Case Studies SBMA Reduced Time Spent Hiring by 63%

The Challenge

Hiring can be incredibly time-consuming. For SBMA, this was leading to “endless hours” spent searching for applicants, communicating with prospective candidates, and scheduling interviews only to find that many of these candidates wouldn’t even pick up the phone for a scheduled interview.

SBMA is a third-party administrator that helps employers provide compliant, affordable insurance plans to their employees. SBMA hires for a lot of different roles, including accounting, billing, claims administration, eligibility, customer service, and account management. What SBMA was looking for was a way to identify high quality candidates early on, move them through the hiring process efficiently, and ultimately hire the best candidates for the role.

The Solution

SBMA adopted Criteria’s assessment solution to improve the efficiency and accuracy of its hiring process. The company incorporated five of Criteria’s assessments across two different stages of the hiring process.

In the first stage at the point of application, applicants take the GAME, or General Aptitude Mobile Evaluation. The GAME is a mobile-first game-based assessment of cognitive aptitude that takes just 5-6 minutes to complete.

Based on the candidate’s resume and score on the GAME, the candidate moves to the phone screening stage.

If they pass the phone screen, they are then invited to take the second round of assessments. These include the CCAT, EPP, Excel, and Typing tests. The CCAT, or Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test, is one of the best predictors of job performance and measures critical thinking, problem-solving, and the ability to learn new information, which predicts a candidate’s trainability.

The EPP, or Employee Personality Profile, is a comprehensive personality assessment that measures how well the candidate matches with a certain role based on their behaviors and work styles.

The Excel test measures a candidate’s familiarity with basic Excel functions, while the Typing test provides an indication of a candidate’s typing speed.

If the candidate passes these four assessments, SBMA invites them to an interview. During COVID-19, these interviews were conducted virtually, but in normal circumstances they were conducted in-person.

After the in-person interview, the candidate takes assessments that are specific to the job role. For example, a candidate for the billing department would be asked to take an assessment that evaluates their ability to complete tasks associated with the day-to-day responsibilities of that role.

And in the last step, SBMA took advantage of the integration between Criteria and Checkr to conduct a background screening.

If a candidate successfully passes through these stages of the hiring process, SBMA extended a job offer.

The Results

Since incorporating Criteria’s assessments into the hiring process, SBMA experienced a wide range of benefits.

Time Saved in Hiring

Before using Criteria, SBMA spent a lot of time conducting phone interviews with applicants who were unqualified, or simply did not show up to the interview. They estimate that before Criteria, they spent an average of 88 hours per month hiring. With Criteria, they now spend just 33 hours per month, representing a reduction of 63%. In other words, SBMA estimates that, “the platform saves us about 2.5 hours per day, 12.5 hours per week, and 55 hours per month.”

Efficient Candidate Management

Criteria helped SBMA save time in the hiring process in more than one way. While the assessments help SBMA identify the best candidates to prioritize, Criteria’s software platform helps SBMA streamline the time-consuming administrative tasks associated with managing candidates. SBMA takes advantage of Criteria’s advanced candidate management features, including the calendar scheduling, automation, and the ability to communicate with candidates directly through the platform.

Higher Quality of Candidates

Criteria’s assessments helped SBMA raise the bar on the candidates that were making it to both the phone interview stage and the formal interview stage. SBMA particularly appreciated having applicants take the GAME upon applying because it provided an indication of the candidate’s “level of investment” in the role. Because the GAME takes just five minutes to complete, it provided SBMA with an early indication of a candidate’s qualification and investment, making it easier to decide which candidates to invite to the next stage of the hiring process.

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