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#JobSearch : 3 Tips To Help You Navigate Pre-Hiring Tests. Understanding the Process Allow you to Navigate Successfully. Great Read.

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For recruiters and HR departments, pre-hiring tests are necessary tools that help make the hiring process more efficient and effective. Back in the day, pre-hiring tests were nothing more than basic quizzes or assessments administered in person or via mail, focusing primarily on general knowledge or basic skills relevant to the job — they usually took no more than 15 to 20 minutes too.

Nowadays, companies are requiring more extensive tests to further verify competency. According to a survey, 40% of HR departments plan to increase the pre-hire tests they expect candidates to take when interviewing for a new job.

With fewer job openings and increased competition in the job market, acing a pre-hiring test sometimes becomes crucial to ensure that your application remains in consideration. Here are three things that you should know about pre-hiring tests.

Understand The Test

It’s crucial to know the kind of pre-hiring test that you’ll be taking ahead of time so that you can prepare for it effectively.

Most recruiters will detail the test in writing to give you an idea of what to expect and how long it’s going to take ahead of time. The most popular pre-hiring tests are cognitive ability tests, which attempt to give recruiters an idea of a candidate’s mental abilities.

HR departments who care about culture fit may also administer personality tests to determine a candidate’s ability to integrate into the company culture and work effectively with existing teams. Among the most commonly used personality tests are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator Test and the DISC Assessment, both designed to give recruiters insights into an individual’s personality traits and behavioral preferences.

For more specialized roles, recruiters may require candidates to partake in skills assessments. For example, a software developer might be asked to complete coding challenges or troubleshoot programming problems. Meanwhile, sales candidates may be asked to demonstrate their pitching, objection handling, and deal-closing abilities through mock sales calls, presentations, and role-play.

Still, some companies prefer to assess a candidate’s skills in real-time by engaging in trial work. Typically reserved for candidates already in the later stages of the hiring process, trial work involves giving them very similar tasks related to their future day-to-day operations. This approach allows employers to directly observe how candidates perform tasks as if they were already hired to do the job.

Whatever method a company uses, understanding the nature of a pre-hiring test allows candidates to better prepare themselves and puts them in the best position possible when taking the test.

 

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Article continued …

Practice Makes Perfect

Do you get nervous during exams? You’re not alone. Skills-based hiring and its tests are known to cause anxiety in many candidates, causing job seekers to miss out on the opportunity they would be a great fit for.

That being said, pre-hiring tests aren’t going away soon, so it’s best for candidates to seek out practice tests to ease some of these nerves. Not all tests are worth practicing for, especially personality tests which don’t necessarily have right or wrong answers.

However, for skills-based assessments like coding challenges, technical exams, or situational judgment tests, practice can significantly improve your performance and alleviate anxiety. If you can, try to make connections with somebody already in the company to get an idea of the kind of tests that you may encounter and try to prepare for that ahead of time.

Many companies also use standardized tests that you can look up online and do practice runs with. Companies customize these standardized tests for their own purpose, so doing practice tests based on similar formats will not give away the exact answers to the test. However, they can still help you by getting you familiarized with the type of questions that you may encounter, and whether or not there is a time limit.

Know When To Walk Away

There’s no doubt that pre-hiring tests are critical for companies who want to make sure that they are hiring the best people they can. Despite making the hiring process longer, pre-hiring tests help balance the subjective nature of interviews.

That being said, such extra steps have recently been shown to be taxing for candidates. In fact, we’re seeing some applicants complete up to 10 to 15 hours of pre-hire work on top of interviews, a lot of the time for free.

While beneficial for employers, it’s easy to see why many job candidates may find this setup onerous. Many have cautioned job applicants to be wary of employers who employ pre-hiring tests of such length, calling it unpaid labor and speculative work in disguise.

While there’s no hard and fast rule when deciding when a pre-hiring test is too long or tedious, it’s crucial to consider the context of the test. If you’re vying for more senior management positions, then you should expect a more thorough and rigorous hiring process that will be appropriate for the position and the compensation package that it comes with.

However, if you’re applying for more junior roles but are being asked to complete a multi-hour assessment or project, trust your gut instincts here. If it feels overly excessive, I would advise you to walk away while you’re still early in the process. With job opportunities being a bit tight at the moment, it’s even more crucial to be strategic about the opportunities you pursue and the time and effort you invest in them. Rooting for you!

