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How to Consult Effectively with Employee Assessment Tests

Pre-Employment Assessments

How do employers test for skills pre-employment?

Before a candidate gets in through the door, there are now ways to learn about who they are as people and what they can bring to your team. It all depends on the way your organization builds the candidate selection process.

An effective interview process is driven by pre-employment assessments. These science-based, data-driven questionnaires can reveal the behavior, internal motivation, skills and social awareness of your job candidates.

The first step to effectively assess job candidates is to eliminate the language and idea of assessment tests for job applications. Assessments are different from skills tests; they are simply a clear and concise way to measure different factors, rather than a “pass/fail” style test. Someone’s personality can’t be graded!

There are no right or wrong answers in assessments offered at TTI SI; there is simply the reality of someone’s behavior. It’s actually quite clear in the assessment results if someone has tried to cheat on their pre-employment assessment, and any skilled consultant will be able to interpret the results and tell. These assessments are powerful tools, but you need to use them correctly.

How useful are pre-employment personality tests?

Pre-employment assessments are incredibly useful for employers who understand exactly how to harness the information they reveal. However, you need to understand how to interpret their results for maximum efficiency. Many employers want to know, “Do assessment tests work?” The answer is entirely dependent on how you utilize these tools.

When selecting the right job interview assessment to use, you need to consider what new hire assessment questions you need to be answered. Do you just want to get to know candidates better before conducting in-person interviews? Does the role you are trying to fill need a high amount of emotional intelligence? What particular skills are needed to maximize success in the role? These are some of the questions that you need to answer before utilizing pre-employment assessments.

What are pre-employment assessment services?

TTI Success Insights works with a global network of resellers who are trained in our sciences and are ready to help organizations like yours thrive. We highly recommend working with a consultant when utilizing our assessment tools; unless someone on your staff is trained and certified in DISC, 12 Driving Forces, and our other assessment offerings, you might be lost when examining results. The consultant or coach you work with will guide the assessment process. Together, you will decide if you will utilize benchmarking, if you will use a single science or work with a multi-science assessment like TriMetrix EQ, and when exactly to introduce assessments into the interview process.

What are some pre-employment assessments?

Here are the TTI SI assessments most often used in the hiring process.

DISC: How You Do What You Do

DISC is a universal behavioral model that goes over four separate factors: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance.

Put simply, the DISC assessment measures how a person does what they do. It creates a language around observable behavior.

The DISC assessment is the only offering available at TTI SI that was not created by us. First appearing in its earliest form in the 1960s, the DISC assessment is based on the behavioral theory of William Marston.

One of the areas that TTI SI innovates in is our measurement of the combination of scores, or the high and low scores.

Many providers only focus on the area with the highest score, while ignoring others. This is reductive and ineffective at gathering the whole picture of an individual’s behavior. By looking at every element of DISC and how those scores interact with one another to reveal behavior, TTI SI’s DISC assessment gives you both the big picture and the small details.

TTI SI also provides two graphs in each DISC assessment. One is the Natural graph, which shows an individual’s natural behavior, or how they prefer to do what they do. The other is the Adapted graph, which shows how an individual adapts their behavior to fit the situation they are in.

This feature is particularly important for hiring managers and leadership because it lets you know exactly how good the fit is for a position. If an individual’s Adapted score matches their role, but that adaptation is far from their Natural score, they are at a higher risk for burning out. In contrast, if an individual’s Natural graph aligns well with their job, they will be more engaged, productive, and successful.


12 Driving Forces: Why You Do What You Do

The 12 Driving Forces assessment measures the motivation and strength of those motivations behind behavior. Put simply, it measures why you do what you do. 12 Driving Forces allows for a unique insight into what drives an employee or candidate, which allows for more accurate hiring, established KPIs, and an assessment of cultural fit.

