Skills Testing and Assessments for Hiring
Insights from Indeed
In today’s fast-paced and competitive business landscape, finding the right talent is crucial for success. Traditional hiring methods, like resume screening and interviews, while still the primary method, may not always provide a comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s true capabilities. This is where skills testing can be an indispensable tool for identifying the best-suited candidates. By evaluating candidates’ skills, knowledge, and problem-solving abilities, you can make more informed hiring decisions, enhancing overall productivity and driving business growth.
Accurate Skills Assessment
High-level skills, as well as subject-defined skills testing provides an evaluation of a candidate’s proficiency in specific areas critical to the job role. Unlike relying solely on resumes and self-reported examples, skills test offer objective and quantifiable results. This can be anything from completing an application to typing speed or data entry accuracy.
Time and Cost Efficient
The traditional hiring process can be time and resource-intensive, involving multiple rounds of interviews and assessment exercises. Skills testing helps streamline the process by quickly identifying top performers from the pool. This allows you to focus on a narrower field of candidates, ultimately leading a more efficient and cost-effective recruitment process.
Reducing Bias and Enhancing Diversity
Skills testing contributes to mitigating unconscious bias during the hiring process. Resumes and interviews may inadvertently allow biases related to gender, ethnicity, or educational background to influence decision making. Skills testing can help ensure that candidates’ evaluations are also based on merit and objective criteria, creating a level playing field for all candidates. This, in turn, fosters diversity and inclusion, which can enrich your culture with a variety of perspectives and ideas.
Predicting Job Performance
The ultimate goal of any hiring process is to identify candidates who will excel in their roles and positively impact your business. Skills assessments can offer valuable insights into a candidate’s potential job performance. Performance in a controlled testing environment can often correlate with real-world success, allowing you to make informed predictions about how well an individual will perform on the job. Consequently, the likelihood of hiring candidates who are productive, motivated, and committed to the success of your business increases significantly.
Identifying Learning and Development Needs
Skills testing not only assesses a candidate’s current abilities, but also highlights areas for potential improvement. This information is valuable for talent development and management within your business. Identifying skills gaps can guide targeting training programs, fostering continuous learning among employees and contributing to a highly skilled workforce. Investing in employee development can also enhance employee engagement and retention, leading to a more stable and contented workforce.
Types of Skills Testing and Assessments:
Technical Skills:
Technical testing will vary depending on the role, but overall, a technical test should ask more defined questions about specific skills or knowledge which are necessary to the role.
Examples: Junior Advisor or Growth Oriented Paraplanner
- Advanced data interpretation tests
- Numerical reasoning tests
- Error checking tests
Examples: Administrative Support
- Error checking test
- Software usage tests
- Typing test (words per minute)
Not all assessments can be done through traditional testing methods, which is why it's important to have well thought out interview questions that are designed to assess specific situations and skills.
Soft Skills:
Soft skills are intangible qualities that focus on skills needed for successful team building, patience, and communication. These skills can’t necessarily be tested in the traditional sense. Instead, the assessment needs to happen through carefully designed questions, which an understanding of what to look for within the responses.
Examples: Junior Advisor or Growth Oriented Paraplanner
- What is the job of a junior advisor/paraplanner?
- Listen for a procedure for accurately analyzing processes and data related to the role, an emphasis on working closely with a senior advisor and clients to fully understand their needs, and collaboration with the senior advisor and the team to achieve a higher level of service for a client.
- What is your philosophy when it comes to communicating with a senior advisor and/or clients?
- Listen for an emphasis on transparency and keeping the client informed, the ability to be available to the senior advisor and/or, and their willingness to check in with the senior advisor to see what more can be done to help the client.
- How do you continually improve your knowledge in the financial services space?
- Listen for candidates who take interest in following the market or developing a deeper understanding of financial concepts, their willingness to continue honing their skills through classes, workshops and professional networks, as well as their emphasis on understanding financial regulations.
Examples: Administrative Support
- How would you approach a situation that requires your discretion?
- Listen for professionalism when it comes to handling highly confidential information, an ability to be selective with details during interactions with other team members, and an ability to accurately identify sensitive information.
- How would you research a problem or question for a client or team member?
- Listen for clean communication skills that allow the candidate to explain their thinking, an ability to facilitate effective research and collect necessary data for the problem, and a clean demonstration of how the candidate contributes to a positive and collaborative environment.
- How do you adapt to unfamiliar business procedures and policies?
- Listen for a willingness to quickly learn new business procedures, an ability to adjust to sudden changes while ensuring that workflows are not disrupted, and an openness to accepting new responsibilities that maximize efficiency.
Problem Solving:
Asking problem-solving questions that are specific to the role can help you learn more about how and why a candidate would choose a solution.
Examples: Junior Advisor or Growth Oriented Paraplanner
- Can you name a few considerations people should keep in mind when planning for the current tax year?
- Listen for references to current events or recent changes in regulations, high-level explanations that would work well when talking to a client, and actionable solutions that candidates could implement or use to support their research when working with a senior advisor.
