Resumes and interviews do not accurately reflect the real potential of candidates when they are recruited or promoted for a new position in a company. The educational background and professional experience of a candidate show their knowledge and accomplishments. However, if you want to assess their competency and proficiency, it is best to administer a skills assessment test. Continue reading to know all about the skills assessment test.
What is a Skills Assessment Test?
A skills assessment test comprehensively evaluates a candidate’s competencies, skills, and knowledge. The goal is to know as much as possible if that person can properly do a specific job or task. Moreover, there are various types of conducting skills assessment tests. For instance, it can be done as part of your hiring process or a part of your external audit.
You can also do skills assessments on your own to understand better what competencies or skills your company has. Then, you can see more clearly what you can and what you cannot do and what soft and hard skills exist in a team, department, or the company as a whole.
Types Skills Assessment Tests
Here are the different types of skills assessment test:
- Psychometric Skills Assessment Tests
Psychometric tests are utilized for psychological assessment to objectively evaluate candidates’ personality traits, abilities, intelligence, and aptitude. These tests are commonly used in the recruitment process and in developing employees.
Regardless of using it to improve careers or for employment, the test can match the personality and skills of candidates to the apt position or job for them. Moreover, this is helpful in large recruitment programs since it can limit the large pool of candidates into several ones who can be the right people for a specific position or company.
- Aptitude Assessment Tests
These are standardized screening tests that guide recruiters in knowing if a candidate is fit for a position or not. They can understand how a candidate can handle challenges in the position they are applying for. Recruiters also see the strong and weak points of the candidate.
This assessment is usually done online through a web-based and dedicated platform for online evaluation at scale. Since it is scientifically structured, it provides convenience in finding performing and driven candidates by determining their professional aptitude.
- Coding Assessment Tests
A coding test is a technical skill test that tech employers utilize to filter qualified coders with the right skills. This online skill assessment test also helps recruiters to eliminate unwanted candidates early in the technical recruitment process. It ensures that only competent applicants go through. Recruiters also assess the coding talents of the candidates through technical skills assessment tests.
- Domain Assessment Tests
These tests are also known as technical tests. This is a structured assessment given to technical and non-technical candidates. It assesses their domain background and knowledge of the given positions.
Potential candidates are determined by putting probabilities in a strict testing environment to check if their abilities and knowledge are suitable or not. Functional abilities, technical abilities, performance in different domain skills tests such as marketing and sales, accounting, finance, and leadership ability assessments, and aptitude are some of the elements determined in this test.
- Communication Skills Tests
This type of skills test assesses a candidate’s communication abilities. It concentrates on how they comprehend the intricacies of the language. Pronunciation, grammar, listening comprehension, and fluency are 4 board parameters used in evaluating it.
Therefore, the test includes language comprehension activities and a few assessments that check the range of a candidate’s proficiency and knowledge in the oral and written form of the language. The different elements of these tests help employers evaluate how candidates can comprehend the language and how prompt they are in responding properly using it.
Steps on How to Conduct a Skills Assessment Test
These are the general steps on how to conduct a skills assessment test:
Step #1: Decide on the Skills for a Job Application You Want to Assess
You begin conducting skills assessment by carefully considering your situation now. Therefore, you start by deciding the skills for a job application you want to map and track. You can do this by utilizing your company’s job responsibilities or roles. Then, you pick the most crucial positions and roles and begin working your way on your list.
Step #2: Express Your Good Intentions
If you have great support for conducting a skills assessment test, you can reap beneficial outcomes. That is why it will be helpful if you precisely and clearly express your objectives and intentions in doing this kind of survey. You need to make it clear that this survey is made not to see who is the least successful. Instead, it is used as a way to resolve skills that are lacking in the company as a whole. It is best to make everyone understand that the process will be handled confidentially.
Step #3: Gather Information
This is the time to start gathering data. Nevertheless, there are many ways to do this, such as talking to people individually, conducting tests and surveys, and observing, among many others.
Step #4: Review the Collected Data
After you have collected all the data you need, you need to analyze it. You can check if there are trends in the data. You can also try to assess if this information can help your current training and hiring policies. Doing this helps you to make better strategies and policies to make the company more competitive and ready for the future when it gets more people.
Reasons Why Skills Assessment Tests Are Needed
Here are the top reasons why skills assessment test are necessary:
- Understanding Where the Applicant Stands
Many resumes usually have distorted details and misleading data. Conducting a skills assessment test can help companies check the validity of the information presented in a candidate’s resume. Moreover, companies can make sure that how candidates claim their credibility is something they truly possess.
- Searching the Right People for the Job
A skills assessment test is one of the most effective methods to know if the person is capable of the position they are applying for. This type of assessment can reveal related data about candidates if they are the right fit for the position and the company.
