A comprehensive guide to understanding and selecting the right technical assessments

Technical assessments are domain-specific and role-based assessments used to evaluate prospective candidates’ technical skills and proficiency. These assessments help measure applicants’ abilities against specific requirements while assessing the level of skills they have in areas like programming, coding, data analysis, system design, etc.

Selecting the right tech assessment helps companies implement a combination of knowledge-based and application-based techniques for screening candidates.

• Sales: Sales skills tests assess skills and knowledge in retail sales, cross-selling, upselling, inside sales, field sales, etc. These target core abilities like handling objections, persuasion, negotiation, presentation, etc. and test cognitive competencies for handling sales-related challenges and responsibilities.
• Marketing: These evaluate knowledge of various aspects of successful marketing strategies, including lead generation, brand management, SEO, market research, etc.
• IT: Based on organizational needs, these tests can evaluate various technical abilities and web expertise.
• Finance and accounting: These technical assessment tests assess candidates’ abilities to process and communicate financial information.
• Operations: These tests focus on evaluating whether a candidate is suitable for business operations roles like supply chain manager, operations manager, etc.
• Human resources: For assessing candidates’ ability in HR management skills like interviewing and selecting candidates, making job offers, onboarding, communication, conflict resolution, negotiation, etc.
• Customer support: These tests help hire top talent that can ensure customer satisfaction. The tests assess technical skills required in customer-facing roles, including customer expectation management, front-end technical support, etc.

Selecting the right technical assessment strategy should be based on organizational requirements. The hiring team should be able to tailor assessments and questions to match different job roles with:

• The ability to create questions that help in the accurate identification of the skills.
• Access to diverse types of questions, like MCQs, open-ended queries, coding challenges, etc.
• Customization capabilities for adding multimedia, personalized feedback, branding, etc.

Technical assessments should be accompanied by robust analytics and reporting features. Evaluation of test results, performance measurement, and identification of areas that require improvement is imperative. Detailed performance reports on an individual as well as group basis help identify trends and support data-driven decisions.

Technical assessments should facilitate a secure testing environment that ensures the protection of sensitive data and intellectual property. The test should be reliable, consistent, and fair.

Compliance with the latest data protection regulations and industry best practices are necessary for maintaining privacy and security.

1. Define objectives

It is essential to have clarity on hiring objectives to select one that aligns with the company’s goals. Further, concisely defining job roles helps ensure specific and relevant assessment for each job position.

2. Define competencies

As the required competencies may vary from one role to another, hiring managers must define the skills and competencies that translate to on-the-job success for specific roles.

3. Research and compare

Create a list of technical assessments for relevant job roles and follow these steps:

• Compare features and prices
• Evaluate user reviews
• Consider vendor reputation

4. Evaluate user experience

The software should be easy to access for people with disabilities.

Apart from this, visual appeal, responsive design, and zero glitches are some important aspects to consider.

5. Customize assessments

Create personalized assessments tailored to the hiring needs of specific job roles. For a better user experience, create comprehensive tests that include a variety of questions and utilize multimedia elements.

Mercer | Mettl’s wide range of pre-built technical skills tests are curated by experts for specific technical competencies. Assessing more than 500 skills for 1500+ job roles across 40+ industries, Mercer | Mettl’s technical tests go beyond MCQs and evaluate candidates based on their real-world functional knowledge.

Integrate technical assessments in the hiring process to improve hiring efficiency and workplace productivity. Accelerate the assessment processes for technical roles, widen the candidate pool, attract top industry talent, optimize recruitment time, and create outstanding experiences for potential hires.