Digital Skills Assessment

As of 2023, nearly 13 percent of all full-time employees are working from home, with 28 percent working in a hybrid setting. According to Upwork, the U.S. will see a jump to more than 32 million Americans working from home by 2025. 

Organizations had already transitioned to digital communication and work systems before 2020, but the advent of remote and hybrid work settings has made the need for digital competence all the more necessary. 

Whether you function in an in-person, hybrid, or fully remote work setting, you will need employees with competent digital skills. Read on to learn more about how you can leverage a digital skills assessment to find quality candidates that meet your needs.

What Is a Digital Skills Assessment?

Digital skills assessments are competency tests or references that measure candidates’ proficiencies with digital tools, technologies, and basic computer skills. You can use digital skills tests to gauge applicants’ abilities to navigate relevant software to the role as well as widely used applications within your organization. 

Most modern jobs require some level of competency with computer and digital skills, so these tests are a good way to ensure a basic understanding of certain software, communication pipelines, and other relevant technologies. 

How to use digital skills assessments

We recommend using a digital skills assessment directly after or before the first interview. If the position requires a certain level of experience or understanding with specific software or technologies, like programming or data analysis, then you can use the assessment as a good way to weed out candidates before the interview stage. 

On the other hand, you can use digital skills tests to make important decisions between two or more competitive applicants after the interview. Making a hiring decision with multiple quality candidates is never easy, so a skills test will give you one more piece of data to consider. 

Why you should use a digital skills assessment

The best hiring decisions are the ones made with the most information, data, and understanding of your candidates. As a valuable piece of a holistic hiring process, employee assessment tests for new hires work alongside interviews, reference checks, screening processes, and other important hiring steps. Together, they can help you make the right hiring decision with greater confidence. 

Here are a few key statistics that underscore the importance of digital skills tests for modern hiring teams:

• More than 80 percent of organizations use some form of an assessment test in their hiring process. 
• Hiring managers who use pre-hire assessments are 36 more satisfied with their hiring decisions than hiring managers who do not use them. 
• Companies that use pre-hire assessments report nearly 40 percent less turnover. 
• 75 percent of employers had issues with skill gaps in 2018/2019.

What to Test for in Your Digital Skills Assessments

Because digital skills refer to a wide range of skills, technologies, applications, and digital tools, it’s important to align your skills assessment with your particular needs and hiring focus. You can implement a general digital skills assessment if you want to establish basic computer skills and competencies, but you can also offer more specific skills tests for particular software or skills. 

Here are a few things digital skills assessments test for. 

• Basic computer skills
• Research and web browsing skills
• Email communication
• Word processing skills
• Social media marketing
• Digital ads 
• Digital marketing
• Data analysis
• Information literacy
• Software dashboard navigation
• SEM and SEO skills

For more on how to effectively implement a digital skills assessment, check out our ultimate skills-based hiring guide.

Digital Skills Assessment Example Template Questions

There are hundreds of different digital skills assessment tests covering a range of skills and experiences. If you leverage a reference check, you’ll have a better understanding of a candidate's self-awareness and skill set by asking them to rate their own experiences. This is a great way to compare self-reference scores with scores from the candidate’s references (former employers, peers, clients, etc.).

Here are a few questions you can use to get a self-assessment score from candidates. 

Short Answer Responses

1. What is Search Engine Optimization, and what SEO strategies do you use?
2. What is phishing, and what are some common signs of phishing in an email?
3. What development tools are you most familiar with? 
4. How does a firewall protect a computer or network?
5. What are some of the most important marketing KPIs to track and reach? 
6. What are some key marketing automation tools or strategies to streamline tedious marketing tasks?
7. What is customer segmentation in email marketing?

Final Thoughts: Digital Skills Assessment Test

Digital skills are essential for most roles in corporate and modern work settings. You can test for digital skills pertaining to a specific role, basic computer skills, technical skills, and more. 

Effectively implementing a skills test requires more than just finding a well-made assessment service. You need to identify the skills gaps in your organization, connect your assessment to your existing systems, and know which roles to hire for throughout your organization. 

Crosschq’s skills competencies help you identify the most important skills by providing you with continuously connected performance data. When you have a pulse on your current performance metrics, you’ll know what skills you’re lacking and where you’re excelling. You can use those analytics to inform your competency tests, so you know the skills to target for each role you’re seeking.

Improve your quality of hire, assess candidates with confidence, and take the guesswork out of hiring with Crosschq today.