How Will a Recession Impact Your Employment Strategy?

^{Updated April 21, 2025.}

There are fat times and lean times. We can swing from an employer's/buyer's market to a candidate's/seller's market in a matter of months.

A growing number of signs indicate a recession is looming.

Whether you are in the C-suite of a Fortune 500 company, a small or medium business (SMB), or you're just an individual trying to keep the rent paid, what is your strategy for navigating a possible change in the job market?

Psychometric assessments have played a part in the employment game for decades. Traditionally, it was big employers that footed the bill for complicated and expensive assessments like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and others to be used during the hiring process. Individuals rarely purchased assessments on their own.

The Core Values Index™ psychometric assessment and personality test came out and things changed for the better. At a price point below $50, individuals began to take the CVI for their own use because it is accessible, easy to take, and you don't have to rely on highly paid and trained experts to interpret the results.

As of the writing of this article, over one million people have taken the Core Values Index assessment. With a recession looming in the economic skies, it's not just employers that are relying on the CVI to help weather the change, individuals are, too.

Sellers Market

Up through the end of 2024, it was a seller's market. Employers were scrambling to find — and keep — qualified workers. The United States was experiencing record-low unemployment, and wages even made headway after a multi-year period of stagnation. Employers learned the hard way they needed to get creative to find candidates, including using more carrot to get them to say, "Yes."

The seller's market in the employment landscape is changing rapidly in 2025.

There is a lot of uncertainty and employers are nervous about over-hiring.

Smart business leaders realize that people remain their biggest asset, so smart hiring becomes their secret to success.

Putting the right people into the right seats is one of the most effective ways businesses can improve their competitiveness.

Considering the low per-seat cost of the Core Values Index psychometric assessment (less than $50) and its market-leading ease of use — it takes just 8 minutes to complete and the results are easy to understand and use — increasing numbers of organizations are using this highly reliable¹ psychometric assessment to pre-screen candidates.

Buyers Market

What is the role of psychometric assessments like the CVI when the economy turns and it becomes a buyer's market? When unemployment is high, employers have a large number of applicants to wade through when a position opens up.

Using an Applicant Tracking System (ATS) that integrates with a psychometric assessment like the CVI can save organizations a lot of time and money during the screening process. eRep.com offers an integrated suite of employment tools that links the job application to the psychometric assessment through their Jobs Listings service, which feeds into their ATS. Candidates are ranked based on their psychometric score and only a few are selected for interviews.

The integrated talent acquisition and talent management system at eRep.com is very efficient and cost-effective.

What makes it really work is the Top Performer Profile™ (TPP). A Top Performer Profile is a psychometric framework or profile of the open role. It produces a set of scores for the role that mirror the scoring system used in the Core Values Index.

When applicants apply to a role that has a TPP, eRep's integrated hiring suite automatically matches candidate scores to the role's TPP score. The employer then sorts the candidates by their appropriateness for the role.

Candidates with a ?high recommend' CVI score against a TPP outperform their counterparts with up to 200% higher productivity and 50% lower turnover.

By pre-screening large numbers of candidates using the Job Listings → CVI → ATS → TPP integrated system, the employer doesn't have to waste valuable time filtering out large numbers of candidates, resumes and applications. Only those candidates with highly matched psychometric profiles to the role are reviewed or considered for interviews.

Job applicants benefit from this approach, too. Once they take the CVI as part of a job application, their profile is in the eRep system. Employers that engage eRep for their hiring platform can identify individuals with CVI profiles that match their TPP-based openings and contact them directly.

Applicants also save time through this efficient — and highly accurate — screening process. The system is also automated so that they receive emails notifying them when they are considered or rejected for a position; no sitting around wondering if the phone will ring.

Efficiency Wins

Regardless if the economy is experiencing high or low employment rates, the integrated hiring platform at eRep.com based on the Core Values Index provides efficiency, value, and accuracy to both employer and job seeker.

Read more

• Employer Services: eRep.com/employers/
• Job seekers: eRep.com/jobs/
• Individuals: eRep.com/core-values-index/

NOTES

[1] The Core Values Index has the highest repeat reliability of any psychometric assessment available, 97.7%. Source: Seattle Research Partners, 2014

Core Values Index™ and CVI™ are trademarks of Taylor Protocols, Inc.