It is beneficial for all employers to implement skills testing during the interview process. This allows employers to rate the candidates and decide whether or not they possess the ability to perform the job duties that they are interviewing for. Job candidates are hungrier than ever to obtain employment, and it is important that companies hire carefully in order to protect themselves. This is where job interview skills assessments come into play; they save the company the time and frustration of hiring the wrong person.
A great resume and a pretty cover letter can make a candidate with substandard skills appear more than capable of performing the duties of a job description. What most hiring managers do not realise is that job candidates are now hiring agencies and talented writers to perfect their resumes and cover letters in order to get a job that they are interested in. In addition, candidates are also padding out their resumes with details, such as duties they have performed in the past that were not necessarily pertinent to their job, in order to align their skill level with the description of the job they are aiming for.
Once the hiring manager has narrowed down the applicants for a job position to less than a dozen, the initial interviews can take place. Screening and filtering-out candidates that do not meet the immediate skill or personality requirements can be done during the first interview. For companies new to skills testing, it is best to introduce the skills evaluations during the second interview. This way, the interviewing manager is not wasting their time testing and assessing candidates who have not passed the basic job requirements.
A core skills test will help you evaluate exactly what level of expertise the candidate possesses. Since computing skills are extremely important in the business world today, it may be prudent to also test potential candidates on their skills in this area, and there are tests available to employers for this purpose. Furthermore, there are even tests to evaluate a potential employee’s skills with specific program suites, such as Microsoft Office.
Accurately assessing skills during an interview is extremely difficult without the proper tools – skills testing and skills evaluation are important keys to making the right hiring decisions the first time around. Modification in business processes may not always develop smoothly, so it may take a few times to get the interview process that you are currently using customised to include skills testing. However, once you have figured out what works best for your company, and modifications have been made to the interview process, you will find that the employees you hire will be more successful in their jobs and that the benefits the company gains from the skills testing are worth the difficulties that may arise during their implementation.
