What Are Skill Assessment Tests?

Human capital is increasingly becoming a vital factor in the success of any organization. Today, hiring the best talent is no longer limited to referrals or recruitment agencies. The workforce is more versatile than ever, and the entry of millennials has only made things difficult for recruiters. The fierce competition in hiring the best fit has led to the evolvement of the recruitment process. Skill testing, pre-employment assessment, and other similar methods are being used to determine the abilities, judgment skills, ethics, and even the personality of the candidates.

Organizations hiring for technical positions are faced with an even more complicated situation as there is a dearth of skilled talent. However, at the same time, it is becoming difficult for organizations to weed out ordinary candidates from the exceptional ones due to the sheer number of applications. Recruiters hiring for technical roles cannot afford to lose out on a worthy candidate. A potential solution is a skill assessment test that will help the employer evaluate the competency of the candidate.

Defining Skill Assessment Tests

Skill assessment tests are a formal, scientific, standardized, and technology-driven methods of evaluating the skills of the candidates. Skill assessment tests allow recruiters to take data-driven actions in shortlisting and hiring the right candidates for the right roles. While there are a variety of tests that recruiters can employ from measuring the personality traits to knowledge tests, skill assessment tests focus on testing specific skills for particular roles. They help measure the skills required for a particular job, thereby improving the chances of hiring the right talent.

At Otomeyt, we believe technology should make recruitment easier for the recruiters while improving the efficiency of the complete process. Our AI-powered tool is equipped with Natural Language Processing capability which makes it capable of scanning the job description for factors such as job description, title, required skills, etc. to create a customized assessment test tailored for the job role.

Which Skill Assessment Tool To Choose?

There are many options available in the market that offer you a wide range of skill assessment tests. However, it is essential that you begin by determining the specific goals and needs of your organization. You should determine the precise skills that you need to evaluate based on the available role. If you are hiring for a technical role such as a developer, it is crucial that your skill assessment test covers the scalability, performance, and quality of the code written by the candidate.
The right skill assessment tool should offer support for auto-generating role-specific assessment tests by simply uploading the job description. It is imperative for you to define the ideal characteristics you want in your assessment tool and then evaluate the options available. Some of the questions that you should answer before shortlisting any skill assessment tool could be as following:

• Do you need a questions-library to create an assessment test?
• What programming language support you require based on the specific needs of your organization?
• Do you need in-depth reports or just the results?
• Do you need a customized skill assessment for the role?
• Should the tool be easy to use with minimal tech knowledge required? 

Answering these questions will help you narrow the choices of skill assessment tools. Also, since you would be relying on this tool to make crucial hiring decisions, the skill assessment tool that you are using must have advanced mechanisms to prevent any form of cheating. Some of the advanced features that you should demand include location detection, eyeball detection, capturing screenshots, disabling copy-paste, and other features designed to deliver a fair test.

Conclusion

Skill assessment tools are one of the most advanced methods that you can use to evaluate candidates or even assess the skills of your current employees. It can help you hire the right candidates, thereby reducing the attrition rate and improving the efficiency of the workforce. The skill assessment test you use must not only help you weed out the poor candidates but also helps you in selecting the best candidate from the better ones.

Tags: Skill assessment, Technical assessment