Employers use skills assessment tests to measure job applicants’ abilities for all positions and ensure they have the skills necessary to perform a job. However, they find basic skills assessment tests particularly useful because they can be used to recruit applicants for most entry-level and administrative positions.
Administrative employees are the backbone of most organizations. According to a study by the International Association of Administrative Professionals, there is an average of one administrative professional for every 42 employees in most companies.
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, demand for administrative employees will stagnate between 2021 and 2031 in some industry sectors but will increase in fast-growing fields like healthcare. Furthermore, organizations in all industry sectors find recruiting qualified employees to fill critical job roles challenging.
Employers must recruit top-quality entry-level and administrative employees to maintain their competitive edge. So, they implement an industry-leading skills assessment testing solution like the eSkill Talent Assessment PlatformTM.
Using Pre-Prepared Basic Skills Assessment Tests
When hiring entry-level and administrative employees, organizations can use skills assessment tests to evaluate applicants’ ability to manage various administrative tasks, measure computer proficiency, and confirm that applicants can communicate effectively via phone, email, and face-to-face.
eSkill offers a variety of pre-prepared basic skills assessment tests to help hiring teams instantly identify candidates with the skills and attributes needed to succeed in entry-level and administrative roles. These are some basic skills assessment tests available in the eSkill Assessment Library:
Customizing “Off-the-Shelf” Basic Skills Assessment Tests
HR leaders can also build customized assessments that perfectly match the requirements of any job, using questions from multiple skills assessment tests.
Suppose you want to hire an administrative assistant who will create and maintain reports and spreadsheets and have a lot of contact with customers. In this case, you can choose questions from the Administrative Assistant, Customer Service, MS Word®, and MS Excel® skills assessment tests and include questions from the Basic Math, Telephone, and Email Etiquette tests.
Depending on specific job requirements, you can assess entry-level and administrative candidates’ event planning skills, business communication, filing, time management, and written and verbal communication abilities.
The best way to ensure applicants are qualified is to watch them perform job-related tasks. So, hiring teams include simulations in basic skills assessment tests, which present applicants with realistic, on-the-job scenarios. Since almost 80% of all jobs require computer proficiency, you should use an MS Office® Simulation to test Word® and Excel® skills. Within 10 years, 90% of all jobs will require digital literacy skills. So, you may also want to include the Digital Literacy Simulation. eSkill also offers Chat and Multitasking simulations that are helpful when you are evaluating candidates for positions that require good organizational skills.
Add Your Own Questions to Skills Assessment Tests
Many employers want the option to customize skills assessment tests and add their own questions. This is an essential feature for organizations that must include proprietary content in assessments.
For instance, suppose you are hiring manufacturing technicians to maintain certain types of machinery. In this case, you can select questions from the Maintenance Technician and Mechanical Aptitude skills assessment tests and add questions about the machinery and equipment the employees will be expected to work on.
Skills Assessment Tests Minimize Bias in Hiring
Basic skills assessment tests help organizations comply with industry and federal regulations and avoid legal challenges by minimizing unconscious or subjective bias.
Unconscious bias refers to negative attitudes and stereotypes that can influence hiring team members’ evaluation of candidates. It can be unintentional preferential treatment, such as favoring a candidate who attended a university they support or because they share common interests with the applicant. It could also occur if a hiring team member has a preconceived opinion about the type of person who can do a particular job. For example, an interviewer may not be able to visualize a woman as an airline pilot or diesel mechanic or an African American as a manufacturing manager or software engineer.
In a perfect world, we can assume that all hiring team members will judge candidates fairly and impartially. However, research shows that unconscious bias can compromise even well-managed hiring processes. In fact, 79% of HR professionals agree that subjective bias exists in recruitment and succession planning decisions.
Basic skills assessment tests minimize the chances of unconscious bias affecting hiring decisions because they focus on candidates’ skills instead of who they are, where they have worked, and their academic background.
Get Started with Skills Assessment Tests
Requiring entry-level and administrative applicants to complete basic skills assessment tests will help you and your team improve hiring outcomes because your decisions will be based on hard data. You will also reduce hiring costs and decrease time-to-hire. Many eSkill clients have reduced hiring costs by around 70% and time-to-hire by about 60%.
Do you want to see how easy it is to create basic skills assessment tests that help you identify top candidates for entry-level and administrative roles? Contact us to request a demo.