About Assessments

Assessments are used for recruiting new employees, making promotion decisions and developing personnel but most often in the recruitment process. Every stage of the recruitment or hiring process is designed to assess an applicant’s abilities and aptitudes for a specific job. The following are the primary methods of assessment that you will likely encounter in applying for most jobs:

• Resume or Job Application evaluation
• Screening questions at time of job application
• Skills testing that examines skills and knowledge levels
• Psychometric assessments that examine job fit in terms of learning ability, interests, motivation, values and personality match
• Interviews (both phone and face to face)

Why Do Employers Use Psychometric Assessments?

Organizations use psychometric assessments to help them with a number of human resource management functions including the following:

• Selection – identifying and hiring the best people for the job and the organization in a fair and efficient manner.
• Placement – assigning people to the appropriate job type and level.
• Training & Development – identifying those applicants or employees who might benefit from particular training programs and coaching individuals to success in a particular job.
• Promotion – identifying employees who possess the potential for higher level activities and responsibilities.
• Career Exploration – helping people to make career decisions within an organization, particularly for larger companies who have a wide range of jobs.

Assessments are generally used in the hiring process to gather information on a job applicant’s knowledge (particularly where a special level of knowledge is required), skills (where particular skills are required), abilities (measuring underlying abilities such as aptitude for verbal or numerical problem solving), and experience.