Behavioural assessment in hiring is most useful as one input among several and least useful as a filter applied early to a large pool. Placed early it removes people cheaply and on the weakest evidence in the process. Placed late it informs a conversation with a shortlist, which is what it is actually good at.
Place it late, not early
Early filtering by questionnaire is attractive because it reduces volume at no apparent cost. It is also the point at which the instrument has the least supporting information and the greatest impact, and where an unjustified adverse effect on a group would do the most damage. Use it to inform interviews with a shortlist instead.
Tie it to the job, in writing
Name the behaviours the role genuinely requires, before looking at any candidate, and use the assessment only against those. An instrument used to form a general impression of a person is not a selection tool; it is a prompt for confirmation bias with a report attached to it.
Structure the interview that follows
The value of a behavioural assessment is the questions it suggests, asked of everybody in the same way, with answers scored against criteria agreed in advance. Structured interviewing is better evidenced than almost anything else in selection, and an assessment that improves the structure is doing more good than the score itself.
Questions people ask about behavioral assessments for hiring
Do behavioural assessments predict performance?
Some do modestly for some roles, and structured interviews built around them generally do better than the score alone.
Can a candidate fail an assessment?
Treating it as pass or fail is where it becomes risky. As an input to a structured conversation it is defensible and more useful.
Do we need candidate consent?
You need to tell people what is collected and why, and in some places more than that. Explain it at the point of assessment rather than afterwards.