The selection and recruitment process is one of the most challenging steps in recruitment. Hiring teams need to sift through vast mountains of candidate applications. And even with resume sorting and filtering tools, this is no guarantee that you will find the best candidates. This is especially true for any role that requires a high level of technical expertise.

Hiring managers will agree that accurately assessing applicant skills is one of the most demanding tasks by far. Despite a candidate looking the part, they might not have the skills you require. And this is difficult to determine, especially in a subjective interview. You need something more concrete than a resume and a candidate’s word.

What is a talent assessment?

This is where talent assessments or pre-interview assessments are most valuable. They are a collection of career-specific tests with the purpose of evaluating the skills of a candidate structured in an automated testing environment. These tests can be both technical and non-technical, including psychometric and aptitude tests.

In Testlify you have the ability to search for roles and find related tests. This makes the process of setting up skills assessments for a specific position as easy as clicking on an option. And you can select the level of skills required. You can also add custom tests to the mix if there are specific questions you want to add.

Categories of talent assessments tests

Our library of tests covers a wide range of skillsets from technical to cognitive ability and more. Depending on the role and the skills required, you can group tests together that best suit the skills you are looking for in a candidate.

Below are examples of what you can test within our platform.

Programming languages

Hiring the best talent can be challenging simply because of the complexity of the field. And this is one of the reasons that employment assessment tests were developed. To help you and your recruitment team quickly structure assessments with minimal time and effort. Even non-technical recruiters are able to setup technical assessments without any knowledge of programming.

This means you no longer need to spend hours on designing skill assessments but instead, you can select the languages and skill level you want. Once you have setup an assessment, you can immediately send out invitations to candidates.

Available Programming languages include:

  • HTML5
  • CSS
  • TypeScript
  • Ruby
  • C
  • C++
  • C#
  • PHP
  • SQLite
  • Python
  • Java
  • JavaScript
  • SQLite

You can further select the types of test you prefer:

  • object-oriented programming
  • entry-level algorithms
  • intermediate-level algorithms
  • language-specific concepts
  • intermediate-level querying
  • data structures & objects
  • data structures
  • debugging

Using the above you can quickly organize tests for every position that you may need to hire. This means keeping a uniform test structure you can easily duplicate.

Software engineering frameworks

Your organization may need technical staff experienced in software engineering frameworks to efficiently develop software. But do they have enough experience to deliver the solutions you need? Testlify has a library of the most popular frameworks available to test the skills of your applicants.

Available Software Engineering Framework Tests:

  • Flutter
  • Node.js
  • Ionic framework with Angular
  • Ruby on Rails
  • Vue.js (Vue 2)
  • Vue.js (Vue 3)
  • Django REST Framework (DRF)
  • Laravel
  • Angular
  • Spring
  • Ionic framework with React
  • Express.js
  • React Native

The results from these tests can be viewed live as candidates complete every question. You and your team can easily access test results without the necessity of emails or additional communication.

Cognitive skills

“Cognitive skills also called cognitive functions, cognitive abilities or cognitive capacities, are brain-based skills which are needed in acquisition of knowledge, manipulation of information and reasoning. They have more to do with the mechanisms of how people learn, remember, solve problems and pay attention, rather than with actual knowledge.

Cognitive skills or functions encompass the domains of perception, attention, memory, learning, decision making, and language abilities.[1]”

Everyone has a different level of these cognitive functions, to a greater or lesser degree. As a recruiter, you want to know how well a candidate can function at dealing with tasks. The better a candidate’s skill to absorb information, and solve problems the more of an asset they will be.

Available Cognitive Tests:

  • Attention to detail (textual)
  • Following instructions
  • Critical thinking
  • Reading comprehension
  • Intermediate math
  • Problem solving
  • Numerical reasoning
  • Attention to detail (visual)
  • Basic double-digit math
  • Verbal reasoning
  • Basic triple-digit math
  • Spatial reasoning
  • Mechanical reasoning

In today’s world of information overload, being able to process large amounts of data is critical. And this is one of the core skills that the Testlify assessments can evaluate. You can now get accurate feedback on the cognitive ability of each candidate and compare who has the highest scores. These scores are reflected in your dashboard to easily choose the best talent with ease.

DevOps

“DevOps is the combination of cultural philosophies, practices, and tools that increases an organization’s ability to deliver applications and services at high velocity: evolving and improving products at a faster pace than organizations using traditional software development and infrastructure management processes.[2]”

There are numerous skills that are required to be successful in a DevOps environment. These skills may vary from organization to organization depending on the platforms used. With our library of tests, you can easily select which platforms and technologies are most relevant to your organization.

Testlify’s DevOps Test covers the following:

  • AWS
  • Cloud system administration
  • Kubernetes
  • DevOps
  • Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
  • Microsoft Azure
  • Cloud architecture and more.

With our array of tests, you can easily test a candidate’s skill level and establish if they really have the experience that says they have. And that means no more costly mistakes recruiting unskilled candidates for DevOps roles. Now you can identify the best talent and employ them before your competitors do.

Psychometrics

Technical skills are critical to any job. But they are not the only skills that make a good candidate! There are many other soft skills like leadership and communication that can be equally important for a role.

But how do you really know if they have what it takes to be a leader in your organization? Are they good communicators? And do they have the necessary business skills?

With Testlify you can now test candidates for the following psychometric skills and aptitudes:

  • Business ethics & compliance
  • Leadership & people management
  • Negotiation
  • Business judgement
  • Time management
  • Communication

With a better understanding of their psychometric skills, you will have a deeper understanding of their real potential within your organization.

