A pre-employment assessment is a set of online tests that a large employer uses to sort thousands of job applicants before any person reads their applications. It usually combines ability tests, a personality questionnaire and recorded video answers. It is also called a psychometric test, an aptitude test or a hiring assessment. Psychometric means measuring a person's abilities and personality. These tests are used mainly for roles outside engineering, such as sales, customer service, operations and graduate trainee programmes.
An assessment usually has three parts. Ability tests measure numerical, verbal and logical reasoning, with a time limit. A personality questionnaire asks how the candidate usually behaves at work. It often includes situational judgement questions, which describe a work situation and ask what the candidate would do. A video interview asks the candidate to record short answers to a few questions on their phone or laptop.
How are the scores read? A raw score, such as 24 correct answers out of 30, means little on its own. So each score is compared with the scores of a large group of people who took the same test earlier, called the norm group. A candidate who scored better than 85% of the norm group is at the 85th percentile.
Here is a typical case. A private bank needs 1,500 branch sales executives across eastern India, and 80,000 people apply. Each applicant gets a link from the bank's applicant tracking system. They take a 40-minute ability test and a 15-minute questionnaire. Then they record answers to three questions, such as "Tell us about a time you persuaded someone to change their mind", with two minutes for each answer. Online proctoring watches each session through the camera. The bank invites the top 12,000 to interviews. These are applicants above the 70th percentile on ability, with a personality profile that suits sales.
These tests raise fair questions. A test must actually predict how well people do the job. Otherwise, it rejects good people for no reason. It must also be fair to candidates who have a disability, or who are taking the test in their second language. Good test makers check both regularly.
The same companies also sell proctoring to universities and exam bodies, which use it with a university ERP and exam systems. A pre-employment assessment sorts people for a job. A diagnostic assessment in a school is different: it finds what a child has not yet learned. Engineering candidates usually take a coding assessment instead.