The JobSync Blog
Job Seeking Gets More Personal
September 12, 2011
Forget the old saying “Dress for success.” With each passing year, more and more companies are now preaching “Assess for success.”
As Marketwatch.com recently pointed out, 56% of companies use some kind of assessment test to better screen a candidate’s personality, cognitive ability, competency and other pertinent areas. This is up from 48% in 2010, and this upward trend is likely to continue. Companies are under increasing pressure to hire the best-fitting employees for positions, and assessment tests are a relatively cheap tool to help optimize an employer’s selection process.
Some assessment tests are fairly adept in evaluating a candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, and potential. In addition, more sophisticated assessment tests are structured to identify jobseekers who may be trying to outsmart the tests. Such candidates usually fail, as they usually misrepresent themselves in systematic ways that the tests can detect.
So, should jobseekers lose sleep over such tests? Hardly.
Most assessment tests are not the be-all and end-all of a company’s selection process, although they certainly may come into play more in the final round of interviews if the competition is tight. Also, even if a test determines someone may not be the best match for a position, other factors such as experience and work samples may downplay the relevancy of an assessment. On the other hand, if an assessment test determines you truly are not a good fit for a position, it may be doing both you and the company a big favor.
In the end, assessment tests are here to stay, so don’t take it too personally.
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