Aptitude Tests Blog

When push comes to shove, how do you know which candidates to call for an interview and which ones to politely dismiss?

What is your time worth? Some employers have given up altogether on actively recruiting and have passed on the task to greedy employment agencies.

Did you know the internet provides useful tools to make your choice more impartial? Knowledge appraisal is what it's all about. If your inbox has been flooded with 50, 100, 200 applicants for the one position you just advertised - how do you know who is telling the truth about their background and abilities?

Despite popular belief you do not have to be a specialist in every field of expertise to produce a meaningful test of knowledge and abilities. All is required is some decent course material which can be turned around into a set of multiple or free text questions. If you are concerned that people answering questions randomly might get away with an average score - it is not so. The same question can be presented couched in two different ways. Chances of guessing your way through the test are much lower.

What about the accreditation racket? You and only you are the judge of who is fit to work on your team. Why should you pay extra in recognition of qualifications you do not really need? Are people's mindsets being affected by what government think you should do or not do in your private enterprise? What you are really after is your procedures manual turned around into an aptitude test. Therefore you can screen people on really the issues that are important to you as an employer - not what some academic or some government boffin thinks.

Aptitude tests are despised by people who perceive them as another unfair selection criteria. Others assume their usefulness is degraded if taken online - just google away the answers you need! For the first issue you can provide a sample test to minimize the effect of surprise and give time for people to adjust to the software. Secondly tests have a time limit. If people are able to check an answer online - why not? Wouldn't you like people working for you to be pro-active? But if it means getting their qualifications while being paid on company time to do something else - of course not.

What if people cheat and get a professional to do the test online on their behalf? Simple - get them to do the test again when they arrive for the interview. Questions are presented in random order. They won't have time to memorise everything.

If you are hiring staff and have chosen not to use a recruitment agency brace yourself for the onslaught. A job interview can be an emotionally charged affair. How can you bring objectivity in the equation?

Some small business owners have resorted to the grapevine to hire staff. It can have mixed results. Yes it saves on advertising costs and recruitment agency fees but the fact that someone is a member of your church or the relative of someone you play golf with isn't in itself a qualification for anything.

Introducing aptitude tests. How could you ever devise a test to see if someone is qualified to fill your vacant position? How do you find out how someone performs under stress? Is there a way to see if someone is fit to represent your company in face to face contacts with customers?

The internet has somewhat answered most of those questions. You can subscribe to an aptitude tests website and ask candidates to sit for the tests you see relevant to your selection process. When you call people for interviews you have some hard evidence of what they can do relative to other people who passed the same tests too.

Sounds too good to be true. How can a computer decide who is fit for the job? Should I hire computers instead of people? Tests are good to evaluate somebody's problem solving skills, to ascertain someone's ability to obey orders and work under discipline, to check how fluent the person is in a foreign language, to gauge a worker's industry knowledge, etc...

The assumptions to stay well clear of are results from personality tests. These tests where there are no right or wrong answer aim to fit people into pigeonholes insofar as their temperament and mood. In a business like in a family life would be hell if everyone processes the world in the same way. Some fresh blood will always balance the status-quo. Yes hiring is a risky process. Suffocating yourself in the same mental stale air is even more dangerous.

What if you spent a few hours to devise a list of 50 to 100 questions that would profile the applicant in relation to your work procedures, market segment and customer relations style? Wouldn't that be time well spent where you now have a tool to compare objectively both utter strangers from people who have been introduced to you as a favour?