Poor recruitment practices are costing UK businesses £5bn a year, according to research revealed exclusively to Recruiter by people assessment firm Talent Q.

It found that almost half of employees were recruited without any efforts to determine whether they could do the job — 44% of hires didn't include a personality assessment and 24% didn't test the employee's abilities.

It calculated that the resulting poor hires reduced productivity by around £2,400 a year for every worker.

Steve O'Dell, chief executive of Talent Q, said: "Organisations are often employing people based on little more than gut feel, even though it's by far the worst recruitment technique."

He added that efforts to reduce costs by dropping assessments "clearly represents a false economy", in terms of lost productivity further down the line.