Using Pre-employment tests for the right type of hiring

by Keerthi Rangan Content Marketing Strategist at Adaface

Before recruiting candidates for any job role, organizations need to assess the abilities of the applicants. Traditionally this was done with multiple rounds of interview which is time-consuming and a stressful process for both candidates and recruiters. With the advancement in technology, hiring is now more automated and data-driven. Every single metric related to the recruitment process can now be tracked and analyzed to create an effective and efficient hiring funnel.

This means that businesses small and large strategically invest in hiring solutions that can improve the quality of hire. Pre-employment testing is one such tool that is used to screen applicants and tests their knowledge, emotional intelligence, personality, as well as cognitive and motor abilities. These tests weed out the unqualified candidates, thereby reducing the candidate pool and the time invested to hire the best candidate.

What is a pre-employment test?

Pre-employment tests or assessments are more popularly also known as pre-screening tests or pre-hire tests is used by organizations in their recruitment process to identify candidates who are the best fit for the role and weed out those who are not qualified for the job. Apart from being used during the hiring process, pre-employment tests are also used by organizations to assess the skills and knowledge of existing employees, to understand if they require further training or not.

80% of Fortune 500 companies use pre-employment assessments in their recruitment process.

Types of Pre-employment test

There are several types of pre-employment tests, which are crafted by subject matter experts, to help recruiters find the candidate with the highest potential. Recruiters should also keep in mind, that using the wrong type of test can hurt applicant experience and in the long run, also hurt the image of the organization. Some of the commonly used tests are:

Aptitude Tests

Aptitude tests are designed to assess a candidate's general intelligence and cognitive abilities. Assessment of cognitive abilities includes assessing a candidate's ability to understand, digest, and application of information. Hence aptitude tests are also known as cognitive ability tests.

Aptitude test is the most commonly used pre-employment test and is used to screen applicants for every job role. There are many sections to such a test where the questions are designed by subject matter experts. Numerical reasoning, logical reasoning, abstract reasoning, spatial reasoning, verbal reasoning, and situational tests are some of the famous sections of a cognitive ability test.

The final result of an aptitude test is in the form of a score that is highly predictive of future job performance and is used by recruiters to filter out weak candidates.

Personality Tests

Personality tests, a type of psychometric assessment, are the most commonly used pre-hire tests to screen applicants based on the Big Five personality traits, i.e., openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Such a test assesses the communication preferences, demeanor, approach, triggers, and motivators for a candidate.

This helps to understand whether the candidate is fit for the job role and the company culture.

Skills Tests

A skills test or a talent assessment is used to evaluate a candidate’s ability to perform day-to-day tasks.

This may include knowledge of computer programming(such as Java, Python, PHP, etc) or proficiency in a foreign language/tools(such as MS Excel) or typing speed. A good skill test will help recruiters to understand whether the candidate will be successful if he/she is hired for the job role.

PRO-TIP: Use a resource website for a quick look at everything related to the skill such as this website on everything related to Java.

Background Checks

Background checks help businesses to verify an applicant's background. These are indirect tests handled by third-party companies, who run a background check on the candidate's employment history and criminal records.

The format of the test

The format of the pre-employment assessment depends entirely on the company, requirements of the applied job, and the technologies available for assessing the skills. There are two ways in which assessments are usually carried out. They are:

Offline Format
Online Format

Choosing what format to use while testing your candidates is important.

The offline format is rarely used by organizations as they are time-consuming. Offline aptitude test or skills test is still used by certain organizations to filter out applicants.

The majority of businesses prefer the online mode of assessing applicant skills as they are more efficient and effective.

This either includes pre-set or custom online questionnaires or pair-programming interview that can be conducted remotely as well.

Purpose of testing

Every single type of test is designed to understand and assess the behavioral or knowledge or working nature of the candidate. This is done to understand if the applicant is hired, then he/she would be able to fulfill the expectations of the company and contribute to its growth.

So if you think your business needs improvement in terms of the work that needs to be done, then you need to be clear with what the job role requires and then choose and set the assessment accordingly.