- Which financial planning software have you used, and how have you used it to support your role and the client?
- Listen for specific software solutions, explanations of the software’s benefits that indicate familiarity and proficiency, and examples of client use cases to demonstrate abstract software capabilities, are preferred.
- Talk me through an investment you were excited about. Describe the type of client you think would be perfect for this opportunity.
- Listen for clean explanations of the advantages of this investment for a (demo) client, an emphasis on how this investment could help support goals such as retirement or estate planning, and consideration of a client’s potential concerns about the investment’s drawbacks.
Examples: Administrative Support
- Describe how you manage your tasks and deadlines.
- Listen for a proactive approach to establishing hard deadlines, a clear understanding of expectations for assigned tasks and projects, and an ability to create an effective roadmap of tasks according to their deadlines.
- Explain your knowledge of computer software.
- Listen for past experience using software for project and office management, including Word, Excel, CRM, etc.
- How do you ensure that emails, reports, and other documents are written correctly?
- Listen for proven experience in proofreading and reviewing various types of documents, an ability to quickly edit and submit consistent data on a regular basis, and attention to detail that allows the candidate to closely identify errors.
Behavioral Testing:
Behavioral assessments may involve situational judgement tests, where candidates respond to workplace scenarios to evaluate how they handle specific situations, resolve conflicts, or prioritize tasks.
Examples: Junior Advisor or Growth Oriented Paraplanner
- Tell me about a time when someone disagreed with your advice or recommendation. How did you solve this problem?
- Listen for: A well-mannered and respectful tone, candidates who back up their advice with further evidence or data, and consideration of how the suggested action would be supportive of the client’s goals.
- Describe an experience when you felt your personal integrity was being tested. What happened, and how did you react?
- Listen for: A true test of morals in which a candidate was offered two opposing choices, the ability to maintain discretion in a high-pressured situation, and a serious tone that recognizes the weight of these ethical challenges
- Think about a time when you were especially proud of the impact you had on a client. How did you leave them in a better place than when you began?
- Listen for: A consideration of the client’s goals and objective, interest in a plan that is oriented to the client, and an example that demonstrates how a candidate had a measurable impact on the client, is preferred.
Examples: Administrative Support
- Whas there ever a moment you disagreed with a supervisor? How did you communicate and resolve the conflict?
- Listen to: Their ability to explain their rationale behind a decision, a willingness to collaborate with a supervisor and brainstorm effective solutions, and flexibility with certain expectations as long as they guarantee successful project completion.
- Tell me about a moment where you did not know how to complete a task. How did you approach this challenge?
- Listen to: Their strong verbal communication skills that allow the assistant to facilitate productive conversations, an ability to research and identify clarifying information independently, and a willingness to collaborate with the others when a task is unclear.
- Think about a time when you made a mistake. How did you approach the situation?
- Listen to: Proven experience in identifying and executing solutions for a previous error, transparency when acknowledging one’s mistakes, and their ability to reflect on previous shortcomings while action planning to minimize potential mistakes in the future.
Questions for Culture
General Questions:
- Can you describe your ideal work environment?
- This question will help you determine if the candidate will fit into the working environment you offer.
- What gets you excited about coming to work?
- This question will help you be able to determine if the level of interest and passion the candidate has for the job.
- What did you like most/least about your last company?
- This question will show you what type of working environment the candidate is likely to thrive in.
- How could a manager or advisor best support you?
- Asking this question will help you see what type of managerial style works for the candidate.
- How do you handle stress or deadlines?
- This question helps you to understand if and how the candidate values teamwork.
- What motivates you to do your best work?
- Learn about the types of things that motivate the candidate.
- Would you rather work alone or in a team?
- Determine how well a candidate values autonomy and individualism or if they are driven by personal interactions.
Fun Questions to learn more and boost enthusiasm and energy.
You will have a lot to consider when preparing for an interview. You will likely ask the candidate some hard-to answer questions which can sometimes drop the energy level. And if you aren’t keeping up the energy during the interview, you may never get to truly understand the deeper parts of a candidate’s personality.
Additionally, this information can help you dive into developing a CX record in CRM for your potential new staffer. If you can gather some key insights about them before they start, you are already ahead of the game.
Unique and fun questions to help enhance enthusiasm and also learn more about personality and culture fit:
- If you could hang out with any business leader in the world for one day, who would it be?
- If you could have a superpower, what would it be?
- If you just won the $10 million lottery, what would you do with the money?
- What title would you give your autobiography?
- What was the last gift you gave?
- What is your favorite thing about yourself?
- Are you more of a dog or a cat person?
- What’s the word people who know you best would use to describe you?
- If you could go back in time, what historical event would you want to see?
- What is something on your “bucket list?”
- Which person has made the biggest impact on you in your career? How so?
- What is your favorite sports team and why?
- If you could give your high school self a piece of advice, what would it be?
- Who would you want to play you in a movie about your life?
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