Why Job-Focused Assessments Are Becoming Essential for Modern Hiring & Long-Term Success

Hiring today isn’t just about finding someone who can do the job. It’s about finding someone who will thrive in it.

Skills matter, yes… but so do behaviors, motivation, work style, problem-solving ability, and team fit. With turnover impacting productivity, morale, and revenue across industries, companies can’t afford to guess who is right for a role.

Job-Focused Assessments (JFAs) solve this problem by evaluating the critical hard and soft skills that truly predict job success. Through Talevation and SHL, hiring teams gain a deeper, more accurate, and more fair way to select top talent.

What Are Job-Focused Assessments?

Job-Focused Assessments are short, engaging assessments designed to measure the exact skills, behaviors, and competencies needed for a specific role. Using SHL’s Apta technology and the Universal Competency Framework, each assessment provides a clear view of a candidate’s:

• Role readiness

• Team fit

• Future potential

• Competency strengths and gaps

Instead of relying solely on résumés, guesswork, or inconsistent interviews, hiring teams get a single, job-relevant assessment that predicts how someone will perform once hired.

Why JFAs Matter: A Better Way to Predict Success

These assessments are designed to solve the biggest challenges in hiring today including speed, fairness, accuracy, and candidate experience.

1. Strong Prediction of On-the-Job Success

JFA results correlate directly with job performance. Apta measures observable behaviors that link to real-world outcomes and reduces guessing, gut-feel decisions, and interviewer bias.

2. Engaging, Difficult-to-Fake Experiences

Candidates complete an interactive, job-relevant assessment that reflects their actual work. This helps attract committed applicants and deters candidates who may not be the right fit.

3. One Assessment, Three Reports

Each JFA provides:

• A detailed hiring manager report

• An interview guide for consistent, structured interviews

• A candidate development report ideal for onboarding and 90-day reviews

Your hiring team gets data. Your managers get structure. Your new hires get support from day one.

4. Fairness and Equity Built In

JFAs are validated to be fair across race, sex, and ethnicity, helping companies make equitable talent decisions and reduce unintended bias.

5. Fast Deployment for Any Role

From entry-level through leadership, SHL offers pre-packaged assessments targeted to the role level and the outcomes that matter most.

What JFAs Help You Accomplish

Better Candidate Decisions

• Quickly stack-rank applicants against the most critical competencies

• Identify top performers early

• Make consistent, confident hiring decisions

Better Hiring Outcomes

• Reduce turnover

• Improve team fit

• Increase productivity and performance

• Strengthen culture by hiring aligned, motivated people

Better Onboarding and Development

The candidate development report supports coaching and conversations during:

• onboarding

• 30-, 60- and 90-day reviews

• individual development planning

• career path discussions

Hiring the right person is only the beginning. JFAs help them succeed long-term.

Targeted, Job-Relevant Results That Matter

Using JFAs helps companies:

• Hire candidates who are ready to succeed

• Measure the competencies most critical for each job

• Broaden talent pipelines by evaluating skills rather than résumés

• Improve performance with insight-driven hiring

• Make decisions backed by real-time dashboards and data

With JFAs, your hiring strategy becomes more agile, informed, and aligned with the true needs of the role.

Ready to Hire with Confidence? Talevation Can Help.

Talevation partners with SHL to bring Job-Focused Assessments directly to staffing teams, HR departments, and organizations of every size.

Whether your goal is to reduce turnover, improve interview consistency, or make more confident hiring decisions, JFAs give you the clarity you need.

If you’d like help selecting the right assessments or want to see a sample report, let’s talk.

Hire smarter. Develop stronger. Build teams that thrive.