Hiring is a strategic decision that carries long-term implications for most businesses. Getting it wrong wastes not only your time and resources but also stumbles your business growth.
Creating a hiring test is a proven way to minimize recruitment mistakes and filter out any candidates that do not fit your business requirements.
How do you create a professional hiring test that manages the whole process for you? By using a professional pre-employment assessment and testing solution.
This article will demonstrate the complete process of creating, launching, and managing hiring tests using TestGorilla.
Let’s get started.
Step-By-Step Guide to Create a Hiring Test
If you choose the right tool, creating a hiring test should be a smooth process.
Here are the steps you need to follow.
Step 1: Define Your Hiring Goals
The first step of creating a hiring test is to have clear goals for your hiring process.
You need to know precisely the kind of candidate you’re looking for, their technical skills, personality traits, and role in your business.
Most hiring managers have a vague idea of their perfect candidate.
But to ensure that you make the right choice, list down all the desirable and undesirable qualities for your potential.
Write down your expectations from this role and how it will add value to your business. Similarly, list their primary and secondary responsibilities so that you clearly understand who you’re looking for.
This will help you evaluate your candidates more effectively and allow you to create more accurate hiring tests.
Step 2: Sign-Up For A Hiring Test Creation Tool
Now that you have a sample profile of your ideal candidate, let’s start creating a hiring test.
For this article, we’ll use TestGorilla, one of the most popular top recruitment assessment tools right now.
TestGorilla has three different subscription plans depending on the number of employees you expect to hire per year.
Their entry plan costs $22.50 per month and allows up to 36 candidates per year. All plans come with a free 14-day trial and features such as cheating prevention, test templates, company branding, custom questions, etc.
Here’s how to get started with TestGorilla.
Step 1: Visit TestGorilla.com.
Step 2: Click Try For Free to start your free trial sign-up process.
Step 3: Enter your email address and accept the terms of use. Click Create my free account to continue.
Step 4: Enter your first and last name along with your expected annual hiring volume. Click Next to continue.
Step 5: Confirm your email address by clicking the activation link sent to you by TestGorilla.
You’ve now successfully signed up for a TestGorilla account.
Step 3: Create A Hiring Test For Your Job Role
Now that you have an active account, you can start creating hiring tests for your candidates. The process for creating a test in TestGorilla is very straightforward.
TestGorilla gives you over a hundred different hiring test templates for various job roles. You can use these templates without any changes or customize them according to your hiring needs.
Here’s how to create your test:
In your main account dashboard, click Create new assessment to start creating your first hiring test.
Enter a name for your assessment that’s easy to remember and reflects the role you’re hiring for.
In the job role field, type your target role (e.g., content marketer). If the role shows up in the menu list, click to select it. If the position doesn’t show up, choose the closest match. Click Next step to continue.
In this step, TestGorilla will show you various hiring tests that match your job role. You can choose up to five tests for one assessment. If you want to see the details of a hiring test before selecting it, click Details under it.
The Details section gives you an overview of the test, its target candidates, question style, difficulty level, and covered skills. To view sample questions of a test, click Preview sample questions.
If the test questions are in line with your requirements, click Next to continue.
Click on the Add button under a test to make it a part of your assessment. Choose up to five relevant hiring tests.
Click Next Step to continue.
If you want to add custom questions to your assessment, click New question in the test template section.
You can choose from five different question types – Multiple choice, video, file upload, code, essay. Click on your desired question type to continue (we’ve selected multiple-choice.)
Enter your question and add a description below it. Then type the multiple choice answers in the answer fields.
You can also assign points to different answers. This helps you rate your candidates’ answers better. To assign points, enable the Distribute points across answers tab and assign a score to each answer next to its field.
Click Save to continue to the Review section.
Scroll down the Assessment Review page to the Advanced options section, which has three main parts: Qualifying questions, Welcome video, Anti-cheating settings (all optional.)
To add a qualifying question, click New question.
To add a welcome video to play before the test, click Upload new video.
Enable screenshots of candidates every 30 seconds to prevent cheating.
Click Finish to complete the test creation process.
You have now successfully created a hiring test in TestGorilla. Your next task is to invite your candidates to the test.
Step 4: Invite Candidates To Take The Hiring Test
There are a couple of ways candidates can access your hiring tests in TestGorilla. You can send them an email invitation or share a public access link with them.
Here are the steps you need to follow.
