24 Aug Ask the Recuiter Mondays-Acing Assessment Tests

It’s Ask the Recruiter Mondays here at Integrated Staffing. Today’s topic: acing assessment tests. So you’ve made it through the first round of interviews and your future employer wants to get a handle on your real life capabilities . Whether you’re interviewing for accounting , customer service , secretarial or information technology , testing has become a solid recruitment tool. Acing assessment tests can mean the difference between a permanent position and sitting on the bench waiting for the next job to come along.  Assessment testing is usually applied to gauge Job knowledge, Integrity, Limitations, Cognitive Ability, Personality, Emotional Intelligence and Physical Ability.

If you meet every other criteria, then a stellar test result could be the final push towards a hiring decision and while the best hiring decisions consider many aspects of a candidate’s personality, behavior and skills, wise recruiters use multiple tests, developed and validated by experts.

So feel free to e-mail us at asktherecruiter@integratedstaffingcorp.com with any of your burning assessment testing questions. Some popular assessment testing platforms are below so you can get a jump start on preparation.

1. Caliper – Caliper has been around for over 50 years and the core focus is on personality assessment that measures the natural strengths, motivations, and potential to succeed. It helps with hiring and also talent development. Over 4.5 million people at 65,000+ companies people have taken the Caliper to date. Known as “predictive hiring,” Caliper generates a profile based on an assessment that measures:

   • Natural tendencies, competencies, behaviors, and work styles

   • The candidate(s) or employee(s) inclination to interact with peers and managers

   • An individual’s attitudes toward important performance-related obstacles

   • Approaches to communication, social interaction, problem-solving, and time management

2. Predictive Index – A science-based, behavioral assessment that measures personality to indicate potential success at performing the job function. It works similarly to the Caliper, but just with a slightly different approach.

3. Myers-Briggs – This a self-report questionnaire that helps show people’s preferences, how they perceive the world, and how they make decisions. The test aims to show that random behavior is actually not random at all, and it is consistent. You are given one out of 16 possible profiles which are based on extraversion, openness, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and neuroticism.

4. Wonderlic – You’ve probably heard of this cognitive assessment if you watch the NFL Draft, as it is a measuring tool for selecting players, specifically NFL quarterbacks. The test measures learning styles and tells potential employers how quickly you grasp diverse concepts and make sense of them. In a sense, can you do the job? It does this by measuring cognitive ability, motivation, and personality. So while Caliper measures how you will fit in at a company, Wonderlic is more of an assessment of whether or not you can do the actual job.

5. Plum.io – The Plum helps improve candidate fit for a position by helping you match the position to the right personality traits. It’s a newer test on the block, but customers and those we spoke with find it to be a vital part of their hiring process. Plum measures traits like adaptability, innovation, communication, and more. Of 10 different talents like “peacemaker” or “innovator” and you are ranked on your strengths and weaknesses within the different talents. You are ranked against other candidates, and the ranking is based on the position itself.