The Tangible ROI of Pre-Employment Skills Testing

To many, adding a step to the hiring process sounds like adding a cost. But when it comes to pre-employment skills testing, the opposite is true. It's one of the highest-return investments a company can make. The ROI isn't just in dollars and cents; it's in time saved, quality of hire, and long-term retention.

Calculating the Hard Costs of a Bad Hire

The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that the average cost of a bad hire is at least 30% of the employee's first-year earnings. For a role with a $100,000 salary, that's a $30,000 mistake. This includes costs of recruiting, onboarding, training, and the productivity lost while the role is filled by an underperformer and then sits vacant again.

Pre-employment skills testing directly attacks this problem. By weeding out candidates who lack core competencies at the very beginning, you dramatically reduce the risk of making a costly bad hire.

The Time-Savings Dividend

Your recruiting team's time is one of your most valuable assets. How much of it is spent on low-value activities like manually reviewing unqualified resumes or conducting phone screens with candidates who can't answer basic technical questions?

• Let's say a recruiter spends 10 hours screening 200 resumes for a single role.
• At an average recruiter's salary, that's hundreds of dollars spent just on initial review.
• Automated screening with a tool like Sift can reduce that time by 90%, saving you those hours and allowing your team to focus on talking to top talent.

The Long-Term Cultural ROI

Beyond the hard numbers, skills testing has a powerful cultural impact. When you hire people who are demonstrably good at their jobs, you create a culture of excellence. A-players want to work with other A-players. A rigorous, skills-focused hiring process is a powerful signal to top talent that you are serious about quality. This improves your employer brand and creates a virtuous cycle of attracting and retaining the best people.