Career Assessments Basics
Increase the efficiency of your HR department by learning career assessments basics
Knowing the ins and outs of career assessments basics can help simplify the complicated world of career assessment tools. Job assessments range from personality and psychology tests to examining skills directly relevant to the position. These tests screen applicants, evaluate employees’ progress and judge qualifications for promotions. Some tests, like math and grammar tests, you can easily score in house, while psychometric tests may require you to hire a professional.Knowing the basics of career assessments can help you decide if using them will benefit your company, both financially and on a morale level. It's not necessary to know the fine intricacies of psychometric testing, but you do need to have an idea of their use to implement them into your human resources department effectively. When learning career assessments basics, consider the following:
1. Know the types of questions your employees and potential employees will encounter during their career assessment.
2. Educate yourself on what career tests entail and how to put them to use for your company.
3. Decide if pre-employment career aptitude tests will benefit your business.
Review examples of questions commonly found on career aptitude tests
Reading through examples of career assessment questions can give you an idea of whether career assessment tools would be beneficial to your business. Psychometric questions assess the personality and behaviors of potential employees. Typically, the tester must answer "agree," "disagree" or "uncertain" after reading a statement. Other types of questions include asking how the tester would respond to a scenario and asking for the correct answer to an open-ended skills-based question.
Try: Find examples of common pre-employment test questions at Forbes.com. These questions represent a career aptitude test that allows employers to predict future performance and behavior. For sample questions designed for use in the education field, visit Atomic Learning. The correct answer and an explanation follow the examples.
Research how to effectively use career assessments
Implementing career tests won't benefit your business if you don't know how to effectively use the results. Take the time to read case studies, research articles and industry blog posts about the use of career assessments. Search for similar businesses that have successfully used career aptitude tests.
Try: Read case studies on the effective use of career assessment tools at ACT. Changeboard offers an article on making the most of psychometric tools for employers. Read more information on career aptitude assessments at Nelnet. CareerOneStop provides a large list of informative resources on using career assessments to find the right employees.
Know when to include job assessments as part of the interview process
Pre-employment testing might not be a cost-effective tool for every business. Although one of the benefits of administering job career tests is lowering the employee turnover rate, some businesses, such as restaurants, naturally have a high turnover rate and pre-employment testing might not have an affect. It's also critical to know the legal guidelines for requiring potential employees to take a pre-employment career test.
Try: Learn more about pre-employment career skills assessment, including the legality of the procedure, at Saterfiel and Associates. Browse through the skills public agencies routinely test for during the pre-employment process at CPS Human Resource Services. Click on the job title to review the necessary skills.
- Companies have the option of either hiring professional career assessment providers to administer and interpret test results or purchasing computer software that allows companies to do their own internal testing.
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