance and accuracy and are committed to providing our clients with customized plans that fit their needs.
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