Communication assessment is a holistic analysis of an individual’s communication skills. It includes various tests and language comprehension exercises gauging the candidate’s proficiency in written and oral mediums. The multiple layers of such an assessment analyze the test-taker’s ability to comprehend, process, and respond appropriately in the same language.
Communication skills assessment is one of the fundamental pillars of recruitment for organizations focusing on a holistic HR management approach. Using suitable tools to evaluate a candidate’s language proficiency, non-verbal etiquette, and cultural fitness can be extremely rewarding in matching professionals and profiles.
This guide offers essential insights into the science of communication assessments, answering prominent questions concerning their role, requirements, applications and advantages in global recruitment processes.
Good communication skills are the core of successful workplace collaboration. Modern recruitment processes are designed to assess candidates beyond profile-specific competencies. This chapter elaborates on the role of communication in the hiring stage in HR management, serving as the platform for understanding pre-employment communication skills test online.
Communication is fundamental to a committed and productive workforce. From team building to innovation and growth, every stage of the employee life cycle is directly linked to their ability to express their ideas openly. According to a Graduate Management Admission Council corporate recruiters’ survey report, employers rank communication skills as the most important recruitment criteria.
Irrespective of professional achievements or working styles, today’s thriving workplace primarily focuses on soft skill development. Research by Optum indicates that effective lateral and workgroup communication boosts overall company performance and increases employee job satisfaction and engagement.
The business world demands excellent workplace communication. However, there are certain professions where these skills are the top priority, and the assessment criteria for communication skills remain critical.
While some areas focus more on excellent writing, others demand profound verbal communication abilities. Some jobs include advertising and marketing, journalism media and PR, BPOs, human resource management, and teaching.
The right tools and resources must be utilized throughout recruitment to ensure success, as they provide a holistic view of how to assess communication skills. Among other skills, a combination of pre-employment assessments determines a candidate’s communication abilities. A holistic approach toward measuring these aptitudes is imperative in finding the best match for a role, company culture and long-term association.
A communication assessment gauges an individual’s proficiency in a language, ability to utilize that proficiency in multiple scenarios, and their skill to harness that potential in professional and social contexts. Communication assessments are essential when hiring for positions involving regular interactions with customers, co-workers, or people at large.
A well-structured communications assessment emphasizes how to evaluate communication skills and measures all the essential parameters of verbal and non-verbal communication. Organizations and industries that require excellent workplace communication can leverage a suite of assessments that evaluate a candidate’s comfort and proficiency in a particular language. They measure an individual’s ability to read and hear information, their processing speed, develop an understanding of it, and their ability to come up with a suitable response to that information in the same language. Communication assessment tests evaluate writing skills, grammar, pronunciation, and speech.
When choosing a communication skills assessment, it is crucial to consider the essential elements of interpersonal communication for the complete evaluation of communication skills. These elements can be placed under four categories: writing, reading, listening, and speaking.
Good writing abilities in managing communication are vital for professionals. It prevents any distortion of facts, ensuring everyone receives the same in a professional setting. A written communication test analyzes the candidates’ writing abilities and evaluates their pieces based on grammar, spelling, punctuation, vocabulary, and more.
Reading comprehension skills demonstrate a candidate’s ability to interpret and analyze written information accurately. These skills are relevant for professions that require routine verbal communication. Assessing reading skills with the help of a holistic English communication skills assessment provides insights into an individual’s average comprehension abilities, critical thinking skills, general aptitude, the ability to pay attention to detail and patience, focus and attention span.
Listening is essential in minimizing misunderstanding. The US Department of Labor Secretary’s Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS) identifies effective listening as one of the three critical foundation skills for the workforce. Research states that efficient listening skills help register more information.
Speech, or spoken language proficiency, is one of the most prominent and traditionally valued skills employers seek when assessing an applicant’s communication abilities. Communication assessment for speech or a spoken English test is essential when the candidates are not native speakers of the specific language. It helps in:
Communications assessments offer myriad possibilities ranging from grammar and punctuation evaluation to communication assessment test questions measuring verbal ability for a specific industry. Some of the applications include:
Communication tests are now considered a must-have by hiring teams. Some of the benefits are:
Communications skills assessment highlights and identifies candidates skilled at mitigating workplace conflicts. It enables HR professionals to make better hiring choices, ensuring candidates communicate in ways that avoid and resolve disputes.
Effective communication enhances connections among colleagues. Testing communication abilities highlights how well candidates connect and engage with their colleagues. These tests identify hires that will understand goals and strengthen connectivity between employees and management.
HR can make evidence-based hiring choices by introducing testing into the recruitment process. Employees who understand what’s being communicated understand the goals and articulate their thoughts, working more efficiently and boosting productivity.
Customer-facing roles depend on communication skills. Effective and empathic communication with clients helps build lasting relationships, leading to customer retention and improved brand loyalty.
A healthy work environment is critical for success. Communication skills make avoiding potential miscommunications and disputes easier and create a healthier and more equitable work environment.
Communicating ideas through open communication channels empowers employees and advances brand innovation. With communication testing, it’s easier to spot the candidates who will benefit most from those open communication channels.
The hiring team make informed decisions if the communications test has the right questions. Hiring teams must customize their tests to reflect the requirements of the job role. Some of the sample questions include:
Candidates must read the query statement and write the answer as ‘true’ or ‘false’ in the allotted time. Some of the examples are:
These questions propose a scenario and give applicants multiple options for their response. It is one of the more common questions in a communications test because it encourages candidates to think about their answers more. For example:
You are the manager of a customer service team. One of your team members, John, has consistently been late for his morning shift for the past two weeks. This delay has started affecting the team’s performance. What would be your most appropriate course of action in this situation?
