Skills assessment designs are one of our many psychometric test design specialities.
Our other psychometric test design specialities
- Firstly, here are some examples of our specialist situational judgment test designs.
- Secondly, our values situational and competency values-based assessment designs.
- We also specialise in aptitude test design projects.
- Then next our customised leadership assessment projects and pre-employment sift designs.
- Plus, our emotional intelligence assessment designs. and high potential test designs.
- And then next, our top bespoke personality test design projects and our school aptitude test designs.
- Finally, some examples of the bespoke psychometric tests designed recently for clients.
What are skills tests?
Assessments which assess hard skills, a specific ability, or job knowledge. Other psychometrics typically assess softer skills.
Our skills tests intro
These range from assessing a general skill to a very specific skill.
Some other key skill assessment characteristics include the following:
– ask a variety of questions in different formats to see how candidates perform on-the-job tasks.
– include questions that are capable of being answered by someone already doing the job.
– are tailored to relate to the responsibilities of an open position.
– often include immersive experiences, like coding challenges or job simulations.- mimic how a candidate performs when faced with a real-life scenario.
Popular skills test formats
- Excel skill tests
- coding skill tests
- typing skill tests
- task-related, e.g. “Create a Powerpoint Slide that has a video embedded in the presentation”.
What are the main types of skill test?
- Hard skills are similar to school assessments and educational qualifications. These are specific capabilities to perform a particular job; practical skills that can be learned through study and practice and therefore depend on training and work experience. Sometimes they are simply referred to as ability, under the label of “specific abilities” to differentiate from general mental ability (“g”)
- specific abilities are similar to psychometric aptitude tests, such as numerical reasoning and verbal reasoning.
- job knowledge skills tests are based on customised testing. In other words, bespoke assessment for the specific role. The skills test assessment process is similar to that of Situational Judgement Test design, and work sample designs.
How do skill tests differ from other psychometrics?
Other psychometrics tend to focus on soft skills and such psychometrics are generic – not job-specific.
These can also be called:
– transversal skills
– 21st century skills
– competencies.
How well do hard skills predict job performance?
- Hard skills can be learned much more easily than soft skills.
- The Validity of hard skills assessments depend on job-similarity. The higher the similarity between the hard skills test and the role, then the higher the validity of those hard skills assessments.
- Job knowledge has a high correlation with job performance. However, job knowledge depends on work experience and intelligence.