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When hiring, developing, or promoting employees for new positions, resumes and interviews talk so much about a person:  education, experience, and references all provide indicators about what employees know and what they have done. However, the best way to understand one’s abilities and level of proficiency is to conduct a skills assessment. skills assessment is an evaluation of an individual’s ability to perform a specific skill or set of skills. Usually, it’s an evaluation of skills specific to a job or role. Ideally, the assessment captures the level of proficiency for each skill, so you know which participants are new to a skill and which have mastered it. Skills assessments may be conducted in person and/or online and may take the form of a simulation, test, questionnaire, or observation. 

Skills assessment tests give no weight to how employees learned what they know; they measure what employees can do. They are routinely used for a range of hiring and employee development initiatives:

• Recruiting: a skills assessment test for employment can help hiring managers narrow down the list of candidates to interview or to decide between finalist candidates for an open position;

• Career Development: a jobs skills assessment test can be used to evaluate the performance of current employees, to help confirm that they are strengthening essential skills as they build experience;

• Learning and Development: as employees progress along a learning path, a skills assessment test is a simple, objective checkpoint to ensure that the training is effective;

• Rapid Adoption of New Skills: The coronavirus pandemic reminds us that skills are constantly evolving. From effectively participating in video meetings to adopting new social distancing protocols or manufacturing procedures, a skills assessment can quickly test whether employees have mastered new, essential skills before they are cleared for the work;

• Reskilling and Upskilling: many employers are encouraging current employees to learn adjacent or entirely new skill sets to help address a talent gap.

1. Types of Skills Assessment Tests

There are many types and categories of talent or skills assessment tests, including:

• Hard skills assessment tests are a great skills assessment tool because they closely mirror the work an employee would perform if hired. To assess candidates’ hard skills, you can ask them to complete exercises similar to what they’d be performing on the job or provide ready-made work samples. These tests are often used for technical jobs and are especially handy when you have a lot of similar, apparently qualified applicants, but can’t seem to narrow them down.

• Soft skills assessment tests. Soft skills refer to someone’s interpersonal characteristics. Often referred to as “people skills”, they are qualities individuals need to work, lead, and interact with others. While soft skills can definitely be developed, in many instances, candidates naturally have an inherent level of soft skill ability showcasing themselves as great people to work with. Examples of soft skills include: communication, leadership, problem-solving, critical thinking, persuasion & Influence, teamwork, organization, work sample or job knowledge tests.

• Cognitive ability tests are much more general in nature than personality tests, since they don’t test for any specific skills that are directly related to the job. Like an IQ test, they test your verbal, spatial, mathematical, and logical reasoning skills, as well as memory and concentration. These skills are desirable in any candidate, regardless of the position they’re applying for. That’s why most hiring teams find cognitive skills tests useful for preliminary screening – when they’re trying to shortlist candidates based on their thinking abilities.

• Personality tests is more of a soft skills assessment tool that determines whether candidates have the right demeanor to not only succeed at their roles, but within the company culture as well. It might include a questionnaire that asks them to rank themselves on various scales, such as extroversion, agreeableness, and critical thinking. It might also involve scenario-based questions that ask how you’d respond in such a situation. For example, if you’re hiring a salesperson or looking to improve your current team, you might prioritize extroverted traits.

• Psychometric tests. Graduate psychometric tests help to identify your skills, knowledge and personality. They're often used during the preliminary screening stage, or as part of an assessment centre. They're objective, convenient and strong indicators of job performance - making them very popular with large graduate recruiters. Common tests include: diagrammatic reasoning; error checking; numerical reasoning; spatial reasoning; verbal reasoning. The majority of psychometric testing is completed online, though some paper questionnaires remain. Most tests are timed, but some can be completed in multiple sittings.

• Situational judgment tests. The tests present candidates with various hypothetical situations found in the job position for which they have applied. The situations may relate to difficulties with customers, superior-subordinate conflicts, ethical dilemmas, stress and disagreement among co-workers, etc. The situations described may vary depending on the role for which one is applying, as specific characteristics and attitudes are being assessed. The length of the scenario varies between 40 and 150 words. For each situation presented, several possible actions are suggested. There are usually 4-5 action-responses. The candidate must select the appropriate response to cope with this situation. Once the test has been automatically scored by the computer, the number of correct answers is compared with a normal distribution of answers given by a group of previous examinees, and the range of variance (percentile) is evaluated. Each company then makes its own assessments of the range of variance.

• Interview assessment test is a form of examination a company gives a candidate during the interview to test their fitness for the role they intend to fill. Interview Assessments can be on a different range of subjects and test many qualities and skills depending on the available vacancy. They can test industry knowledge, personality traits, the candidate's ability to observe certain phenomena, and many other requirements. For instance, many Interview Assessment tests have progressively included questions that test the candidate's ability to work remotely and interact with team members without physical interaction. Similarly, Interview Assessment tests can also be helpful in cases where the work role is well-paying and competitive. This means many equally qualified candidates will apply. Again, the interview assessment test proves an impartial decision-maker about a candidate's competency over another. With human biases out of the way, the hiring manager's work becomes more effortless.

2. Benefits of a Skills Assessment

Because skills assessments are designed to objectively assess the skills of individuals, there are many benefits to using them. Here are just a few:

• Reduce Bias: Especially in the hiring process, intrinsic biases can affect our hiring decisions. The more weight given to skills assessments, the less is given to things like age, gender, previous employer, education, address, and other factors that can inadvertently sway a hiring manager;

• Consistency: Without an assessment, hiring managers are left with human reports of proficiency – with no objective agreement on the “scale.” One job candidate may report that her skills are mostly “3” on a 3-point scale and another mostly “2” – even if their skill levels are exactly the same. A skills assessment does a much better job assigning objective meaning to that 1-2-3 scale;

• Personalized Development Plans: Just because someone isn’t fully skilled doesn’t mean they shouldn’t get the job or promotion. A skills assessment is extremely helpful in pinpointing exactly the areas where someone needs to develop skills, making it easier to develop a relevant, personalized learning and development plan;

• Measure Progress: Whether monitoring the development of individuals or teams, regular skills assessments can confirm progress – or identify areas where the training and support isn’t enough;

• Employee Engagement. As a global employee reward and recognition company Fond reminds us, employees want to keep learning. “Cultivating your employees’ growth is a win-win situation — it keeps them engaged and allows them to develop new skill sets that will make them stronger employees.” Skills assessments are precisely all about employee growth; supporting and recognizing their progress keeps employees engaged.