Pre-Employment Assessments: Weeding Out Unfit Candidates

Posted by Interview Mocha on May 21st, 2015

Pre-employment assessments are indeed beneficial in selecting and screening the best candidates for specific jobs and positions. However, legal issues can arise if the tools that you use are improperly implemented, unreliable, or invalid. If you want to benefit rightfully from these tools, it is your responsibility as an organization to make sure that the tools you use are fair, valid, and reliable.

Pre-employment tests come in many shapes and forms. They can be used to test applicants' cognitive abilities, work skills, general knowledge, physical and motor abilities, emotional intelligence, personality, language and numerical proficiency, specializations, and even their integrity. Pre-employment processes may differ from one organization to the next, but assessments are always a part of the recipe. Companies in general use testing methods to screen out the unqualified and find candidates who are most likely to flourish and succeed in the open positions they are offering.

Pre-employment assessments help companies save time and cost in their employee-selection process. Long-term benefits like reduced turnover and raised morale can also be expected, as they help determine top performers early in the recruitment process while still providing equal opportunity to all candidates.

Validity is an important aspect of pre-employment tests. This refers to the exam/tool's ability to predict and assess future job success or performance. Tests should be able to project efficiently that those who score well will also perform the job well, and that those who score poorly will likely perform poorly.

The next important issue to address when selecting tests is reliability. This refers to the consistency of the tool in measuring a specific skill or item. For a test to be considered reliable, it should yield the same results when an individual takes it for the second time. Suppose, a candidate takes an exam today might score high, however, when the candidate takes the same test a week later but scores low, then the exam may not all be that reliable. Tests should measure traits, consistently; otherwise, it does little to predict a candidate's proficiency and future job performance. It is your responsibility as an employer to prove your tests' reliability and validity prior to implementation.

Finally, pre-employment assessment exams must provide equal employment opportunity to applicants and candidates. Employment tests have been challenged in court in the past, and are periodically being challenged for fairness in providing equal opportunity to candidates. As an employer, you must also make sure that the tests you implement do not violate any equal employment opportunity laws.

About the Author:

Akshar Thakur is the Customer Success Manager of Interviewmocha.com that is a pre-employment testing solution for skills in Business, Finance, Marketing, Design, Development, IT and many more. They help companies Worldwide to objectively measure skills related to all facets of the hiring process - Technical Skills, Business Skills, Aptitude Skills, Communication Skills, Designing skills, Marketing skills, Sales skills etc. in a single test. They make the recruitment process easier & faster.

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Interview Mocha
Joined: April 24th, 2015
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