Administration

Navigating Administrative Skills Testing: A Comprehensive Guide for Employers

If you are like most business leaders, you know that your administrative employees are the glue that holds everything together at your company. You likely rely on them when you need to know where to find something and how to get things done.

Administrative employees wear many hats. On a given day, they might work on projects for managers, clients, staff, and vendors, requiring skillful multitasking. Computer proficiency is also critical. Administrative employees must have strong MS Office® abilities and be able to learn new computer applications quickly.

You and your HR team may wonder, “Why should you use an administrative assistant skills test?” or “How does an administrative skills assessment test benefit business?” When we hear these questions from clients and prospects, we tell them that employers worldwide use administrative skills tests to evaluate candidates’ computer skills, organizational and time management abilities, and their ability to master new software applications.

Is it Worth it to Invest in Administrative Skills Tests?

If you are wondering whether administrative skills tests are worth the investment, consider your HR manager’s point of view. When your HR team posts an administrative assistant or office manager job, it is not unusual to receive hundreds of responses. Some are from top candidates who would be perfect for the job, but many are from applicants who do not have the required skills.

Imagine how long it would take to review all the applicants, identify those who deserve further consideration, and eliminate those who lack the proper skills and experience. If you require applicants to complete an administrative assistant assessment, you can instantly sort and review the results. This saves you hours and frees up your time to concentrate on critical projects important to your company’s goals and objectives. 

What Types of Companies Use Administrative Skills Tests?

Virtually every industry uses administrative assessments. These are some examples of clients from various industry sectors that have streamlined hiring, decreased time-to-hire, and reduced turnover by implementing the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM to use administrative skills assessments.

• A placement service matches executive assistants with CEOs and C-level executives at top companies like Intuit, Chime, Terminus, Loom, Mozilla, Teach for America, and Indeed. The organization implemented administrative skills tests to identify applicants’ skills gaps so they can provide the tools and training they need to be successful. The result was faster placements, which reduced time-to-hire by about 40–50%.
• Chemonics, a multinational consulting and solution development company, implemented basic Excel skills tests and other pre-employment assessments. It has reduced time-to-hire to 55 days and is working to reduce it to 45 days from the initial interview to a job offer being accepted. It has also reduced turnover by 43%.
• Houdini, Incorporated provides wholesale gift baskets to warehouse clubs, mass merchandisers, liquor purveyors, and specialty stores. It implemented Microsoft® Excel skills assessments and was able to instantly select 30 top candidates for seasonal work from a pool of 458 candidates.
• Conservice, a large utility management and billing company, was using a homegrown assessment solution that required tests to be administered in person. They also had to give separate MS Word and Excel tests. The HR team created one administrative assistant skills test that covers both applications and tailors it to fit each job. It previously took the HR team about 20 days to fill a position, from screening job applicants to extending an offer. It now takes 15 days–a 25% decrease in time-to-hire. 

How Do You Test Admin Skills?

If you are like most business leaders, you have always relied on time-honored recruiting methods such as resumes and interviews to hire administrative staff. However, you have probably found this is no longer possible because almost 80% of applicants lie on their resumes. So, if you hire the candidate of your dreams, s/he could be your worst nightmare, as illustrated in the following scenario.

David N, an HR manager for a small manufacturing company, needed to fill a new administrative position. She posted the job, received resumes from several promising candidates, and created a shortlist.

When he interviewed the shortlisted candidates, Adrienne G. stood out as the top candidate. Her resume looked perfect and listed the right skills and experience. When he asked her why she wanted to leave her current company, she said she wanted a more challenging position and more training and development opportunities. This was exactly what David wanted to hear.

Adrienne had interviews with Tom A, the hiring manager, and prospective team members, and everyone gave her rave reviews. Her references from a couple of former managers and colleagues were also excellent. David and Tom were convinced Adrienne was perfect for the job hire and offered her the job. They could not have been more wrong.

It became obvious that Adrienne had lied about her skills and experience on her resume and during interviews. There were huge gaps in her computer knowledge, and she made critical errors that required extensive rework. She also had trouble keeping up with the workload, which meant Tom missed deadlines and had to appease frustrated vendors and customers.

This created a difficult situation for Tom because he was forced to delegate Adrienne’s work to other team members, some of whom were not administrative employees. Other team members became irritated and resentful, and a few met with Tom and urged him to let Adrienne go.

David and Tom tried to make things work with Adrienne. They had several meetings and counseling sessions, and they provided training. Unfortunately, nothing worked, and the situation continued to build up to a boiling point. It finally came to a head when Tom received complaints about Adrienne’s work from his manager and senior managers in other departments. So, after a three-month probationary period, Tom was left with no alternative but to terminate Adrienne.

This taught David and Tom an important lesson–resumes, interviews, and even references do not always indicate which candidates are best qualified for a job.

