Using Pre-Employment Assessments for Effective Hiring

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Testing candidates during the recruitment process is an excellent way for companies to gain insight into their candidates. Being a technical recruiter isn’t easy at all. Many positions in the industry are competitive, and hiring qualified candidates is a priority.

How does pre-employment assessment work?

Companies use pre-employment assessments to assess candidates’ skills and abilities. Coding tests, pair programming, and technical interviews are common in tech recruitment. In addition to assessing technical ability, these tests assess how the candidate handles problems.

Types of technical hiring assessments

Testing for job knowledge 

Generally, job knowledge tests are used in technical recruitment as part of pre-employment assessments. There is a greater focus on knowledge rather than on learning capability, which is inadequate for tech skills. The problem is that they cannot show how likely a specific candidate is to learn a new skill.

  • Assessments for integrity

Another type of pre-employment assessment is the integrity test. This assesses a candidate’s character and trustworthiness. Candidates may lie on Integrity tests, which is one of their issues. This makes them less reliable than other types of assessments.

  • Evaluating physical abilities

This is common if the job role requires specific physical fitness, like a basketball player. Technical recruiting positions do not require physical ability tests since most technical work relies more on the mind than the body.

  • Assessments of cognitive ability

The purpose of cognitive ability tests is to assess the candidate’s ability to think and solve problems. Many reasoning tests can be found in these categories, including questions related to math, logic, or mechanics.

  • A skill assessment and a work sample assessment

In order to assess soft and technical skills, pre-employment skill assessment is crucial. Rather than focusing on theory, these programs emphasize practical application, including code writing tasks. Performing a work sample assessment can indicate whether the candidate possesses the required skills for the position. Additionally, it is an indication of the candidate’s response under pressure.

The use of pre-employment assessments for technical hiring

Technical hiring often includes coding tests as part of the pre-employment assessment process. Coding tests do more than measure algorithm knowledge. Candidates can demonstrate their practical programming skills. By doing so, the workload of the manager is reduced.

Pre-employment tests vs. traditional CV evaluation. What are the benefits of pre-employment tests?

  • Objectivity is key to a pre-employment test

With a pre-employment assessment test, recruiters can accurately measure each candidate’s skills and abilities. Within 20 minutes, it is hard to assess someone’s technical knowledge, soft skills, personality, ambition, and ability to learn.

  • Pre-employment tests speed up the process

Both the recruiter and the candidate spend a lot of time on pre-employment skill assessments. But, some coding tests are evaluated automatically. This quickens up the recruitment process as the evaluating process is taken out of the hands of the recruit.

  • Assessments prior to hiring can help retain your candidates

An organization is less likely to retain its qualified candidates if the recruitment process is lengthy. Hiring managers can gather a wide variety of information if they use pre-employment tests. Candidates who can demonstrate their skills will not mind giving up a few minutes.

Conclusion

Modern technical hiring relies heavily on pre-employment tests. The recruiters’ subjective judgment is left out, and only the results are considered. Recruitment is also sped up by pre-employment assessments.