Forbes.com | March 21, 2024 | Sho Dewan

 

#JobSearch : Lost Your Job?  First Steps First. Great Ideas to Get Through the Unemployment Period.

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Nothing is more worrisome than being out of work and dreading the bills coming in the mail that you can’t afford to pay.  Scarier yet is not having funds for job shopping (gas money or interview clothing).  Here are some ideas to help you get through the unemployment period and make time without a job work to your advantage.

Your full-time job while unemployed is applying online for jobs. Once you lose your job, you should immediately research your state’s unemployment benefits options.  In some states, a two-week waiting period must be reached before application; in other states, you may be eligible on the first day of unemployment. You must file for the benefits. In most states, you may do so online via an Internet-based application. The state will require forms completed pertaining to the circumstances leading to the job loss. Be truthful. If you were fired, state the honest reason. Not all states deny unemployment benefits for being fired unless the termination was for extreme reasons (e.g., embezzlement, equipment destruction, theft, avoidable OSHA-related safety incidents, or vandalism).

 

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We here at FSC want to thank each of corporate partners in the opportunity in serving & moving each of their transitioning employee(s) rapidly toward employment !

 

Article continued …

Regardless of the waiting period, the employment commission in each state is one of the best places to search for a new job.  Many companies post job openings to comply with the EEOC mandate for the 3-5-day public posting of positions, and they can do so for free. The state also supplies job listings within an easy commute to your city and surrounding areas.

Apply directly to public job openings – some companies will allow resume uploads into their Automatic Tracking Systems (ATS), even if there are currently no job openings (this is called ‘resume farming’  by recruiters). Alternatively, apply online by uploading your resume to proprietary resume databases, e.g., Monster.com, CareerBuilder.com, Indeed, or USAJobs.gov (resume loading for the job seeker).

You don’t want a blank space on your resume where you were unemployed if you can avoid it. Recruiters are not fond of seeing extended periods of unemployment (the UNNA syndrome – Unemployed Need Not Apply). However, after the 2009 housing crash and the COVID pandemic, they are more used to seeing these phenomena of long periods of unemployment. The good news is that there are two rich opportunities to add content to your resume, allow you to meet new people, and network for new employment opportunities.

First, offer your time or assistance to non-profit organizations or obtain training to enrich your job skills. Many small non-profit organizations (NPSs) are desperate for grant writers, volunteers, mentors, and specialists. There is a shortage in these skills for many small NPOs who can’t afford to pay salaries for these job skills – your local paper may run lists of NPOs needing assistance.

Second, if you can’t do the education or training and can’t offer assistance as a volunteer, the next best activity is to go into business for yourself as a consultant. Shop the market for companies needing your skill set as a 1099 consultant (a local city business license may be less than $50).  You never know when your skills sets may turn into a more realistic method to replace that lost salary.  Recruiters will note you didn’t let the dust settle after a job loss and view you as a more viable candidate.

While you are unemployed, get the training (or education) you didn’t have time to take while you were working, and add industry or trade certifications to the achievements on your resume. Take classes to advance your education beyond the courses or degree you last achieved.  There may be inexpensive adult education classes in your city that provide insight into a fresh new topic for you. Computer skills are one of the hottest training needs in any industry. If you gain insight into how software or a process works, it will move you ahead of the job’s competition.

As you achieve the training, education, or volunteer work, add it to your resume as the most recent ‘employment’ activity.  The longer you are unemployed, the more obvious the non-productive activity and the less viable a candidate you become to recruiters.  Filling that gap with volunteer activities, education or training, and/or part-time consulting work demonstrates you are still a viable and highly qualified candidate.

FSC Career Blog Author:  Dawn Boyer, Ph.D., is an associate of First Sun Consulting, and the owner of D. Boyer Consulting – providing resume writing, editing, and publishing consulting services. Reach her at: Dawn.Boyer@DBoyerConsulting.com or http://dboyerconsulting.com.  

Bio: Dawn D. Boyer, Ph.D., manages and operates a consulting firm in Norfolk, Richmond, Colonial Beach (Dahlgren), and Gloucester, VA.  Her background is 24+ years in the Human Resources field, of which 12+ years are within the Federal & Defense Contracting industry.  She is the author of 940+ books on business, human resources research, career search practice, women’s studies, genealogy lineages, and adult coloring books.  Her books are listed on Amazon.com under her author’s page for Dawn D. Boyer, Ph.D.

 

FSC Career Blog | September 19, 2022