How does pre-employment testing work?
Pre-employment testing is a method of assessing candidates’ skills at the start of the recruitment process to help you identify the best candidates to interview.
How does it work? You, the recruiter or hiring manager, can compile various skills tests for a specific role to review applicants. The tests can evaluate role-specific and technical skills as well as soft skills like communication. This collection of tests is called an assessment.
Once created, you can send the assessment to job applicants, without even looking at their CVs. Then, as candidates complete the assessment, their results are cataloged in a dashboard where you can identify top performers and review individual applications.
Platforms like TestGorilla even allow recruiters to create custom questions. This means if you have a role or company-specific question to ask applicants, you can create your own question, add it to the test and choose how candidates answer it, whether by typing a response or recording a short video.
Which roles can a communication test be used for?
Most job roles require interaction with others in one form or another. Even if some positions need communication in writing more than speaking, or vice versa, there is an element of communication bound to every job.
We recommend the communication test for any role where strong communication skills are needed to effectively collaborate with others. Some notable roles include:
• Sales: Sales representatives, who have possibly the best-known communication roles, need to communicate with clients and prospects to explain how products or services work while relaying information to colleagues to manage clients’ expectations.
• Media: People who work in the media are storytellers. Whether they're writers or designers, they should be able to understand briefs and communicate with readers via messages and graphics on various platforms.
• Customer service and support: Whether people in these roles are serving customers or helping them with problems, the jobs of customer service and support staff rely on their ability to clearly and effectively communicate with customers.
• Information technology: Although this industry is rife with jargon, IT workers often need to share technical information with team members or break down specialized language so that non-technical staff and clients can understand it.
• Managerial: Regardless of the industry, managers are regularly required to relay and convey information and messages to employees and stakeholders. They often need to communicate organizational information in a way that is easy to understand.
• Administrative: Assistants, receptionists, financial administrators, and others often work with various departments and teams. To succeed in these positions, they need to be able to relay, co-ordinate and manage information from people in an organization.
• Analysts: From the start to the end of a project, an analyst needs to understand, interpret and relay information around requirements, updates, mitigation, opportunities, and project delivery. Because projects often hinge on analysts’ ability to effectively communicate with various people, this skill is invaluable to the role.