Skills evaluation: Benefits, types and how to choose the most appropriate test

In today’s job market, attracting and hiring suitable candidates has become challenging. With traditional hiring methods no longer sufficient, organizations are turning towards modern assessment strategies to find the right fit. Skills assessments in recruitment have become critical for businesses seeking growth and success in the future.

These assessments provide a structured approach to gauge candidates’ abilities and ensure an objective selection process. Skill assessments can include personality, behavioral, psychometric tests and more. By leveraging these tools, employers can find top talent and make informed recruitment decisions that align with their organizational goals.

To help hiring managers navigate this complex landscape, we have designed a comprehensive guide on using skills assessments.

Skills evaluations are scientific and formal evaluation tools to assess potential applicants. These tests enable employers and hiring managers to gain first-hand insight into someone’s ability to perform a particular task, helping remove subjectivity or bias from the decision-making process. This process allows easy analysis of the candidate’s readiness for the job roles they have applied for.

Skills assessments are useful and time-saving tools that evaluate candidates early in the assessment process when managing high-volume hiring, enabling recruiters to quickly shortlist only qualified applicants from large applicant pools.

Skills are the veritable currency for hiring, training, and development. They determine the likelihood of one’s success at work, and skills tests primarily help recruiters gauge the depth and breadth of knowledge and skills required for the job role. There are various skills assessment tools, and each can help organizations evaluate candidates’ skills for specific roles when hiring. Listed below are some common categories of skills assessments used during the recruitment process:

Psychometric tests

Psychometric tests are psychological evaluation tools that objectively assess a candidate’s aptitude, personality traits, abilities, and intelligence levels. These assessments are extensively used in hiring and employee development. A psychometric test can help match an individual’s personality and skills to a suitable role or career, whether for employment or career guidance. These tests can help in large-scale recruitment drives, whittling down a huge applicant pool to the selected few who could be a suitable match for a particular role or organization.

Behavioral tests

Behavioral tests are structured frameworks for assessing candidates’ competencies in a simulated work environment. Individuals taking these assessments demonstrate their behavioral skills in tasks that mimic workplace settings. Behavioral assessments are a crucial part of the evaluation process that aims to observe, understand, analyze, or predict candidates’ behaviors. Employers use this type of pre-employment assessment to assess critical behavioral traits required to excel in a particular role. Based on behavioral competencies, the test can help recruiters determine whether an individual is a good fit for the organization.

Aptitude tests

Aptitude tests are standardized pre-employment assessments that help employers determine an individual’s suitability for a role. These tools are an excellent way for recruiters to understand how applicants might tackle the challenges of the role they have applied for, uncovering their strengths and areas of improvement. Aptitude assessments are usually conducted online via dedicated, web-based platforms that can help conduct virtual assessments at scale. These scientifically designed assessments lent incredible ease in evaluating every person’s professional aptitude to find performance-driven and goal-oriented candidates.

Coding tests

Coding tests are technical skills assessments that tech recruiters can use to find suitable coders with the desired skills. These online skills assessments help hiring managers filter out any candidates that are not suitable early in the tech hiring process, ensuring only the most competent professionals get to the next level. Using these technical skills tests, employers can easily assess the coding prowess of job applicants. For example, Mercer| Mettl offers an innovative digital tool, Mercer | Mettl Hack, which includes many coding skills tests and simulators for both campus and lateral hiring purposes and helps evaluate coding abilities online.

Domain tests

Domain or technical tests are structured assessments administered to candidates (for technical and non-technical profiles) to evaluate their domain knowledge and aptitude required for the given roles. Such a skills test helps determine suitable candidates by placing probables in strict test environments to gauge whether they possess the knowledge and skills required for the position. The test helps determine candidates’ functional abilities, aptitude, and technical skills and how well they can perform various domain skills tests, such as sales and marketing assessments, leadership skills assessments, accounting and finance assessments, etc.

Communication skills tests

Communication skills assessments evaluate the candidates’ communication skills and focus on how well they understand the complexities of the language. These tests are broadly based on four evaluation parameters: pronunciation, fluency, listening comprehension, and grammar. These tests comprise several assessments and language comprehension assignments to gauge the breadth of the applicant’s knowledge and proficiency in oral and written mediums. The various components of such a skills test help recruiters assess how well the test-takers can understand the language and the promptness with which they can imbibe its essence and respond appropriately.

Skill evaluation plays a crucial role in hiring by providing a structured method for assessing candidates’ abilities and competencies relevant to the job. Hiring managers can utilize skills assessments to evaluate candidates’ aptitude and abilities and determine whether they are suitable for the role. Many organizations also use role-specific skills assessments for workforce development and recruitment.

By implementing skill tests, employers can objectively measure a candidate’s knowledge, skills, and capabilities, which helps to ensure that they have the qualifications necessary to perform effectively in the role. This process leads to informed and equitable hiring decisions.

These evaluations enhance the overall efficiency of the recruitment process. Skills assessments for employment are administered as a general evaluation that helps gauge an individual’s personality type, skills, and expertise level, providing a detailed understanding of the candidate’s fit. These evaluations can also provide valuable insights into a candidate’s suitability within the company culture and ability to collaborate with existing team members.

They are additionally utilized by HR and learning and development teams to identify their workforce’s knowledge gaps and plan for succession. Therefore, incorporating skill evaluations into the hiring process helps organizations build a competent and cohesive workforce, driving better performance and productivity in the long run.

Employers conduct job skills assessments to make the correct hiring decisions. The most common methods of assessing candidates’ or existing employees’ skills are resume reviews, interviews, employment tests, background investigations, etc.

However, there’s no match for high-precision skills tests. These are standardized, scientific and formal means of identifying high-potential employees and suitable candidates. Intrinsically, these assessments ensure authentic scores, ratings, grading and overall descriptions. Hence, they are prepared to comprehensively evaluate the candidates’ skills and abilities.

