Candidate skills assessment is necessary for recruitment as employers want top talent and recruiters want to find them before the competition does. Using skills testing software to filter applications and measure candidate abilities has become quite common in recruitment.
Identifying the best candidates for the hiring company
Staffing agencies can leverage skills testing at the start of recruitment. Many recruiters use the skills assessment software to immediately sift through a large volume of applications.
To elaborate – if there is only one vacancy but there are hundreds of candidates and recruiters do not have enough time to interview everyone, an appropriate skills test can help to quickly distinguish a more knowledgeable or experienced candidate. This cuts down the number of applicants to a more manageable number.
Recruiters also leverage skills testing software in the middle of a hiring process to filter a group of applicants and narrow down the candidates in preparation for the next stage. This helps in identifying the better applicants from several similarly talented and qualified candidates.
Choosing the right skills tests
There are plenty of assessments that recruiters can choose from to evaluate applicants in different sectors. The tests are range from Basic to Intermediate and Advanced levels.
Psychometric skills testing is designed to help check if a candidate has the right cultural fit for the hiring company. It assesses leadership, problem-solving and communication skills among others. MS Office skills test, literacy skills test and numeracy skills test are suitable for a lot of office-based employees.
There are other sector-specific assessments such as the accounting skills test and driving skills test. In short, recruiters can find a variety of tests that they can put to good use in identifying the best applicants for their clients.
Easy, quick candidate assessment process
Employment skills testing has many benefits. In recruitment, recruiters and employers rely mostly on CVs, cover letters and interviews to understand the applicants better. But these continue to be limiting and do not necessarily help paint a comprehensive picture of an individual’s abilities and qualifications.
A skills test does not take long. It can be anything between 5 to 60 minutes depending on the type of test. The results will help recruiters understand where their candidate’s skills and potential lie. It also shows how an individual performed against a group of other candidates.
Leading skills testing software systems use a standard set of questions. Everything is automated so even the way of evaluating the answers is also the same for everyone. This ensures that the assessment is objective and with no chance of bias hurting a candidate.
It is best to combine it with the agency’s choice of recruitment management system. A good recruitment CRM works smooths with all the other important recruiting tools. So, it shouldn’t be a problem to use both the software solutions together.
Online skills testing software for everyone’s benefit
It is quick, easy, and efficient. Proactive recruiters tap into the advantages of online skills assessment as there is more value in this. Working with online skills testing software means recruiters can quickly send the tests to their candidates. It only takes a couple of minutes to select and send the test links to a group of candidates.
If it were to be done the old way – on location with the recruiter present – it would take a huge amount of time to schedule all the candidates. It is much simpler and more efficient now.
Test results are also instantly available in the recruiter’s inbox when a candidate is done with the assessment. Recruiters can review the result and compare it with the performances of other candidates. Good skills testing software vendors provide a comprehensive result highlighting candidate potential and strengths in comparison with the average group performance. This allows employers to see which of the candidates they are interviewing and vetting are a better fit.
