Budgeting

Budgeting test: Pre-employment screening assessment to hire the best candidates

About the Budgeting test

Budgeting is a key part of financial management – planning the use of resources, such as people, cash flow, capital spend, and target setting to ensure the financial goals of a business are met. Developing and applying financial controls and procedures is essential to ensuring the budget is adhered to.

This test evaluates the candidate's ability to read and interpret data, such as financial data, estimate the financial resources and needs of a project or organization, monitor and control a budget, and apply financial policies and controls for your organization.

This screening test helps you to identify management that can review profitability and sales data, analyze time sheets and work charts, and analyze income against expenses. This test helps you identify employees who can properly estimate the amount of financial resources needed for a project, work with quotes from other businesses, and estimate expenses. This budgeting test will help you identify candidates who can apply variance analysis, determine budgetary discrepancies, and manage cash flow, and who can apply and enforce your company’s cash management and payment tracking policies.

Candidates who perform well on this test have a strong understanding of the budgeting process and solid experience in financial analysis and cash flow management. They will also have a good understanding of financial controls and processes to ensure there is adequate control of cash.

The test is made by a subject-matter expert

Miruru W.

Miruru is a Certified Public Accountant with over 25 years in financial management and control activities that include budgetary preparation and control, resource planning, financial reporting, and financial modeling. He has consulted for hospitality, agro-processing, petroleum and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), manufacturing, and a variety of other sectors

Crafted with expert knowledge

TestGorilla’s tests are created by subject matter experts. We assess potential subject-matter experts based on their knowledge, ability, and reputation. Before being published, each test is peer-reviewed by another expert, then calibrated using hundreds of test takers with relevant experience in the subject. Our feedback mechanisms and unique algorithms allow our subject-matter experts to constantly improve their tests.

What our customers are saying

Use TestGorilla to hire the best faster, easier and bias-free

Our screening tests identify the best candidates and make your hiring decisions faster, easier, and bias-free.

Watch how you can use the Budgeting test

Create high-quality assessments, fast

Building assessments is a breeze with TestGorilla. Get started with these simple steps.

View a sample report

The Budgeting test will be included in a PDF report along with the other tests from your assessment. You can easily download and share this report with colleagues and candidates.

Budgeting test online

What is a Budget analyst assessment test? How will it help you?

The Budget analyst assessment test or the Budgeting test is a pre-employment skills assessment that helps you evaluate your candidates’ budgeting skills to see who can understand and apply financial policies in an effective way. Budgeting, in general, is a part of financial management, and any manager who wants to be successful needs to understand and apply budgeting in their management.

But finding a good candidate who has great financial management skills is trickier than ever. The competition to get the best talent from the market is fierce and companies will have to go above and beyond to hire great talent. But there are more obstacles on the way besides competition; there are also outdated internal hiring processes that prolong recruitment and create obstacles to hiring great people. Some of the problems are:

Limited candidate pool: Even though your hiring managers are receiving many applications, the quality of those applications isn’t very good. There are a lot of applicants that are using the “shotgun” method, where they send their CVs and resumes to as many companies as possible. They do so because they hope one of the applications sticks and they get an interview. The problem is on the other side; hiring managers are getting swamped with CVs that aren’t qualified for the position they have open. So they have to sit down for hours upon hours and sift through resumes until they find a couple of suitable candidates. And even when they do and they present you with a shortlist, you’re not sure if they’re really the best candidates or a product of the hiring manager’s bias.

Inherent bias: Even if the manager knows about unconscious biases, they will still fall victim to them during the hiring process.

CV dependence: All of this happens because hiring processes rely on resumes to see if the candidates have the necessary skills. With CV screening, the hiring managers are only assessing the candidates’ CV writing skills, not their practical budgeting skills.

The solution to these problems is pre-employment tests.

What will you be evaluating with the Budgeting test?

A pre-employment test, such as the Budgeting test, can really improve your entire hiring process. With a pre-employment test, you’re no longer relying on CVs to assess the skills of your candidates. Instead, you’re evaluating the real skills that they will use on the job.

The Budgeting test itself lasts for 10 minutes and it’s geared toward candidates that have an intermediate level of skills. The test will assess candidates in four distinct areas when it comes to budgeting:

• Reading and interpreting data
• Estimating financial resources and needs
• Monitoring and controlling the budget
• Applying financial policies and controls

With the Budgeting test, you’re looking to shortlist those candidates that score well on the test. That means that they have the necessary skills, experience, and mastery when it comes to financial management. Only those candidates who know how to read and interpret data, estimate financial resources, and control the budget will be the ones that will get good results from the test.

