Best Practices to Implement Pre Employment Test

Online assessment tests have become a common feature for most enterprises. The management wants to be sure that they are hiring only the best eligible candidates who will grow with the business. While no recruitment process or assessment test has delivered 100% results, there has been a significant reduction in the percentage of a bad hire.

With added advantages of being able to cut costs and save time by speeding up the recruitment process, more and more enterprises are opting for pre-employment assessments at various stages of recruitment. For enterprises to increase their success rate and get the maximum results from the tests, there are certain aspects they will need to consider before implementing the tests.

Right from choosing when to conduct the tests to how to conduct them and what elements to keep in mind, these best practices can help enterprises not just hire candidates who are most suitable for the job but will also help in assessing and evaluating their existing talent pool.

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  Unbiased and Lawful

  • No part of the test form should hurt the sentiments of the candidates. Be it religion, race, origin, sex, ethnicity, etc. the questions or the scenarios should not offend the candidates. The companies that provide test tools make sure they adhere to the laws but it is also the responsibility of the enterprise to double-check the same. All candidates who apply for the job should be treated equally. When customizing Pre Employment Test form, keep that in mind.

• When to Use the Test

  • Though there is no right or wrong time to conduct the test, enterprises can get the best results when the tests are used for initial screening. That said, if the enterprise is paying for each test rather than go for a bulk package, the cost will increase. This will result in the opposite of what is required. Enterprises should opt for bulk or unlimited price models to a cost-effective solution.
  • Another point to consider is the candidates’ willingness to be truthful during the tests. While pre-employment assessments reduce the chances of lying, enterprises can further minimize the rate by simply letting the candidates know that there will be further tests and the results of all their attempts will be compared. This will make the candidates realize that they should attempt the test only if they wish to work with the enterprise and be truthful about themselves.
  • Enterprises can conduct advanced-level tests during the later stages of recruitment if they want to compare the performance of a handful of candidates based on their technical, interpersonal, and behavioral skills.

• Valid and Reliable Tests

  • Choosing the right test is the trickiest part of the process. One way to get it right is by going for the popular test forms created for the job. The companies that provide the test tools also have vast databases with just about all topics, subjects, and jobs covered. Depending on the number of candidates required and the importance of the job, enterprises can choose the most used test form.
  • Apart from technical skills and knowledge, soft skills, aptitude, communication, leadership, decision-making, problem-solving, etc. factor into the equation. The higher the job-relatedness of the test form, the greater will be the chances of hiring candidates who are eligible for the job in all ways. The test forms can be combined, customized, and edited to include various elements required to measure a candidate’s eligibility for the job.

• The Time Duration

  • Once the enterprise knows which test form to choose, it’s time to decide the duration of the test. Though this depends on when the tests are being conducted, enterprises have to realize that super long tests can give them adverse results.
  • Any test that is less an hour or specifically around 35-40 minutes should be ideal in most cases. If Pre Employment Test is being conducted to screen and filter the initial pool of applications, anything longer may not interest the candidates. How many candidates would really want to spend an hour or two attempting a test where there is too much competition?

• Test Existing Employees

  • One way to decide the parameters for the test is to conduct an assessment test for the existing employees. Apart from evaluating their performance, enterprises can also see the correlation between test performance and actual performance at work. There have been times when top-performing employees failed the test. The reasons could be many and identifying them will help enterprises in making sure some of the best candidates don’t get rejected based on their test performance.

Apart from the setting minimum cutoff scores is also important. This can be measured by assessing a large number of existing employees and comparing the results with their performance at the job.