If their company used administrative assistant assessment tests, David and Tom could have reviewed applicants’ test results. This would have enabled them to determine which applicants were best qualified instead of relying on possibly inaccurate information to make hiring decisions.

What Different Administrative Tests Are Available?

The eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM provides access to a library with hundreds of validated assessments. Your company may be organized similarly to other companies in your industry, but the skills and experience you require for certain jobs may differ. You might also have different internal requirements by department or division. If either is the case, standardized administrative assistant tests may not be a good solution.

You can use the pre-prepared administrative skills tests “as-is,” tailor them to meet your exact needs by selecting questions from multiple assessments, or build your own skills tests. For example, if you work for a hospital or healthcare company and need to hire an administrative assistant with strong MS Office® abilities, you can build an administrative skills assessment test with questions from the MS Office® Skills Test, Medical Typing, and Medical Terminology tests.

What is the Best Test for Office Admin?

When you extend an offer, you expect the hired person to show up on the agreed-upon start date. Strange as it might sound, that does not always happen. In this situation, you should use video response questions.

Video response questions allow applicants to record responses to questions and upload videos from their computer or smartphone.  You should include them in administrative skills assessments in situations where you need to assess skills that cannot be measured on paper, such as verbal communication skills and foreign language abilities. You can also ask applicants to hold up a picture ID to verify that the person taking the skills test is the same person applying for the job.

Did you know that 89% of hiring failures occur because an employee is not a good fit for a job or company culture? High turnover is also a leading cause of reduced productivity. This is why you should include behavioral assessment tests in your hiring process and measure attributes such as problem-solving, time management, and critical thinking. This helps you determine the likelihood that a candidate will assimilate into your company culture and be successful on the job. The following scenario illustrates the importance of determining cultural fit during hiring.

Gary H., the CEO of a small software company, needed to hire an administrative assistant to work with him, Carl S., the COO, and Ron W., the Vice-President of Sales and Marketing. The company had a very relaxed atmosphere. Employees came to work in jeans, T-shirts, shorts, and Birkenstocks, and they regularly walked into Gary’s office to talk about a development problem or simply chat.

After reviewing several candidates, the three created a shortlist and interviewed several candidates. Linda E. emerged as the front-runner because she had IT industry experience and had worked for several senior executives. They extended an offer to Linda, and she accepted. Everything was fine at first, but they soon began to see problems.

Linda had worked for very structured companies where employees were expected to observe the chain of command. Although she had no problem keeping up with the workload, she had difficulty adjusting to an environment where employees wore jeans and T-shirts, and anyone who wanted to talk to the CEO walked into his office without an appointment.

Her perception of how employees should treat senior managers clashed with the company’s laid-back atmosphere. Within three months, Linda resigned and accepted a job with a larger, more structured company.

Gary, Carl, and Ron ensured she had the required skills and experience during the hiring process. However, they forgot to consider the importance of cultural fit. This meant they had to start the hiring process over again.

How to Ensure Which Candidates Are Qualified

So, what is the easiest way to ensure candidates have the right skills and experience? The tried-and-true way is to assign them job-related tasks and evaluate their performance. Top assessment solutions like the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM include simulations that help you measure administrative skills like general computer and MS Office® proficiency, knowledge of popular Chat applications, Multitasking, and digital literacy.

Suppose you need to hire an office manager with excellent Excel skills and good time management abilities. In this case, you can build an assessment using questions from the Office Manager and Administrative Coordinator Tests, add a Multitasking simulation, and add Excel questions from the MS Office simulation.

Evelyn B. was a newly hired administrative assistant at a company that owned and managed 17 apartment and commercial properties in seven states. She was hired because her resume indicated she had fast and accurate typing skills, good phone skills, and experience working with senior managers and executives.

The people who worked at the company’s properties received weekly reports each Friday that contained information they needed to plan their week. So, one of her jobs was to send the reports by overnight courier every Thursday.

Unfortunately, Evelyn did not have the organizational skills that her resume indicated and was not as detail-oriented as she claimed to be. She prepared and sent the reports on Thursday. On Friday morning, several property managers called the corporate office in a panic. Some had not received their reports, and others had received them for another property.

Bridgit M., the office manager, had to drop everything she was doing and call each property to find out which ones were missing reports or received the wrong ones. Then, she had to create new copies of all 17 reports and send them priority overnight for Saturday delivery,

People in the home office and many external locations experienced disruption because an employee who supposedly had good organizational and data-checking skills should never have been hired. If the company had required applicants to complete administrative assistant tests, hiring managers would have seen that organizational skills and attention to detail were not Evelyn’s strong suit and would not have offered her the job.

Get Started with Administrative Assessment Tests

Business leaders and HR professionals have learned that administrative support skills tests provides the measurable data they need to evaluate applicants accurately, efficiently, and fairly and hire top candidates.

Do you want to learn how administrative skills assessments help you recruit top candidates and improve hiring outcomes? Contact us to request a demo.