BUS305 Small Business Management

Putting Pre-Employment Tryouts to the Test

Trial periods can improve the quality of your hires, but be aware of legal issues.

 

Like its customers on the prowl for the hottest clothes and coolest products, online retailer zulily is always searching for talented people, especially for hard-to-fill roles in technology and merchandising.

Based in Seattle home to retail giant Nordstrom and tech titan Microsoft the company faces stiff competition for great employees. Traditional recruiting methods dont always satisfy zulily talent demands, so the organization is one of many employers leveraging the power of technology and real-world experience by using tryouts, trial periods and short-term assignments to evaluate candidates.

For technology roles, for example, "We prescreen candidates with an online tool, in addition to requiring onsite coding tests," says Colleen McKeown, senior vice president for human resources. "Ensuring the right candidate selection is the best way to make sure we drive and preserve our culture."

Zulily pre-employment tryout test

Online retailer Zulily is always looking for talented individuals, especially for technical roles in technology and merchandising. But from experience, Zulily has never been satisfied by its recruiting methods, and they face great competition for great employees. Due to this reason, Zulily has come up with recruiting strategy of using tryouts, trial period and short-term tasks to assess candidates. The tryout is a strategy which carefully asses the candidate to determine if the candidate suits the firm.

 The company hope that this strategy will be helpful them due to a large number of applications they receive for every new job announced, this does not guarantee that the right person will be found from the applications. According to Novak et al, (2014) Information regarding a candidate can be obtained in a special way when tryout are held during screening process.

For the best outcome, the employee should design the tryout in a way that the weakness and the strength of the candidate will be exposed. This structure is just designed to show the employer how the recruit will perform his duty and it is not possible for the employer to detect every condition in tryout time, the employer can see how the candidates interact within the firm and fit with the culture and other employees  (Van, et al., 2016).

During this tryout period, the company pays for the job done and the candidate work at night or they are they take a break from their current job. At Zulily, candidates for software engineering are given a take-away assessment so that their knowledge in writing codes can be assessed (Novak, et al, 2014).

 Finally, a thorough legal counsel review should be done by the employer to ensure compliance before tryout are implemented. Implementation of tryout will minimize error and hiring process will be transparent

References

Novak, J., Parent-Johnson, W., Owens, L. A., & Keul, P. (2014). National certification initiative for employment support professionals: Promoting quality integrated employment services. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 40(2), 99-107.

Van Esch, E., Wei, L. Q., & Chiang, F. F. (2016). High-performance human resource practices and firm performance: the mediating role of employees’ competencies and the moderating role of climate for creativity. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 1-26.