Gauge What Your Job Candidates Really Know

After reference checking, appropriately implemented skill and behavioral assessments can become the next most important tool for determining the right fit for the job. You obviously want an employee that is able to accomplish the work that they are being hired for. To guarantee that they have the professional and cognitive skills needed for the job, consider using a skills and cognitive ability test. Let us help you through this part of the hiring process.

Oftentimes, filling a position can be a long and arduous process requiring more effort than you initially thought. Pre-employment tests are a great way to speed up the process and weed out any job candidates that end up not having the skills or experience that they claim to have.

Verify Your Job Candidates’ Experience

While we have a separate employment verification process to verify that an applicant has the experience they claim to have, cognitive ability tests offer some hints as to whether or not they’re telling the truth. The skills assessment test will show if they have the skills necessary to perform the work, so it will offer hints as to whether they’ve performed a job where they’ve needed to use those skills.

For example, if a candidate does poorly on the skills assessment, but claims to have experience in a position where they would have used those skills, they may have either exaggerated the truth or simply lied about having the position altogether. If a candidate does poorly on the skills assessment and you’d like to verify their previous employment experience, we offer an employment verification process that will either confirm or deny that they have the experience that they claim to have.

Skills assessment tests can help identify the strengths, weaknesses and training gaps in every candidate, plus allow you to distinguish the valuable contributors from the less motivated applicants.

Use professional skills tests to evaluate basic math and reading abilities or measure competency on Microsoft Office, QuickBooks and other common office applications. A pre-employment skills assessment like this will measure the most basic of skills needed for the job at hand.

Pre-employment assessments are also available to help determine whether your job candidates possess the knowledge, skills, cognitive abilities, and other characteristics (KSAOs) most often associated with certain industries including:

• Architecture and engineering
• Athletics and coaching
• Construction
• Financial
• Food-service related
• Healthcare practice
• Healthcare support
• Information technology
• Legal
• Maintenance and repair
• Management
• Office and administrative support
• Production and manufacturing
• Protective service
• Sales and customer service

You want the candidate that will provide the best future job performance. As much trust as we want to have that everybody has the skills they claim to have on their resume, we know that you can’t always take their word for it. Or, maybe the job you’re hiring for requires a very specific set of skills that not many possess. In either case, the use of a skills assessment as a pre-employment test can narrow your search and show you who really has the skills that you’re looking for to fill a job position.

Hard and soft skills are both incredibly important features that you want your job candidate to possess. Skill assessment tests are a great way to make sure that your employees or job candidates have the best skills for the job. If your position received many applications from people who seem to be qualified and possess the necessary skills for the job, skill assessment tests can be used to show which of the qualified individuals have the best knowledge for the position.

Cognitive or behavioral assessments can help you further identify whether job candidates possess the temperament for management, sales, employee supervision or other job responsibilities. Additionally, a behavioral assessment can help to make sure that an applicant is a good fit in your office or work environment. If workplace culture is important to your business, you might want to consider a behavioral assessment for your job candidates.

Barada Associates provides dozens of personality tests to test applicants’ soft skills and technical skills tests from leading industry providers, including the Hogan Assessment Series, WonderLic, Predictive Index and Profiles International. All skills tests can be conveniently administered online from the security of your office or the applicant’s individual location (when permitted).

Let us help customize a set of pre-employment tests and surveys to meet your particular needs. We can also help facilitate development of an internal benchmarking system to help you further evaluate aptitude for job success based on existing key performers.

We know how big of a pain it can be to find that perfect applicant for your job search. Let Barada Associates help you. We will provide professional and cognitive ability testing to measure soft skills and professional skills tests to measure technical skills. Whatever types of tests we can provide to help you through the employee search process, let us know. Contact Barada Associates today to begin creating pre-employment tests to help you hire the best person for the job.

Barada Associates has been providing screening and reference reports for businesses since 1979. We have built relationships with many businesses that have lasted for many years. Businesses trust us to deliver accurate and helpful reports that aid them in their hiring process. If Barada Associates can help you with skills assessment tests, general cognitive ability assessments, aptitude tests, or personality tests, give us a call today to make a unique and customized plan for your business.