Aptitude Tests Blog

Here comes the age of the recruitment agency. Was it some flamboyant head of human resources in a Fortune 500 company who recycled herself into the slave trade?

Both employers and candidates have a lot of gripe about these services and there are ways to do without them. If you dare to advertise a position for your company you run the risk of being ignored or else being flooded with irrelevant applicants. Who will sort out this mess?

Remember that advertising a vacant position for your company does not need to be done under hand but can be turned into a valuable public relations exercise. Your suppliers and customers alike will notice and say: "So and so is hiring... they must be doing alright!"

If you are the one who is going to supervise that new entrant, doesn't it stand to reason that you should also be the one to make the selection? But how do you thin down a pile of 100 resumes to a shortlist of 10 or 5 people to interview?

The answer might be in using a set of aptitude tests. People have no shame in stretching and fudging things on their resume just to get a foot in the door. Others have quite a charismatic personality but collapse when under stress. Knowledge and time-limited IQ tests can screen those people out. You don't have to call all these people to your office to sit for the tests. They can do that online and you get a report to call in only those with the best scores.

You can even write your own set of questions and devise a test specific for your industry. You can reverse engineer your procedures manual and see if your current staff is up to speed on your current directives.

You should consider your job advertisement like a prime piece of self-marketing. Remember that one of the people you attract will become your people.

If people cared about the position they are applying for they would take the trouble to customise their resume to address all the requirements called for in the ad. If they have some motivation in working for you they would have done some basic research to gather information about your firm before fronting for the interview.