Using a Job Skills Assessment to Increase Hiring Success in 2024

Hiring has become challenging because traditional recruiting tools are ineffective. HR teams used to rely on resumes, applications, and interviews. However, they cannot assume the information on candidates’ resumes and what they learn during interviews is accurate because over 85% of candidates lie on resumes and during job interviews.

Employers are also having trouble finding qualified candidates to fill critical job roles. This problem has been growing for the past decade. Organizations’ needs change when they upgrade technology and implement digital transformation initiatives. Unfortunately, applicants’ skills have not kept pace. So, while companies may receive hundreds of responses to a single job posting, few of the applicants are qualified.

Companies across all industries have implemented job skills assessment solutions to hire top employees. Skills assessment results provide hard data that is often more reliable than the information candidates provide on resumes and applications. They also help HR teams determine which candidates have the required job skills and show which are a good fit for their corporate culture.

How Do Skills Assessments Help HR Teams?

Job skills assessments help HR professionals evaluate candidates’ knowledge, skills, and abilities, enabling them to instantly determine which ones are qualified for a job.

Companies that use an industry-leading job skills assessment solution like the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM have access to hundreds of validated, subject- and job-based skills assessments. HR teams can use pre-prepared skills tests as-is, remove questions that are not relevant to the job, or designate difficulty levels for questions.

These are examples of job skills assessments in the eSkill Assessment Library.

• Account Representative
• Business Manager
• Client Service Analyst
• Data Scientist
• Java Developer
• Paraeducator
• HVAC Technician
• Corrections Officer
• Firefighter
• Network Engineer
• Hazardous Material Specialist
• Food and Beverage Manager
• Information System Security Engineer
• Medical Records Clerk
• 911 Dispatcher

HR professionals can build customized tests by choosing questions from multiple job skills assessments and adding their own questions. For instance, if your organization hires a web designer, you can select questions from the Web Designer skill test to assess creative and design skills. Questions from the Web Developer test help you evaluate applicants’ ability to build and manage websites, and questions from the Quality Assurance Tester assessment help you verify they know how to test, troubleshoot, and solve website issues.

What do Cognitive Job Skills Assessments Measure?

Employers need team members who can think critically and make good decisions. So, HR teams use job skills assessments to measure cognitive skills such as verbal and math skills and problem-solving. Cognitive tests demonstrate how well candidates process and retain information, learn new skills, size up situations, and take appropriate action.

eSkill offers the following skills assessments to give hiring teams maximum insight into candidates’ cognitive abilities.

• General Reasoning: Evaluates general analytic skills
• Numerical Reasoning: Measures applicants’ math, analytical, and logic skills
• Spatial Reasoning: Measures candidates’ ability to visualize designs and structures
• Verbal Reasoning: Evaluates applicants’ ability to comprehend what they hear or read

In general, applicants who score high on cognitive tests can absorb new information quickly and adapt to dynamic, fast-paced environments, in which they often thrive.

Which Job Skills Assessments Measure Behavioral Attributes?

A candidate’s skills assessment results may show they have the right stuff for a job, but they could be a bad hire because they are not a good fit for your corporate culture. This is why employers use behavioral assessments as part of their hiring process.

Behavioral assessments show how candidates will act on the job, collaborate with colleagues, team members, and customers, and treat subordinates. With behavioral assessments, you can evaluate attributes such as:

• Communication style
• Collaboration
• Work habits
• Teamwork
• Motivation
• Ethics
• Workplace personality

How Different Types of Job Skills Assessments Work Together

The different job skills assessments work in synergy to help HR leaders identify top candidates. Skills tests show whether candidates have the right abilities. Cognitive skills assessments tell you whether they have the intellectual capacity to do a job. Behavioral assessments tell you whether they are a good cultural fit for your corporate culture.

The eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM gives you the flexibility to design job skills assessment strategies for any position by enabling you to:

• Choose questions from multiple skills assessments and add your own content to create custom tests.
• Remove or edit questions to modify a pre-prepared job skills assessment so it matches a job role and your corporate requirements.
• Choose top candidates based on skills assessment scores and move them to the next step of your hiring process.
• Use video response questions to measure skills that are difficult to evaluate using written assessments.  
• Include simulations that present applicants with realistic work situations so you can evaluate how they perform in job-related situations.
• Use behavioral assessments and skill and cognitive pre-employment tests to ensure candidates are a good fit for your company culture.

Are you ready to learn how job skills assessment tests can help you improve hiring success during 2024? Contact us to request a demo.