Best Practices for Using Pre-Employment Assessment Tests
The main benefit of using pre-employment assessment tests lies in the prediction of future employee performance. Using job assessments helps your hiring team make an organized and informed decision among a pool of applicants based on cognitive aptitude, acquired skills, and job readiness. It’s important to know the best practices for pre-employment tests to have the most effective results in hiring the ideal applicant. Follow these steps to get the most out of your pre-employment testing process to help your organization select the best candidate for the job.
Choose the Right Test
The effectiveness of pre-employment testing depends on how accurately it can measure the relevant skills and traits in a candidate. It’s important to evaluate if an assessment has relevant criteria for measuring the qualifications of an applicant. Administering job assessments that correlate with a specific job provides the best results for your hiring team to use as a hiring metric.
Test at the Right Time
The time in which you administer a pre-employment test impacts your organization’s investment and the effectiveness of assessing a potential candidate. It’s best to conduct a pre-employment test early in the hiring process. If you’re administering an assessment through a testing vendor with a subscription-based pricing model, testing early on permits your team to have unlimited access to various types of tests and get the most out of the investment.
Limit the Assessment Time
The test duration of your pre-employment assessment can affect the rate at which candidates complete it, so limiting the assessment time is a best practice. If the assessment time exceeds 30 minutes, it’s common to see a drop in completion rates from applicants. The timing of your assessment also helps develop a filter in the applicant pool for individuals who are less serious about the hiring process. The age of online job applications has permitted companies to have massive pools of applicants, but placing reasonable assessment requirements can simplify the selection process.