Why Employers Use Aptitude Test

Throughout the entire appointment process, recruiters essentially intend to collect as much significant information on job applicants as possible. However, the traditional staffing approaches such as interviews and resumes normally don’t offer the most trustworthy insight.

In fact, recent research indicates that more than 78% of resumes contain misleading info, while nearly 46% of that info is actually lies. Similarly, interviews, particularly unstructured ones, are often subjective and characteristically serve as erratic conjecturers of ultimate job performance.

To supplement information gathered through such traditional means, employers are now using aptitude tests to evaluate candidates’ abilities through a variety of different testing formats. There are different types of aptitude tests, all of which can be used to predict a candidate’s future job performance and excellence.

Here are five reasons why contemporary employers are increasingly using aptitude tests in recruitment today:

1. To Evaluate Differences in Candidates 

A single vacancy post can potentially attract thousands of applications from candidates with seemingly similar qualifications. Unfortunately, most recruiters don’t have the time or resources to go through all the applications by hand to determine the best candidates for the job.

In such scenarios, aptitude tests come in handy as pre-employment screening tools, allowing recruiters to reject applications that don’t meet the expected standard in specific areas that are most relevant to the vacant position.

Aptitude tests delve deeper into testing a person’s inherent abilities in relation to the competencies needed for the job position. They go beyond testing the academic and hands-on qualifications to assessing the ‘soft skills,’ which can be used to differentiate candidates who may all appear qualified for a specific role.

2. To Predict a Candidate’s Future Success

Aptitude tests assume that each person has inherent strengths and weaknesses and possesses a natural inclination towards success or failure in particular areas based on their innate individualities. As such, employers are now using these tests to determine a person’s skills or prosperity to succeed in specific organizational capacities.

These tests evaluate an individual’s ability to think critically, digest and apply new information, learn new skills, and solve diverse problems. Essentially, aptitude tests measure numerous qualities that contemporary employers seek in almost every job role they create.

Recent studies show that since cognitive aptitude is related to decision-making capability as well as situational judgment, pre-recruitment assessments normally provide greater efficacy as predictive tools for job performance than ordinary tests such as interviews.

3. To Increase Productivity 

Every job role in a company demands the use of specific cognitive abilities that predicts is an individual has the right level of intelligence required to perform and succeed at work. The best predictor of productivity and work success is cognitive intelligence, which is reliably tested through aptitude tests.

Aptitude tests are shown to help avoid bad hiring decisions that can be extremely costly. A Harvard Business report indicates that more than 80% of staff turnover is associated with poor hiring decisions. If recruiters fail to accurately test if an applicant has the right acumen to excel in a specific role, they can ultimately bring in people who underperform, and this can have a significant impact on productivity.

Aptitude tests can be used to not only judge if a person can perform excellently in their roles but also if they can be able to learn and grow on the job to become future high-caliber leaders. It is essentially a gauge of how learning agile a person is.

4. To Conduct Fair & Unbiased Evaluation 

One of the greatest benefits of aptitude tests is that they are fair and unbiased. As already suggested, aptitude assessments are great at judging and predicting candidates’ competence and performance, irrespective of their education, work history, credentials, and anything else that makes one stand out from the crowd.

Unlike interviews and resumes, aptitude tests can help recruiters identify fitting candidates and potential for future performance without manipulation. This not only allows recruiters to identify candidates that are fit for the respective roles but also shields them from unethical behaviors associated with hiring.

Every candidate takes the same test that is standardized with no bearing on educational, economic, political, or social bearing. Recruiters only receive data that is just scores or percentiles, providing just a snapshot of candidates’ abilities at the time of tests. Then the results are compared to a specific programmed ideal range, and the applicants that match or exceed that range are taken further. Given this, there is no chance for subjective decisions.

• To Save Time & Money 

The recruitment process can be absolutely costly and time-consuming. The rapidly growing applicant pool makes it increasingly challenging for recruiting teams to manage candidates while identifying suitable individuals with a sea of resumes.

Aptitude tests are now proving to provide the most time and money-saving value when employed at the of the recruitment funnel. They allow recruiters to weed off resume ‘spammers’ who are not suitable for the job with minimal effort, in turn eliminating layers of extra costs and time.

Setting minimum cut-off scores for specific tests can quickly cut down the number of candidates to select for further consideration. This way, recruiters will only spend their expensive management time interviewing candidates that are almost qualified for the intended roles.

Pr-recruitment aptitude tests often limit the hours spent on the time-consuming hiring process by making it easier to identify the right candidates with the most potential for success on the job.