Though pre-testing an employee prior to hiring may sound simple but is not actually so. It may be truly difficult to interpret the test scores and arrive at a right decision. However, once an effective test is in place, it is very easy to arrive at accurate hiring decisions.
Recruiting an employee is a major decision which involves a number of processes. However, one chief mechanism, used before hiring an employee, is pre-testing. It involves evaluation of capabilities of a candidate to perform a specific job at hand. It helps a great deal in shortlisting the candidates who have applied for the job. The tests which are conducted prior to hiring a prospective employee should be valid, well structured, and implemented effectively. All this can take place only if there is a proper evaluation system in place. Every company wishing to hire talented staff should have an effective evaluation or testing process in place.
Let us look at the steps involved in establishing an effective system in your organization to measure an employee’s cognitive and work capabilities before the actual hiring begins.
Analyze:
The first and the foremost step would be to arrive at the number of jobs in which pre-testing would be helpful in filtering the right candidates. Testing should be made indispensable for candidates who apply for those positions on which decision making is very critical; where the effects of the decisions taken by them would make or break the company. The HR manager must assess the reasons why certain candidates fail at certain jobs. He may ask the following questions.
1. Did the candidate undergo proper induction and training?
2. Was he supervised in a way which would help him fulfill his job responsibilities successfully?
3. Did he have sufficient compensations for the duties he was dispensing?
The manager can then evaluate the answers to these questions and along with an expert arrive at a conclusion if a specific job needs candidates to give a test or not. He can analyze if a test can help eliminate inefficient individuals before they are hired. With the help of a careful analysis, the manager can assess if testing will really help select the right candidate for a job.
Another important consideration to be made is the cost-effectiveness. Is the testing going to be expensive per individual and is it going to be cheap if applied to a group? This can be a very important consideration before deciding to make testing a prerequisite to a job. If it is costly per individual and the number of people applying for the post is not very high then perhaps the manager may have to think of an alternative to testing.
Define:
The next stage involves defining job requirements in a transparent manner. Sometimes, for some posts, managers do not collect sufficient information as to what knowledge, skills, and capabilities would be required to perform a job. While it may not be possible to measure all the critical requirements through testing, it may be possible to gauge some of the important and indispensable requirements of a job.
Apart from the technical requirements, a candidate may be required to possess certain qualities in line with the organizational values and goals. An efficient HR manager fine tunes the technical with intellective requirements and structures a test which measures both sufficiently.
Determine:
The next step involves determining, based on job requirements, if testing is useful. A manager can carefully review each requirement and assess if it can be tested or not. He or she may also explore as to which test is useful in assessing the specific requirement. If there is a test in place to measure the job requirement, what are the various cost effective means to implement the test. The manager should also evaluate the different things required to conduct the test. At this stage, he or she may also evaluate the pros and cons of different tests and arrive at the one which is most suited to the objectives of the organization.
Choose or Design:
Now that all the raw data is right in front, the manager may proceed to choose and finalize a test to measure a candidate’s capability to meet a specific job requirement. It is time to gather all the resources related to the test. Names of test publishers can be collected. Testing products launched by professionals can be utilized to conduct the test. The validity of the selected test should also be measured to ensure that the results derived from the test and the inferences, thus made, are accurate.
If you are considering buying a test from a publisher, do solicit information about comparability of test scores across various demographic groups. An experienced and cognizant professional test designerwill surely be able to answer all your queries.
Another option which an employer has is to design his own test. Sometimes, a standard product may not deliver the expected results whereas a test structured as per the unique goals of the organization would be more helpful in assessing the candidate’s worth. The middle road most of the organizations take is hiring a professional to develop a good testing program.
Implement:
In the finale, you need to actually implement the test to measure a candidate’s potential to perform a specific job. This stage involves three more steps:
1. Administer
2. Score
3. Evaluate
The existing employees who administer the test should be trained enough in different aspects which will help them implement the test successfully. The various areas in which the test administrators may be trained include test administration conditions, scoring protocols, identifying cheating, using test scores to arrive at decisions, avoiding rating biases, analyzing score, etc. The success of any test depends on how the scores are evaluated,
The test scores are interpreted in various ways. Sometimes, the score is taken as a value to measure the test taker’s capabilities. However, at times, a number of parameters are considered for a subjective observation and arrive at a conclusion based on the score values. At such times it is important to ensure that a professional assists in interpreting the scores in a productive and useful way. This professional can also be hired to train test takers so that every time a test is conducted, they can help assess the scores and arrive at right hiring decisions.
Evaluate:
Once the testing program has been utilized, it is time to measure if it is truly effective in securing the expected results. For this, all the information has to be gathered. It might be challenging to carry on this task if the number of test takers is not very high or if it has only been a while that the test results have been utilized to hire an employee. However, with professional consultation, you can gain information on the data to be recorded or collected during test implementation in order to measure the effectiveness of the test outcomes.
