A pre-employment test helps recruiters find valuable information about the candidate that can’t be found in a wordy CV. In short, a coding assessment is the best way to assess a candidate’s skills, which will help recruiters to make thoughtful decisions.

As a recruiter, you have to go through tons of job applications each day, and judging a candidate based on a wordy resume is a bad practice.

For example, suppose your organization is looking for talented web developers. In that case, you can’t simply hire a candidate based on the words written in the resume. Instead, you have to conduct a coding test to determine whether the candidate is the right fit or not.

But what if you fail to conduct a successful pre-employment test? What can be the consequences?

Let’s discuss some of the horrible mistakes you’re making with the pre-employment assessment.

Conducting The Wrong Test

This is one of the most common mistakes which every hiring manager makes. And if you’re the one, you must resolve this issue as it can impact your hiring decision.

You might have crafted the best strategies to conduct a coding assignment, you are equipped with pre-determined questions as well, but there’s no point running a test when it doesn’t value the job-related capabilities.

For example, you won’t conduct a coding test for social media marketers. Their grades on such a test would prove meaningless for making a hiring decision.

That said, taking the time to evaluate the skills and abilities required for a particular job position will help you conduct the right test for the right job profile. As a result, you are more likely to make informed hiring decisions.

Not Using The Right Tools

Using complex tools to conduct tests can hinder you from finding the right talent for your organization.

With tons of pre-employment tools available online, you must use the tool which best serves its purpose to assess the candidates well. Having the right tool by your side can help you save time and money and help you remain legally compliant.

Many organizations want to develop their own pre-employment assessment test to evaluate candidates. The right tool will help make test creating a simple, straightforward process while ensuring you get the most out of your customized tests.

Overlooking Candidate Experience

While conducting a test is essential to find the right talent, if the test is too lengthy and complicated, it can impact the candidate's experience.

Conducting a lengthy or too complicated assessment can let potential candidates back off from the recruiting process. Research says that the level of candidate drop-off is minimum as long as the total assessment time is less than 45 minutes.

There are a lot of other ways to improve the candidate experience, which can result in developing a positive employer brand. Informing candidates about the pre-employment test result on time can lead to a positive candidate experience. It will make the candidates feel that their time is respected.

Relying On Pre-Employment Test Alone

A pre-employment test will help you determine who is the right fit for your organization among hundreds of applicants. As it eliminates a lot of legwork in the applicant assessment process, it can be tempting to rely on pre-employment tests alone.

A candidate can somehow pass the pre-employment test but may not be the right one for your organizational cultural fit. The best way to overcome this issue is by involving a hiring manager, pre-employment test, and interviews to grab the right talent.

Not Considering Candidate’s Soft Skills

The other most common mistake recruiters make is that they assess only the technical skills of a candidate. You are hiring a candidate to work in your organization, and hence, overlooking soft skills can impact the overall productivity. There is no point in hiring a candidate who is well-versed in technical skills but lacks communication skills.

The mixture of technical and soft skills makes a candidate the right fit for the organization.

Today, most companies are shifting towards the concept of culture fit to culture add. A culture add mindset recognizes the benefit of hiring people who align with your organization’s standards and culture and add value to their organization.

Having Unrealistic Expectations

When you conduct the right pre-employment test, it will help predict work performance. While pre-employment tests are predictive of success, they are unrealistic. As this test can predict business outcomes, it doesn’t mean that the test correctly indicates the performance of every candidate individually.

For example, weather reports are predictive and are not 100% accurate. It is unrealistic to expect a pre-employment test to make the right prediction every time.

Research says that these tests are better at predicting job success than recruiting managers.

Singling Out Only A Few Top Candidates

Top performance shouldn’t be judged on personality and aptitude. Instead, a mix of experience, educational qualifications, training, motivation, and personal values makes a candidate the right fit for the organization.

A successful hire won’t occur by basing a hiring decision based on experience and educational background alone. You must also never overlook the candidate’s soft skills, such as team-management skills, communication skills, problem-solving skills, relationship building, and many more.

Testing candidates never guarantees the top talent for your company. However, not leveraging the power of pre-employment assessment can result in hiring a low-performer, hence, impacting the overall productivity.

A successful pre-employment test can be an invaluable part of your recruiting process. It will help you hire the top talent and develop a positive employer brand on different review websites and recruiting sites.

Using the pre-employment test in the right way can give you deep insight into a candidate's skills which can help you streamline the hiring process while avoiding unconscious bias.

By avoiding the mistakes we mentioned above, you can make your recruiting process straightforward, and you’ll be on your way to a more efficient and more effective hiring process.