What is pre-employment testing?

Pre-employment testing measures a candidate’s skills and is a great way for employers to find out more about their potential employees. This is an objective and reliable means of gathering data on candidates during the hiring process and can provide relevant information on how well someone will perform in workplace settings.

But why do we need it in the first place?

Consider this. Every job opening attracts 250 resumes on an average. Recruiters are basically spammed with resumes, and a lot of times, these are from candidates who do not fit into the basic requirements of the job role. The reason for this? Candidates spend an average of only 76.7 seconds reading the job description; that’s just skimming. Due to the volume of resumes, recruiters reportedly spend less than 7 seconds on each resume.

In such scenarios, pre-employment testing provide an objective and unbiased screening of the candidates while measuring their skills as required. They bring great value to the recruiting process.

Types of pre-employment testing

 

There are multiple types of pre-employment testing. Each serve a different purpose. Let’s see what some of them are.

• Aptitude tests: Cognitive or aptitude tests are used to measure an applicant’s general intelligence or brainpower. They seek to assess the problem-solving abilities and learning skills that they will need for success in any field. As per one study, 70% of employers seeked for candidates with problem-solving skills, and 63% for candidates with analytical skills.

• Personality tests: Personality tests are often used to find the right person for a job. Unlike with aptitude tests, there aren’t right or wrong answers on these types of assessments because they’re more subjective and based off how someone acts in different situations. They seek to answer questions like: Will this candidate be comfortable in their new role? Do they have behavioural traits that linked with success at work?

• Emotional intelligence tests: The connection between emotional intelligence and important work outcomes such as interpersonal effectiveness, collaboration & teamwork is clear. In fact strong emotional intelligence has been associated with good leadership skills which can be seen in the growing interest from organisations interested in assessing this area for hiring processes because they know that a person’s ability to manage emotions will help them perform better at their job.

• Risk tests: Risk assessments measure the likelihood that an applicant will be a reliable employee who follows rules. This helps employers manage risk by assessing different types of risks, like ones where employees may engage in unsafe or counterproductive work behaviours which could lead to negative consequences for both themselves as well other people involved in an organisation.

• Skills tests: The skills test measures job-related competencies; broad ones like verbal, math and communication abilities or narrow ones such as typing speed or certain softwares. These are not necessarily basic aptitude but instead acquired knowledge – what the applicant already knows how to do based on previous experience in their field of expertise with regards education and career history. Skill assessments are probably the most effective pre-employment tests when hiring for tech roles. Yaksha Assessment Platform can help you build customised skills tests for hiring top tech talent.

Why should organisations do pre-employment testing?

American Management Association (AMA) found that the use of pre-employment testing has been growing steadily in the past decade. As per AMA’s data, 70% of employers did some sort of job skill testing as a pre-employment test.

What benefits do pre-employment testing offer to organisations? Let’s explore.

• Shortlisting the most skilled candidate: Having pre-employment tests to screen candidates automates the screening and gives the recruiters a lot of breathing space to conduct other assessments like cultural alignment and more.

• Removing bias: As thinking-feeling humans, we are prone to having our biases and this prevents the hiring process from becoming fair and above board. So employing pre-employment tests to screen would remove bias and level the playing field for all candidates.

• Mitigating risk: Pre-employment tests helps hiring managers take data-driven decisions because these tests give consistent, measurable assessment of the candidates, thus helping reduce the risk associated with hiring.

Benefits of pre-employment testing

Why should you care about pre-employment testing? As an employer, it’s important to consider how your new hires will impact the company. Pre-employment tests are a great way to streamline the hiring process and strengthen the entire organisation by increasing new employees’ chances for success in their positions.

• Higher productivity: The use of pre-employment tests is becoming more popular in today’s job market. Research has demonstrated that these professionally developed and validated assessments can successfully predict an individual’s productivity across many industries, including those where performance levels vary greatly from one position to another.

• Increased employee retention: The goal of pre-employment testing is to ensure that new employees have the basic skills required for their positions with an appropriate personality. This will help keep turnover low.

• Efficient hiring process: The pre-employment test offers a lot of value when administered at the top of your hiring funnel. By requiring that applicants take these tests early on, companies can weed out “resume spammers” who send in their applications without much thought put into it.