Employment Assessment Tests for New Hires

Resumes, interviews, work experience, and references are all useful ways to assess and test new hires. However, HR teams and recruiters are continuously looking for new qualities, skills, and cognitive capabilities that are difficult to assess through the typical hiring means.

Employee Assessment tests can help standardize candidate abilities and predict what the near and far future can mean for your new hire. 

So what exactly is a new hire employment assessment? These tests come in many different forms, and they often assess different applicant skill sets and personality traits. Employee tests often assess things like job knowledge, cognitive abilities, skill assessment, and emotional intelligence, among others. 

When deciding to use an assessment test, it’s important to ensure that the test is both relevant to the specific position and vetted for quality and standardization. 

Benefits and reasons to use a new hire assessment

So what are the benefits of new hire assessments, and what do they test for?

As we stated earlier, industry leaders are starting to play close attention to cognitive abilities and personality traits that were otherwise neglected for decades in the hiring world. 

Current assessments that measure soft skills, personality traits, and cognitive abilities are essentially saying that the success and efficacy of an employee has to do with much more than just experience. New hire assessment tests are also looking for:

• Critical thinking skills
• Subject-specific information related to the position
• Knowledge about the industry, subject, or role a person is applying to
• Teamwork capabilities and communication skills
• Cognitive skills and general aptitude
• Emotional intelligence 
• Confidence and level of motivation
• Ethical integrity and honesty
• Other personality traits that are relevant to the applicant's position
• Leadership potential

Assessments widen and sharpen our ability to learn about our applicants and understand their capabilities within a specific role. There are, however, some downsides to employee assessments tests, and it's important to understand those downsides to be able to mitigate their effects. 

Downsides of employment assessment tests

There are some downsides to employee assessment tests when they’re overutilized or are used incorrectly.

Some of the downsides of employee assessment tests include: 

• Overdependence – Even the most robust assessments have blind spots, and it’s important to remember that assessments are tools like any other tool and only provide insight to one aspect of an employee’s capabilities. 
• Reviewer bias – Even with employee assessments, reviewer bias can influence how an applicant is measured. Some raters will value confidence and motivation, while others might value communication skills and emotional intelligence. Standardization can help mitigate this, but that leads to the next issue.
• Standardization is difficult to obtain – Even with the most accurate tests, employees might overstate or understate certain qualities, which makes it difficult to get a clear and accurate picture of who they are and what they’re capable of. 
• They’re easy to overdo – It’s important to be selective about assessment tests. By requiring employees to do too many tests or tests that aren’t necessarily relevant, you invite a greater possibility for the assessment results to become skewed or misread. 

While there are downsides to assessment tests, they can still be immensely valuable if they’re used appropriately and carefully.

5 Types of employment assessment tests

So what kind of assessment tests are out there? By learning about some of the major employee assessment tests, you can begin to identify which test is best for your business and your hiring needs. 

• Skills Test

• These assessments are among the most popular tests available to employers. Job skills assessments tests will measure skills specifically related to the job title or position in question.

• Knowledge Test

• For some positions, it’s especially important for candidates to have the knowledge base related to their industry or role. Knowledge assessment tests will give a fairly accurate picture of how much a candidate knows about a specific subject or job title.

• Personality Tests

• Personality assessment tests are becoming more and more popular, highlighting things like collaborative capabilities, communication skills, emotional intelligence, and more. 

• Cognitive Employment Assessment Tests

• Like the skills test, cognitive assessments will measure a candidate's ability to learn new skills and function in a demanding work environment. 

• Ethics Assessment Tests

• Employers want honest employees with a sense of accountability and integrity; ethics assessments tests will give employers a better understanding of an employee’s moral compass and the kind of principles and values they carry. 

How Crosschq can help

One way to make the assessment and hiring process easier is to source and attract quality hires. Data-driven and cloud-based reference checking platforms, like Crosschq, give you those capabilities.

With Crosschq, you have access to qualified talent pipelines, CRM, HRIS, and ATS integrations, dynamic job matching capabilities, cost-effective talent acquisition, and much more.

Attract quality candidates and simplify the hiring process with Crosschq today.