When looking to hire potential employees for your company, there are certain methods to check whether they are the best candidates to get the job done. Some of the methods include reviewing resumes, recommendations from previous employers, job interviews, job simulation exercises, and assessment tests for their skills.
The first four are generally the preferred traditional methods, however, there have been some flaws in the methodologies. 85% of employers admit that the candidates had lied in their resumes or references, according to recent studies. Although human resources agents are trained in reading body language, an interview might not be enough to detect the best candidate. As for simulation exercises, they have proven rather effective for checking job performance, but they are generally expensive to implement.
Businesses are shifting to skill assessment tests to check whether their preferred candidate has the necessary technical and soft skills for a position. According to a Candidate Experience Research report, 82% of companies are using an assessment test to evaluate the skills of their candidates prior to employing them.
Just like the name says it, these tests assess and evaluate the skills of candidates for a position. But these tests are also a good fit for already employed workers when considered for another position, or to test whether their skills are up to date with the latest trends. You can use these tests to identify the leaders in your staff or to understand where the strengths and gaps amongst the talent are prior to carrying out a successful training.
The good thing about these tests is that they are standardized and scientific in terms of evaluating the skills of employees or candidates, beyond what they claim the skills they possess are. The tests are also objective because they yield scores and ratings, but also description and category of skills.
And you can assess certain aspects apart from technical or soft skills in your recruiting candidates or employees. You can also have personality assessment tests, psychometric and general mental ability tests, integrity and job knowledge tests, situational judgment, and even motivation assessment tests.
There are different assessment tests depending on the soft and technical skills you want to evaluate or regarding a specific position. You might want to first identify your goals and needs, the reason you are implementing this assessment test. Next, you might want to figure out the skills you want to evaluate, whether you want to evaluate just the technical or the soft skills or even both. You can even make a list of the specific skills you seek to test.
Another thing you might want to figure out prior to looking for an assessment test is to define the characteristics you seek from the evaluating tool.