Other Tests

Apart from the above skills, Testlify is able to test many other skillsets, including technical and non-technical skills. Here is a list of additional skills that we offer:

  • CMS tools
  • CRM tools
  • Design tools
  • Job Specific
  • Web Development
  • Digital Marketing
  • Accounting
  • Customer Service
  • Data Science
  • Next Gen Technology
  • Language
  • Personality

How talent assessment tests have changed recruitment?

By now you probably realize the value of talent assessment tests to guide your hiring decisions. They can be a valuable tool to assist you in evaluating candidates’ skills. And this means you can make more informed hiring decisions based on real data.

Let’s take a look into how you can help improve the recruitment process…

Reduces complexity of assessing applicants

Creating assessments for every technical role that opens in your organization can be challenging. As recruiters, you don’t have the technical knowledge to setup complex technical assessments. You will have to rely on internal technical staff to help structure such tests.

Added to this is the need for someone to assess and grade the answers from candidates. This can become an overly complicated task that will need technical staff to become a part of the recruitement process. And this is just not practical.

Employment assessments can remove all the technical complexity and allow even non-technical recruiters to configure tests and manage results. Testlify offers you a simple user-friendly interface to effortlessly setup multiple skills assessment tests for multiple positions without the need for any technical background.

This empowers recruitement staff to manage the assessments without the need for technical managers to get involved.

Talent assessments help companies hire faster.

Time is money! And large scale recruitment can require vast investment in time. Often organizations are under pressure to scale teams and don’t have the time to wait. The major bottleneck? Assessing whether candidates have the skills for the job and are a good fit for the organization.

Employment assessments can be created in a short time and can be automated. As soon as the tests are completed, your team will be notified. Testlify will score each candidate and display all candidate’s progress on a simple dashboard.

This makes it easier for teams to access candidate information and evaluate them side by side. Less back and forth communication. And a central interface for accessing the data. This ultimately helps your team make informed hiring decisions in less time…

Accurately assess the skills of candidates.

Reducing the time to hire and the complexity of creating assessments are two major benefits of talent assessments, but it’s not the most important one. The ability to dig deeper into your candidate’s true skill level is where talent assessments excel!

With an extensive testing library, Testlify offers recruiters a vast array of tests that can uncover deep insights into a candidate’s skill level. These tests evaluate all popular programming languages, software engineering frameworks, database technologies, DevOps skills, cloud architecture, and more.

Testlify will guide you through the process. And relevant tests will be recommended as soon as you confirm the role you hiring. It’s really that easy!

Highest quality test environment

Creating assessments that maintain the highest quality standards is challenging. And this is why more organizations are investing in talent assessment solutions for maintaining quality and consistency.

At Testlify all our tests are written by experts in their field. This guarantees that tests are relevant, subject-specific, and adequately test skills for the required skill level. No more figuring out how to test candidates. Testlify enables you to manage the whole assessment process with ease.

Intelligent anti-cheating protection

Setting questions for assessments is one thing. Unfortunately, in our digitally connected world, people are able to easily share their experiences. More specifically, the questions and answers to your assessments. You have little control over whether an applicant decides to share information about the tests they have completed.

All questions in the Testlify library have been screened to ensure applicants cannot Google answers. But even more impressive, is the intelligent AI-enabled anti-cheating protection. The system actively scans to detect if any questions have been leaked and will automatically remove questions that have been compromised.

No more worrying about cheating or leaked questions and answers again. Our system does this automatically, without any intervention, giving you peace of mind.

Reduce bias in your hiring process

In today’s open society, ensuring your organization encourages diversity in its recruitment process is essential. Having a more diverse workforce can benefit your organization. But there might still be a tendency to favor one group of people over another.

Testlify’s talent assessment platform offers the ability to hide information that could influence recruitment decision-makers on who they hire. This can benefit governments, organizations, or industries where there has been a history of limited diversity in the workplace.

We can ultimately help you and your hiring team accurately evaluate candidates on their merits of skill and aptitude, rather than favor candidates on their gender or for any other reason. This ultimately will benefit the organization. And enable you to build a reputation for embracing diversity in the workplace.

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Conclusion

The ultimate benefit to motivate investment in a talent assessment platform is quite simple. You and your hiring team will be able to accurately assess large volumes of applicants, their skills, and aptitudes in a professional and automated way.

And this will greatly improve the speed at which you will be able to process applicants. Not only will you be able to evaluate their skills more accurately, but it will significantly improve your hiring decisions making. No more basing hiring decisions solely on vague resumes or subjective interviews.

Testlify gives you non-bias information at your fingertips, organized in a way you can quickly sum up candidates’ performance. And collaborate effortlessly with your team to make hiring decisions faster.

And that means you, your team, organization, and candidates win!

What are you waiting for?

References:

[1] Kiely, Kim (2014). “Cognitive function”. In Michalos, Kim M. (ed.). Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research. Springer. pp. 974–978. 10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_426. ISBN 978-94-007-0752-8.

[2] Loukides, Mike (7 June 2012). “What is DevOps?”. O’Reilly Media.

Frequently asked questions (FAQs)

A talent assessment evaluates candidates’ skills, behaviors, and abilities objectively, unlike traditional methods that rely more on resumes and interviews.

Pre-interview assessments provide insight into candidates’ capabilities early on, saving time, improving hiring accuracy, and reducing bias.

By focusing on objective criteria and standardized evaluations, talent assessments minimize the influence of subjective biases in decision-making.

Yes, assessments can be tailored to assess job-specific skills, competencies, and behaviors relevant to particular roles or industries.

Turnaround time varies but can range from a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the complexity of the assessment and the volume of candidates.