- Evaluating If the Candidate Is Culturally Fit for the Company
Even though your candidates have amazing technical abilities, they may not have the needed communication abilities to have good communication in the workplace. This means their perspectives may not be in line with their colleagues, making them disconnected. A skills assessment test can see if a candidate’s culture fits effectively and capably.
- Helping Make the Right Recruitment Decisions
Employers inevitably make recruitment mistakes. Determining the skills for a job application through an assessment can help employers better decide if candidates are the right people for the job and the company’s culture. Therefore, informed recruitment decisions are made through skills assessment tests.
- Managing High Volume of Applicants
Skills assessment is advantageous when there is a need to hire many people. Using it as part of your pre-screening can save time in differentiating qualified and incompatible candidates. There is no need to spend time interviewing people who are not fit for the job.
- Identifying People with Similar Skills
Applicants who have the same skill sets need to assess their abilities thoroughly and objectively. That is why skills assessment tests are helpful because they provide helpful insights and highlight slight differences in experience and educational background easily.
- Removing Biases
There are many ways biases can affect a recruitment process. One of the best methods to eliminate biases in the hiring process is by having a well-thought and structured skills assessment test. The aim of conducting a skills assessment test is to provide significant information about candidates’ competencies and skills that are backed up by evidence. Therefore, the process does not depend only on resumes, interviews, and subjective opinions since this assessment objectively evaluates competencies.
For instance, a candidate who did not graduate with a 4-year degree can have more skills and knowledge for a position than a candidate who is a degree holder. That is why skills assessment can remove the bias and bring out the skills of the former.
- Lessening Legal Issues
Skills assessment can help minimize legal risks related to recruitment. Skills tests are structured, objective, and formal in evaluating talent. Therefore, it can be used to defend and justify a company’s claims for legal processes.
- Dealing with Skill Gaps
According to research conducted by PwC, it suggests that the US could lose $8.5 trillion because of skill gaps and lack of talent in 2030. Developing skills assessment tests in the learning and development process is effective in dealing with skill gaps. This assessment can provide better judgment on the capabilities of candidates and help develop current and new skills for new hires and employees.
- Saving Time in Hiring
Employers need to make sure that applicants have the potential to bring something to the company that can help it reach its true potential before they interview. Skills assessment tests are important in removing incompatible candidates in the early stages of the hiring process and more easily determine the qualified ones. This ensures that time and energy focus on evaluating and interviewing deserving applicants.
Benefits of Skills Assessment Tests
The following are some of the top benefit you can get from skills assessment test:
- Consistency
Employers can only depend on human evaluation of a candidate’s proficiency if there is no assessment. There is no objective arrangement on the scale of assessing candidates. An applicant can rate their skills with a 3 using a 3-pint scale, and other candidates may give a 2 although their skills are the same. A skills assessment test is better in objectively assessing skills compared to using a point scale.
- Customized Development Plan
If a candidate is not completely skilled for a job, it does not mean they do not deserve it. A skills assessment test is essential in identifying the areas a candidate or employee needs to improve. Therefore, making customized and related learning and development strategies is easier.
- Progress Evaluation
It does not matter if you monitor how an individual or team develops. That is because doing skills assessment regularly can accurately determine progress and pinpoint the areas where support and training might not be enough.
- Employee Engagement
Ford, a renowned global car company, stresses that employees have the desire to continue learning. Encouraging the growth of employees is good for them and the company as well. When new skill sets are determined in skills assessment tests, employees become more engaged and stronger employees. Fostering employee growth, supporting and recognizing them is the core of skills assessment tests.
Tips on How to Choose the Right Skills Assessment Test
There is a wide range of skills assessment tests. Find the most suitable one for your organization, you can consider the following tips:
- Determine Your Objectives
Recruiters need to know what they need and what their goals are in doing a skills assessment test. They can ask themselves if they want to hire internally or new people or if they are looking for people with a particular skill set.
- Know What to measure
Next, they need to know the skills they want to assess, such as focusing on evaluating soft or technical skills. A comprehensive competency structure gives recruiters a clear definition of the knowledge, characters, and skills they need from their candidates.
- Define the Elements of a Skills Assessment Test
There are things employers need to determine before they prioritize their preferred elements. Some of these are the customized questions, components of an effective assessment, the validity of the test, and the competency structure, among many others. These will all help come up with the right decisions.
- Research
Considering all these aspects, recruiters can begin checking the assessment of the different skills available.
Final Words
Finally, you have a better understanding of what skill assessment tests are and how they can benefit companies’ hiring process. Most companies want to foster healthy competition, positive reinforcement, and motivation. These efforts are geared towards the benefit of the company.
Skills assessment tests help assess how competent and suitable candidates are and determine if they have enough drive to succeed there. These tests can also be used to know the skills that are lacking and need improvement.