A) Have a one-on-one conversation with John to discuss the issue and its impact on the team’s performance. Ask for his reasons for being late and offer support to help him improve his punctuality.
B) Issue a written warning to John immediately and let him know that further instances of delay will result in disciplinary action.
C) Ignore John’s delay for now and hope he improves his punctuality independently without any intervention.
Such questions demand specific answers. Here, candidates are given statements like:
When coupled with advanced analytics, communication assessments open new vistas of predictive insights that directly translate into the metrics needed to support strategic and tactical hiring decisions.
Scientific and technological advancements in communication tests have expanded their reach, making these assessments more adaptive, scalable, and accurate. These tools ensure a remarkable candidate experience, also supporting convenient remote access. Furthermore, these tools eliminate bias during the evaluation, providing higher accuracy.
Online assessment platforms help recruiters screen candidates faster with test content made by experts. These tests also streamline the evaluation of the communication skills process by removing the onus from manual grading. As a result, the entire process allows companies access to a larger, diversified, and highly skilled talent pool.
The global reach of online communications assessments allows recruiters to dive into a larger talent pool. Recruiters can easily share remote English communication tests or communication test questions with candidates. With the help of cloud-based and mobile-ready assessment testing tools, they can access the test results and analyses anywhere, anytime. It allows flexibility to administer and review tests anywhere and anytime.
Technologically advanced communication assessments save time and improve efficiency. These tests are customizable and accommodate several question formats, evaluation parameters and feedback options in testing candidates for specific communication skills (e.g., writing or speaking, for industries such as advertising and BPO).
Different types of communication assessments are designed to evaluate candidates for specific roles across industries. Depending on the job’s demands, recruiters can select one or a combination of multiple evaluations as needed. They can include:
There are three keys to choosing an effective communication assessment tool. They include:
It is pivotal to begin by answering the ‘whys’ and ‘hows.’ Some examples are-
The next step is understanding who will be assessed using these tests. It refers to the number of candidates and the position for which they are evaluated.
Promising characteristics of an evaluation are one of the critical drivers of success.
Mercer | Mettl offers a range of holistic communication assessments, helping recruiters make better hiring decisions and filter out efficient communicators for specific positions. These scientifically- backed, innovative tools measure communication skills based on significant parameters. They are customizable, flexible, and domain-specific, allowing recruiters vast possibilities in optimizing their hiring process.
Mercer | Mettl’s communication assessment suite: An overview
SpeechX is the most comprehensive English communication skills test evaluating non-native speakers’ spoken English skills. The tool evaluates candidates’ listening, comprehension, fluency, and grammar proficiency using a patented Speech Recognition Engine and Pinpointing Technology by Proprietary Speech Analytics and Carnegie Speech. Some of its characteristics are:
This English communication assessment is instrumental when hiring for the BPO industry and jobs with client-facing responsibilities that help you recruit qualified professionals who:
Mercer | Mettl’s English Writing Simulator can be used as a fine-toothed comb in recruitment, ideal for shortlisting candidates for content writing and digital marketing profiles. The simulator automatically grades a candidate’s content based on grammar and vocabulary, evaluates abbreviations, punctuation, and parts of speech, and rates overall content quality.
The English Writing Simulator helps hire technical writers, web content writers, and product/service reviewers across industries. It helps assess if the writer can:
Mercer | Mettl’s Corporate Communications Skills Assessment is explicitly designed for assessing communication skills in a corporate setting. It analyses professionals in corporate branding, corporate identity, crisis management, corporate responsibility, investor relations and public relations. The test includes a series of objective and subjective questions and simulators assessing all areas of verbal communication.
This communication test is best suited for gauging a candidate’s communication skills in a quantifiable manner. It identifies:
This pre-built comprehensive assessment analyzes individuals applying for the position of marketing communication manager. The questions are tailor-made to understand their aptitude for the specific role. They test oral and written communication skills, analyze the applicants’ understanding of target audiences, measure their strategic thinking abilities toward developing and implementing media campaigns, and entail behavioural assessment to measure enthusiasm, flexibility, and persistency for the desired response.
This domain-specific communication test allows recruiters to access a talent pool that promises abilities to:
This guide covers the critical elements of effective communication skills assessment, offering detailed insights into measuring a candidate’s communication abilities before and during recruitment. Assessing communication skills is essential for long-term business success. Effective communication is pivotal in improving customer relations, driving team collaboration, enhancing sales and negotiation outcomes, ensuring clear internal communication channels, and cultivating strong leadership. With elaborate solutions for conducting industry-specific communication tests, communication assessment tests quicken and scale up hiring initiatives, making it a valuable resource for an employer/recruiter.
Mercer | Mettl’s assessments provide valuable insights, allowing recruiters to make data-driven decisions when selecting suitable candidates for the job. With the inclusion of SpeechX into the recruitment process, organizations can identify top performers with credible communication skills, ensuring a workforce that effectively engages with clients, collaborates within teams, and contributes to the organization’s overall success.
Originally published February 23 2021, Updated October 13 2023
An English proficiency test software is used to evaluate the English-speaking and comprehension skills of an individual. Customer-facing industries like hospitality, retail, BPOs, etc., often used some variant of an English proficiency test software to assess the pronunciation, fluency, accent, intonation and grammar of potential employees.