Additionally, skills assessments offer various benefits over other assessment methods. For example, when evaluating through old-school testing methods, it is hard to vouch for candidates’ genuineness. The facts presented in resumes, job interviews, and reference checks can be misrepresented.

Skills tests are more effective in predicting performance than traditional interviews or CV screenings. The results derived from skills testing are objective, factually relevant and crucial in selecting a candidate; whereas a CV is not enough to make a hiring decision.

There are several benefits to using skills assessments. Some of them are:

• Competent employees bring significant business revenue through effective processes, strong work ethics, and innovation. Skills tests are often administered to determine whether a person fits the job requirements and the organization’s values well. These fitments are based on specific parameters: personality, domain skills, leadership competencies, etc. As a result, these well-researched and score-oriented assessments can indicate whether an applicant is at the level the employer desires.
• Using skills assessments, hiring managers can screen applicants who are not suited to a specific work environment early in the process. These tests can be used for entry-level recruitment and when hiring for middle and senior management roles. Skills tests can easily identify an individual’s skills and cultural fit.
• The test results lend credence to the selection process, ensuring the selection is justifiable. It enables assessors to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of the examinee’s ability. These abilities can include skills, EQ, knowledge, leadership, or any other area they wish to assess, including ascertaining the need for upskilling or reskilling, considering what is essential to the role and organization.
• Potential candidates and current employees can undergo employability skills assessments to let employers know if the training has worked and whether employees are geared up for promotion. Skills-based assessments can speak volumes about the candidates’ eligibility concerning skills, personality, accountability, knowledge, and dedication toward work, even before recruitment.
• Investing in skills assessments for employment helps organizations save time and financial resources when sifting through a vast pool of seemingly competent candidates. Hiring managers won’t need to invest efforts and resources in hiring candidates who may not be compatible with the job after recruiting them based on their CV and a remarkable interview. Therefore, utilizing skills tests before the interview would be beneficial.
• Subconscious hiring impartialities in the hiring process can lead to poor acquisition decisions. Therefore, skills assessments play a vital role in the hiring process. Such tests offer an objective evaluation of a person’s abilities and level of proficiency, helping eradicate factors that can unknowingly create hurdles for a recruiter.
• Ascertaining someone’s eligibility for a job or promotion based on their current skill levels is a parochial outlook because certain crucial aspects are overlooked. A skills test helps managers understand the areas where someone needs to improve, which allows them to design a meaningful and personalized learning and development plan.

Managers in the HR industry often grapple with the question of which skills test they should choose. It depends on the business requirements, the job position to fill, and the required skills. A skills evaluation tool is a system used to assess a person’s abilities and knowledge in specific areas related to a job. These tools can include online tests, practical exercises, and simulations. Organizations use them to make better hiring and employee development decisions by providing objective data on a candidate’s skills.

A good skills evaluation tool has several essential features. It should be valid and reliable, have accurate measuring skills, and produce consistent results. The tool should also be customizable to fit different job roles, easy to use for candidates and evaluators, and capable of generating detailed reports. Additionally, it should offer various assessment methods, provide real-time feedback, integrate with existing HR systems, and be scalable to accommodate growth.

Here are some of the factors that help in deciding how to select a skills assessment according to job role requirements:

• Determining objectives: Employers must identify their needs and what they intend to accomplish via these assessments. For example, do they want to hire new candidates or assess existing employees? Are they seeking people with particular skills?
• Deciding what to measure: Employers should focus on which skills they hope to evaluate. For example, do they want to assess technical or soft skills? A holistic competency framework can provide employers with a viable blueprint for defining the knowledge, characteristics, and skillsets required from prospective employees.
• Describing the characteristics of an ideal skill assessment: Employers need to ask the correct questions before prioritizing their preferences. For example, what are the aspects of an effective assessment? Is it possible to customize the questions? Are these scientifically validated assessments? Have the assessments been modeled using the competency framework? The preferred characteristics will come in handy while making informed decisions.
• Researching options: An employer can consider all aspects and begin sifting through the available options to find the ideal skills assessment test that suits their requirements.

Mercer | Mettl has designed an assessment ecosystem, enabling many clients across industries and business verticals to conduct their assessments virtually with the highest industry standards. With several pioneering features in its arsenal, this comprehensive online assessment platform accommodates all recruitment needs. Though skills tests have several benefits, appropriately implementing these assessments can be laborious. Mercer | Mettl’s assessment platform ticks all the boxes in the recruiter’s checklist. It provides many crucial features, such as seamless integration, convenient user interface, AI-powered online proctoring, assured data safety, diversity of question types, real-time results, customizable analytical reports, secure API support, round-the-clock services, and much more. The technologically advanced system is inherently attuned to clients’ needs, helping them conduct high-stakes skills assessment tests in a scalable, credible, and cost-effective manner. It enables test administrators to streamline, integrate, and automate the preparation, delivery, and attestation part of the skills tests, making talent assessment a facile affair.

Mercer | Mettl’s extensive library of skills tests and simulators can enable employers to evaluate job candidates and existing employees on various criteria. Its all-encompassing roster of skills assessments provides a host of coding, domain, language, aptitude, and personality evaluation tools, coupled with powerful AI-proctoring technology.

Skills assessments help evaluate a person’s suitability and competency for the job and determine whether they have the drive to succeed and thrive in the organizational setup. These tests are typically used to determine where one lacks skills and needs improvement, allowing companies to get precise data on the skills that need to be developed to increase productivity. These skills tests have internal validity scales, which can quickly detect any misrepresentation and help determine a candidate’s suitability, weighing how they would fare and measure up to the company’s expectations in the long run.