Why Most Candidates Fail Pre-Employment Skill Tests

Hiring managers overseeing these assessments or working for companies utilizing such evaluation methods must actively participate in the process to ensure fairness and candidate-friendliness.

1. Influx of Unqualified Candidates:
   With the convenience of recruitment automation, candidates can easily apply to positions without being adequately qualified. The prevalence of the "Spray and Pray" application method necessitates the use of automated screening to sift through applicants and identify the truly qualified ones.
2. Focus on Irrelevant Questions and Puzzles
   A common error in skills assessments is the emphasis on trick questions or puzzles. While being adept at solving puzzles may be a valuable skill, it doesn't necessarily reflect a candidate's suitability for a role. This approach can introduce bias against more experienced developers, and studies consistently show that puzzle-solving does not correlate with on-the-job performance.
3. Setting Up Excessively Difficult Tests
   Some employers mistakenly create overly challenging tests, believing in having a high hiring bar. However, the goal should be to use the test to eliminate unqualified candidates rather than creating an unnecessarily difficult barrier. Shorter assessments (30-60 mins) are recommended, allowing candidates to showcase their expertise quickly. This ensures candidates invest minimal time while still proving their capabilities. Follow-up detailed analyses and interviews can then be conducted with the qualified candidates.
4. Binary Scoring System
   Traditional testing tools often employ a binary (0/1) scoring system, measuring the current level of candidate skills but failing to assess their learning ability. Modern conversational assessments address this limitation by providing hints when candidates face challenges. This allows for distinguishing between candidates who can learn from hints and iteratively correct their errors and those who struggle even with assistance. Intelligent hints contribute to understanding a candidate's ability to grasp concepts on the spot, a crucial indicator for job performance. For instance, 40% of candidates on Intervue use hints, allowing the evaluation of candidates' adaptive learning skills.

An effective, well-designed pre-employment assessment should yield a score distribution resembling the normal curve, akin to standardized tests like the SAT and GRE. This means that approximately 20% of candidates are expected to perform well, and the distribution follows a bell-shaped curve.

In contrast, status quo assessments often exhibit the opposite score distribution compared to the normal curve. Many candidates receive scores close to either 0 or 100, with a scarcity of candidates falling in the middle range. This skewed distribution is often a result of assessments focusing on theoretical or trick questions, which inherently have a binary nature—candidates either know the trick or theory or they don't.

If you are currently using a pre-employment test in your hiring process, it's recommended to examine the score distribution. Ideally, the distribution should reflect a balanced curve, indicating a fair and effective assessment that accurately distinguishes candidates across a range of skill levels.

While many skills assessment tests provide a quantifiable number to gauge a candidate's qualification for a job, it's crucial to delve into a candidate's performance in detail, especially when the test has recently been implemented, and its validity is yet to be thoroughly evaluated. Examining a detailed report that highlights which questions the candidate answered correctly and where they made mistakes can offer additional insights into their abilities.

This practice becomes particularly valuable in coding tests, where a candidate may have successfully formulated the logic to solve a problem but might have been unable to rectify errors due to time constraints. A comprehensive analysis of a candidate's performance on specific questions allows for a more nuanced understanding of their capabilities and potential strengths, even if the overall test score doesn't fully capture their problem-solving skills. This approach enables a more informed evaluation, ensuring that candidates are assessed holistically, beyond just numerical scores.

Ensure the effectiveness of your skills assessment process with the following key considerations:

1. Optimal Duration:
   Keep the assessment short, within the 30-60 minutes range. This not only respects the candidate's time but also enhances completion rates by minimizing fatigue and frustration.
2. Candidate-Friendly Communication:
   Craft your invite email with candidate-friendly messaging. Clearly communicate the purpose and format of the assessment, creating a positive and transparent experience for the candidate.
3. Advance Notification:
   Inform candidates in advance that they will be receiving a link to a skills assessment. This proactive communication prepares them for the upcoming task, fostering a sense of readiness and improving overall completion rates.
4. Eliminate Puzzles and Trick Questions:
   Remove any elements of puzzles or trick questions from the test. This ensures a fair evaluation based on relevant skills and knowledge, preventing unnecessary stress for candidates and providing a more accurate representation of their capabilities.
5. Relevance to the Role:
   Verify that the questions included in the test are directly relevant to the responsibilities of the role. Tailor the assessment to align with the skills and competencies essential for success in the specific position, thereby enhancing the predictive validity of the test.

By incorporating these measures, you not only streamline the assessment process but also create a candidate-centric experience that fosters transparency and fairness in evaluating their suitability for the role.

A well-designed skills assessment test serves as a powerful tool to efficiently filter out unqualified candidates, allowing you to channel your time and efforts towards identifying the best among the qualified individuals.

At Intervue, we have implemented a candidate-friendly approach with our 45-minute assessments, specifically crafted to evaluate on-the-job skills. Our assessments incorporate anti-cheating features such as non-googleable questions, web and webcam proctoring, IP monitoring, and plagiarism detection. These features ensure a secure testing environment, giving you the confidence to administer assessments without concerns.

Once a candidate completes the assessment, you receive a prompt notification, and a detailed scorecard becomes instantly available. This scorecard provides a comprehensive breakdown of the candidate's performance on a question-by-question basis. The cut-off score, initially aligned with industry standards, is customizable over time to meet your specific requirements.

The scorecard not only offers an overall assessment but also drills down into the candidate's performance for each skill and individual question. This granular insight allows you to make informed decisions about a candidate's capabilities, facilitating a more nuanced and effective selection process.