Employment Testing Continued…

Types of Employee Tests

Mechanical aptitude tests measure a person's mechanical aptitude for household objects, production and maintenance, science, physics and hand and power tools.

Electrical Aptitude tests are used to select applicants for electrical repair and maintenance, reading schematics and motor repair.

Team skills testing indicate a person's ability to resolve conflict, communicate well, and be a leader and team member at the same time.

People working in retail can request an applicant to take a sales test. This tests your knowledge of prospecting skills, communication and expressiveness, confidence, listening skills, closing skills and negotiating skills.

There are literally hundreds of types of tests for assessing all on-the-job skills including but not limited to: clerical and office skills, computer software, Microsoft certification, accounting and bookkeeping, call center and telemarketing skills, food service, law firms, medical offices and retail sales. A new development is psychological testing used to read an applicant's cognitive and motivational ability.

Testing Patterns

The frequency of employee testing seems to be inversely related to the job market. In a hard job market, employers will test more due to the influx of applicants. Testing is a good tool for determining who qualifies when human resources is inundated with applicants. Drug testing has become a deterrent to many drug users as well and medical exams help reject workers who cannot fulfill a job's essential duties. During a soft job market, employers will test less as they cannot afford to turn away so many applicants. Testing has fluctuated much in the past three decades, first at its peak in the 1980s, then gradually hitting a low in the 1990s and now back up in again between 2001 and 2005.

Additional reasons for the decline in testing include that some employee tests were found ineffective and even biased and some were cause for employee lawsuits.

By Lisa Sharp