The 12 Driving Forces assessment measures an individual’s scores in six motivators, which are knowledge, utility, surroundings, others, power, and methodologies. These 6 motivators are divided into two polar opposite scores and an individual lands somewhere along a continuum between those two scores.

This assessment is a powerful resource for improving work performance, launching personal and professional development, creating a talent pipeline, and, of course, making effective hiring decisions.

By gaining access to this knowledge, as well as a shared vocabulary, leaders can tap into the real motivations of their team members. When work aligns with passion, every aspect of work improves.


Emotional Quotient: 5 Factors of Emotional Intelligence

The demand for emotional intelligence in the workplace is on the rise, and will only continue to increase in the new world of work. The EQ assessment was created in 2008 to break this complex concept down into five measurable factors.

  • Self Awareness is the ability to recognize and understand your moods, emotions and drives.
  • Self Regulation is the ability to control or redirect disruptive impulses and moods and the propensity to suspend judgment and think before acting.
  • Social Regulation is the ability to influence the emotional clarity of others through a proficiency in managing relationships and building networks.
  • Motivation is a passion to work for reasons that go beyond the external drive for knowledge, utility, surroundings, others, power or methodology and is based on internal drive or propensity to pursue goals with energy and persistence.

Emotional intelligence is key to creating strong relationships, minimizing conflict in the workplace, and developing yourself and your team.


Competencies (DNA): 25 Essential Skills

While every job is different, TTI SI has determined the 25 essential skills for every position. Measure and understand those skills with the Competencies (DNA) assessment. This assessment identifies a candidate’s top personal skills, as well as areas that need improvement.

Competencies is an assessment tool that can help define if a candidate has the skills needed for a specific job. This makes it an excellent pre-employment assessment; you don’t have to guess at the skill set of your potential employee. You can see their experience and points of development clearly laid out in the assessment results.

So what exactly are those 25 Competencies?

  • Appreciating Others
  • Conceptual Thinking
  • Conflict Management
  • Continuous Learning
  • Creativity and Innovation
  • Customer Focus
  • Decision Making
  • Diplomacy
  • Employee Development/Coaching
  • Flexibility
  • Futuristic Thinking
  • Goal Orientation
  • Influencing Others
  • Interpersonal Skills
  • Leadership
  • Negotiation
  • Personal Accountability
  • Planning and Organizing
  • Problem Solving
  • Project Management
  • Resiliency
  • Self Starting
  • Teamwork
  • Time and Priority Management
  • Understanding Other

This report can ensure two things: the right fit and job satisfaction. It gives you a honed-in insight to the skills and potential challenges of your team members and potential hires.


The Acumen Capacity Index: Intellectual & Emotional Reasoning

Everyone has a personal bias; it’s just a fact about humanity at large. Bias is formed by personal experience, upbringing, culture, and society at large, and the best way to beat bias in the workplace is to first acknowledge it.

That’s where the Acumen Capacity Index (ACI) comes in. This assessment measures an individual’s clarity when it comes to understanding others, practical thinking, systems judgment, sense of self, role awareness, self-direction, clarity of performance, situational awareness and capacity for problem-solving.

This assessment is more in-depth and intense than others, and it’s a great pre-employment assessment for candidates applying for a leadership role. The insights revealed through the ACI help you understand exactly how a person processes information and identifies blind spots and biases, giving you a deeper understanding of who exactly they are.

How can we approach job assessment tests?

There’s a reason why so many people use pre-employment assessments! They give employers instant insight into their candidates, and those insights make for powerful hiring decisions.

The important thing to remember is that assessments are a tool: nothing more, nothing less. They shouldn’t be the only determining factor in a hire, and they won’t magically make a candidate absolutely perfect for their potential role. What they will do is help ensure a good fit in every role, and ease onboarding, increase engagement and help your organization grow in the right direction.

How to Effectively Use and Understand Pre-Employment Assessments

Assessments can innovate your interview process, hiring schedule, and talent pipeline. Here’s what you need to know.