If you're an employer, it is vital for your business that you keep a close eye on how your employees are performing. This can be to make sure they are growing and contributing to the company as well as ensure that they are staying loyal.
Besides, you should also be sure that a newbie you hire for your company is a real professional and can profit your business. One of the best ways to understand your employees better is through assessment tools.
What are assessment tools?
Assessment tools are essential for employers and businesses to evaluate a possible employee's skills and qualities needed for the job. These tools also help to assess the candidate's suitability for a job.
To assess employees, this is management that must administer quantitative assessment tools. Managers should also be properly trained to evaluate a candidate's or employee's skills fairly. These assessments are often made up of written tests and performance evaluations.
Types of assessment tools
There are such main types of assessment tools as personality tests, aptitude tests, cognitive ability tests, and behavior-based assessments.
Aptitude tests can be any test designed to measure your aptitudes (i.e., natural abilities or talents). They are not designed to measure your knowledge, although they can sometimes include some knowledge-based questions. Aptitude tests are designed to measure your innate abilities and evaluate how you would perform on the job.
Personality tests measure your personality and preferences in work situations. They can also be used as an aid in making business or employment decisions.
Cognitive ability tests assess how well a person performs on tasks related to reasoning, learning, understanding complex ideas, and solving problems.
Behavior-based behavior assessments look at past performance on the job and analyze how well an individual performed in certain areas such as safety, attendance, dependability and motivation.
The most popular assessment tools
Each year thousands of people take the first steps toward a new position. While the process can be exciting, it can also be daunting. To ease your transition into the world of work, there're different assessment tools, both for recruiters and self-assessment. The latter ones will help future employees identify jobs that match their interests and strengths as well as assist them in formulating an action plan for their job search. There are many different assessment tools available online, including:
O*NET Online – This is a database of occupational information developed by the US Department of Labor's Employment and Training Administration. It contains detailed descriptions of hundreds of occupations, including tasks and duties, education and training requirements, work environment and pay scale information.
MyPlan.com – This site offers five different assessments to help you find the right career for people at every stage in life.
My Next Move – Created by the US Department of Labor, this free assessment is designed specifically for veterans who have recently separated from military service.
There are also a lot of tools and questionnaires written by psychologists, business coaches or career strategists. The more popular ones are:
1. The Briggs Myers assessment is a personality test where candidates answer questions about themselves on a scale of 1-4. It measures how they relate to others and how they would best fit into the workplace.
This test is designed to help people with their careers, and it has been used in this way by numerous organizations.
2. The KSA method was devised by Richard Bolles, who wrote the book "What Color Is Your Parachute?" Bolles created a list of what he called "key skills" that he believed were important for finding a job. He then devised an assessment to rate the candidate’s own skills against this list of key skills. This can be an interesting insight into how candidates see themselves and a useful way to plan further training or education if they feel they need it.
3. The DISC assessment is based on psychologist William Moulton Marston's model of behavior, published in the 1920s. This model describes personality as being influenced by four main factors: dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. This is another popular method used as one of the employee personality assessment tools and is widely used by recruiters and HR managers.
An assessment tool for programmers
There're also assessment tools dedicated only to a separate sphere: IT, marketing, design, etc. Speaking about the IT sphere, one of the most popular online recruiting tools is the WIld Noodle language-independent programming assessment test.
Wild Noodle employee skill assessment tool uses an AI-based test called Herbert, which presupposes solving as many of the 10 puzzles as possible using the programming language called "h". According to Brian Conte, the founder of the Herbert test, "h" is syntactically more simple and contains some concepts (procedural arguments) that are not found in traditional languages". It takes only 15 minutes for a programmer to study tutorial and 30 minutes to complete a test.
Many companies used the Wild Noodle AI-powered programming assessment test, including Microsoft's Imagine Cup's worldwide algorithm competition and Fast Track.
Interested? Find out more information about the Herbert test by Wild Noodle here: https://www.wildnoodle.com/company or write your questions here: https://www.wildnoodle.com/contact .
Conclusion
There are fewer assessment tools than there are recruiters in the world. However, the goal should be selected first to find a perfect assessment tool that will suit all your needs. Do you need to test the candidate's skills? Or, maybe, their personality? No matter how many best employee assessment tools there are - everything depends on the answers to questions you want to get!