The Budgeting test is essential if you’re trying to hire people for any of the following roles: managers, assistant managers, production managers, warehouse managers, and bookkeepers. All of these roles require financial management skills.

With a pre-employment test like the Budgeting test, you will receive the necessary data to make informed hiring decisions. The test results will help you hire only those candidates who actually have the necessary skills to do the job successfully. And that’s not the only problem pre-employment tests solve in the hiring process.

Budgeting test online
Budgeting test online

Use this Budgeting test for skills-based hiring

When you use the Budgeting pre-employment test, you will solve many problems in your hiring process:

Hundreds of applications: A hiring manager receives around 200 applications per open job role. And it’s really time-consuming for the hiring manager to go over all the (unqualified) CVs and shortlist candidates that meet the requirements. With pre-employment tests, you don’t have these problems. The hiring manager simply sends the pre-employment tests with a single click to all of the candidates that apply for the role. They don’t do CV screening; instead, they send the test to all the candidates and then wait for the results.

No more bias: When the hiring manager sends all the tests, they wait for the test results and use those results to make hiring decisions. The results come in as numerical so the hiring manager can compare candidates to see who did better. So using a pre-employment test such as the Budgeting test will help you eliminate unconscious bias from the hiring process altogether.

Reliance on resumes: Usually, hiring managers rely on CV screening to see if the candidates have the necessary skills to do the job. But with a pre-employment test in your hiring process, you won’t have to rely on CVs at all. A pre-employment test replaces resume screening and it does a better job at that; with a pre-employment test, you’re assessing the skills that the candidate will actually use on the job instead of looking at their CV writing skills.

The first step in implementing pre-employment tests in your hiring process would be to look at TestGorilla’s test library. We have over 170 scientific tests that have helped more than 6,000 companies improve their hiring process. So don’t leave anything to chance; use a pre-employment test in your hiring process and recruit the best talent.

FAQs

What is the difference between an assessment and a test?
An assessment is the total package of tests and custom questions that you put together to evaluate your candidates. Each individual test within an assessment is designed to test something specific, such as a job skill or language. An assessment can consist of up to 5 tests and 20 custom questions. You can have candidates respond to your custom questions in several ways, such as with a personalized video.
Can I add my own questions to an assessment?
Yes! Custom questions are great for testing candidates in your own unique way. We support the following question types: video, multiple-choice, coding, file upload, and essay. Besides adding your own custom questions, you can also create your own tests.
How do video questions work?
A video question is a specific type of custom question you can add to your assessment. Video questions let you create a question and have your candidates use their webcam to record a video response. This is an excellent way to see how a candidate would conduct themselves in a live interview, and is especially useful for sales and hospitality roles. Some good examples of things to ask for video questions would be "Why do you want to work for our company?" or "Try to sell me an item you have on your desk right now." You can learn more about video questions here.
Can you explain how the other custom question types work?
Besides video questions, you can also add the following types of custom questions: multiple-choice, coding, file upload, and essay. Multiple-choice lets your candidates choose from a list of answers that you provide, coding lets you create a coding problem for them to solve, file upload allows your candidates to upload a file that you request (such as a resume or portfolio), and essay allows an open-ended text response to your question. You can learn more about different custom question types here.
Can I customize an assessment with my company logo and color theme?
Yes! You can add your own logo and company color theme to your assessments. This is a great way to leave a positive and lasting brand impression on your candidates.
What type of support do you offer?
Our team is always here to help. After you sign up, we’ll reach out to guide you through the first steps of setting up your TestGorilla account. If you have any further questions, you can contact our support team via email, chat or call. We also offer detailed guides in our extensive Help & Inspiration Center.
What is the cost for using the Budgeting test?
You can find our pricing packages here. Sign up here to try TestGorilla today.
Can I combine the Budgeting test with other tests?
Yes. You can add up to five tests to each assessment.
Where in my recruitment process should I use the Budgeting test?
We recommend using our assessment software as a pre-screening tool at the beginning of your recruitment process. You can add a link to the assessment in your job post or directly invite candidates by email. TestGorilla replaces traditional CV screening with a much more reliable and efficient process, designed to find the most skilled candidates earlier and faster.

Related tests