An organization always makes good hiring decisions with a motive of increasing productivity and lowering absenteeism among the employees of that particular organization. The hiring of wrong people can have large amounts of negative effects on the organization’s image and productivity as well and can even waste huge amount of rupees and efforts as well. Pre hiring assessment provides some tools to the organization so that there can be wise decisions on their behalf while hiring people. They need to be handled with proper and due care as there is always a risk associated with them in terms of the regulations by the authorities. The tests used must be specific, time-based, legal and valid and must equip with the ongoing market trends.
These are basically the standardized methods to measure the skills, abilities, and competencies of the employees which are to be hired for a particular job. The following are some types of tests that can be used in order to provide answers to various questions. Some of them have been explained as:
- Cognitive ability related: This helps to measure the intelligent related abilities of people. These include the general ability tests so that people can be hired on the basis of mental and mathematical abilities.
- Related to physical abilities: This helps to measure the abilities like strength and endurance of the employees and is usually done for people where loading and unloading of raw material are required so that the efficiency can be measured.
- Related to aptitude: This refers to the ability to learn new things and jobs are provided on such a basis that how fast a person is to learn a new and particular skill in an environment.
- Related to personality: These relate to the personality tests that measure attitudes, motivation levels, and interpersonal relationships. These are usually performed in order to check the quality of the job performance of the employees.
- Related to honesty and integrity: These are done to measure the undesirable behaviors like dishonesty, drug consumption, alcoholism, etc. These involve further 2 types: like overt tests which involve questions regarding the theft-related situations and covert tests that use psychological characteristics of people and authority related relationships. Usually, these are interpreted by the candidates and politically correct answers are being provided by them.
- Related to polygraphs: These also are related to the truth based questions but these are considered more valid and are even based on some regulations. There is a prohibition on the use of such tests in the case of pre-employment tests.
- Medical-related examinations: Basic health check-ups are performed here so that the prospective employees are medically fit and even basic functions like bending and lifting are also performed in order to check if they are fit for the job or not. Testing for illegal substances is not covered under the scope of the medical examinations.
To determine what is needed?
This is the basis of the tests to find out and determine what is needed for the job to be effectively performed in order to achieve the organizational goals. First of all the tests which are to be taken are performed and then the evaluation criteria are to be set and in the end, the whole process is to be monitored in terms of the goals set in advance. Implementing is a goal-based process and sometimes can be time-consuming as well. The following things are to be determined in order to have an effective approach.
- Knowledge: This is the specific set of things that must be possessed by the employees. These can be evaluated with the oral as well as written questions. Various tests are available in this field so that they can be used to determine and then these are used on the basis of validity and reliability of those tests.
- Skills: These are the set of things that are required by the people to perform the job. Some of them can be easily accessed by the employees and in some cases, there might be some issues in the implementation. There must be standardized and the same ways to judge all the people and even work samples can be used in order to judge the people.
- Abilities: Such things can be judged by the demonstration effect which means that how well a person is able to grasp things is judged. Further, this is based on the learning abilities of the people. Some safety concerns are to be thought upon in case there is some physical work. Some people prefer mental tests while some prefer general ability tests in order to judge the performances of the prospective employees.
- Some other attributes: These are judged on the basis of some specific tasks to be performed by the employees. These cannot be judged until the time till which job offer is made.
Selecting the best test:
This is also of immense importance to select the best among all the alternatives which can help to solve the purpose of employees. They must meet the legal and regulatory criteria in order to be considered as effective in the field of the job environment. These may be expensive and time-consuming in terms of their implementation. These can be researched using a proper guide that will help in proper and due implementation. There are many commercially available tests that can be implemented using these things and all of them help to solve various purposes. These tests must be selected as per the requirements of the organizations so that there are no worries in implementation. These must be cost-effective and reputed and must possess high levels of accuracy. These must fulfill and be in compliance with the laws. The more the legal tests the more they guarantee success after implantation of them in the real world. A more reliable test will help to have more of the consistency so that the overall goals can be achieved. General considerations like the cultural differences must also be considered while its implementation.
