Why Companies Need To Improve English Language Testing

How is automated language assessment for HR changing the talent hiring process?

Today, technology has a critical role in providing support to many business processes across various industries. Leading companies have started replacing manual functionality with automated solutions. We can see a lot of areas benefit significantly from this replacement, and hiring and managing talent is no exception. Job interviews, email communication, assessment, and learning can be streamlined by new cutting-edge technology. It offers the best way to make great savings in deploying valuable human resources staff.

With remote working or a hybrid model, people in your company must maintain a high level of communication. Is your company a multinational? Do your employees deal with international clients and stakeholders? You must make sure your employees have the necessary English-speaking skills to complete all tasks. You have to monitor and evaluate their knowledge and skills, from hiring to when they leave the company.

Here’s how you can benefit from automated language assessment for HR:

Reduce the time per hire

Imagine you need to source 1000 salespeople for a call center project in medicine or telecommunications. It means screening 7000 candidates if your interview-to-hire ratio is 7, for example. They must have fluent English skills and be able to use the right vocabulary. The earlier in the process that potential candidates are tested for language skills, the better. The recruiter can avoid wasting resources on candidates that don’t achieve the required score in the language skills test.

SmallTalk help recruiters test candidates’ English-speaking skills with just a couple of clicks.

Here’s how:

· Send the test link to candidates.

· The candidate reads the instructions and records their speech in response to each question.

· Then, the SmallTalk AI algorithms assess and measure performance, and provide a data-rich report on the candidate’s English scores and their linguistic ability.

Check out our Time Economy calculator to understand how many hours you can save after implementing SmallTalk in your business.

Cut the cost per hire

Every business owner or hiring manager knows that the recruitment process is expensive. There are many additional costs other than just salaries. So automating routine recruitment tasks previously handled by humans has a positive impact on your budget instantly.

By using SmallTalk’s cutting-edge technology, recruiters can help eliminate tedious and time-consuming speaking interviews and test candidates’ English faster. This solution allows human resources staff to use their valuable time on more critical tasks. These might include fine-tuning strategic relationships, communicating with candidates, and sourcing and bringing quality talent to the organization. It is especially relevant when recruiters deal with large-scale hiring.

To discover how using the SmallTalk platform can positively impact your budget, check out our Assessment Value calculator.

Eliminate errors

Even highly qualified professionals make mistakes. According to research, a business loses nearly 30% of its profits due to mistakes and bad decisions. It can cost up to five salaries to find a replacement after a wrongly hired employee makes a mistake. A costly lesson to learn! So when it comes to people, they are not only expensive to hire, they’re more likely to make mistakes than automated solutions.

Recruiters can be subconsciously misled by gender, race, age of potential candidates, or make poor hiring decisions based on their experience. Using SmallTalk eliminates such issues. If you hire an under-qualified candidate, it may negatively affect your brand and, in addition, you will lose time to find a replacement.

Using the SmallTalk oral English assessment tool standardizes the testing procedure. Standardized testing helps recruiters eliminate bias and potential recruitment errors and make fair and more accurate hiring decisions.

Find out more about how SmallTalk can streamline and optimize language assessment for talent hiring and management. Visit the SmallTalk website or contact our team now!

FAQ

What are some of the most common questions HR managers or recruiters have about using AI-based oral English assessment for hiring employees?

Q: Do AI assessment tools evaluate accents? Some people have strong accents and others are poor English speakers but good talkers.

A: SmallTalk evaluates accent and pronunciation as part of each candidate’s overall score. All candidates respond using their own words, which SmallTalk records and analyzes.

Q: How much time can be saved using AI to evaluate English-speaking skills?

A: It is becoming more and more important to ensure that employees based in other countries can speak fluent English. The traditional approach to evaluating an applicant’s skills in speaking English can take up to 60 minutes per test subject. SmallTalk assessments take around 15 minutes to perform, and results are available to hiring managers and recruiters within 5 minutes.