To share a link, click on the Generate public link switch to create a link. Then, click Copy link. Share the link with your candidates to give them access to the test.
To invite candidates by email, enter their first name, last name, and email address. Click Invite.
To invite multiple candidates via email, click on the invite link below the Invite button. Enter the names and email addresses of all the candidates you want to invite. Click Invite to send the test invitations.
You have successfully shared the hiring test with your candidates. TestGorilla provides you complete candidate tracking and stats to analyze your test results.
Step 5: Analyze The Hiring Test Results To Choose The Right Candidate
Once your candidates take the test and the results start coming in, TestGorilla gives you the necessary tools to analyze the responses and finalize successful candidates.
Here are the different steps involved in this process.
Go to the My assessment section to view all your hiring tests.
In this section, you can view the number of candidates in each test and the overall response progress. Click on a test to see the list of candidates and their performance.
In this section, you can view the performance of individual candidates, their test scores, and their custom question ratings. Click on a candidate’s name to view more details of their test results.
In the individual candidate’s dashboard, you can view test scores, test date, anti-cheating results, and more. You can also view video responses to your questions if you requested any.
Using these insights, you can qualify candidates for the next steps of your hiring process and ultimately choose the right professional for your company.
3 Top Benefits of Create a Hiring Test
Hiring tests have several benefits for your recruitment process. They save you time and resources and help you find the best candidates for your job role.
Here are some of the main benefits of using hiring tests during the recruitment process.
Screens Out Irrelevant And Mismatched Candidates
Creating a hiring test helps you filter out irrelevant candidates that do not match your essential recruitment criteria. This increases the overall efficiency of your hiring process and enables you to screen candidates. Increased hiring efficiency also has a direct impact on employee retention. When you hire employees with the right technical skills and personality traits that align with your business needs, they’re likely to stay longer and help you grow faster.
Adds More Value To Your Hiring Interview Process
A well-designed hiring test provides valuable input for your interview process. You can assess the candidate’s test results, make inferences, and identify follow-up questions to better understand their skillset. Similarly, hiring tests help you gather all the technical details of a candidate and allow you to focus the interview on their vision, goals, and overall alignment with your company values. A hiring test combined with a detailed interview provides you sufficient input to evaluate candidates for a job role.
Makes The Candidates Familiar With Your Standards
One of the most important aspects of hiring is to set the right expectations for your candidates from the start. A hiring test plays a vital role in achieving this goal. A comprehensive hiring test gives candidates an idea of your hiring criteria and the skills that your company values the most. It also helps them understand the work standards that your company follows and expects its employees to meet. Similarly, it removes any ambiguities about the job role and gives the candidates a clear picture of all the areas they’re expected to contribute.
3 Biggest Challenges With Create a Hiring Test & How To Troubleshoot Them
Using hiring tests in your recruitment process has a lot of benefits. But it also comes with a few challenges that can potentially impact your test results and can be detrimental to your hiring process.
Let’s look at some of these challenges along with their potential solutions.
Candidates Can Cheat During Tests
One of the biggest challenges in conducting online hiring tests is the possibility of candidates using outside help or any other prohibited means to answer questions. The most common cheating methods include using a separate computer or smartphone to search for answers on Google and other public forums. Some candidates also seek outside help during the tests calling someone or asking someone else to take the test on their behalf.
To counter this challenge, TestGorilla, and most other testing solutions, provide screen and face recordings of the candidates every few seconds during the test duration to ensure they’re not violating the test’s terms and conditions.
Recruitment Bias Can Impact Selection
Personal or stereotypical biases are a significant challenge during the recruitment process. No one likes to talk about it, but it is true. Suppose a recruiter has a negative opinion about a candidate or has any bias against a particular minority, ethnicity, age, or gender. In that case, they can deliberately misinterpret the test results to disqualify candidates.
To counter this challenge, the test results should be evaluated by at least three different decision-makers from different backgrounds. Organizations can also minimize such behavior through strict policies and compliance during the hiring process.
Test Results Are Insufficient
Test results offer valuable guidance in the recruitment process. But evaluating candidates only based on test results is not recommended because numbers never tell you the complete story.
To ensure that you hire the best candidates, combine hiring tests with a series of interviews, background checks, and other forms of evaluation during the recruitment process.
Other Options For Create a Hiring Test
We’ve shared the complete process of creating a hiring test for your company using TestGorilla. However, several other tools allow you to conduct hiring tests along with other forms of HR management. For example, if you’re looking for a more collaborative hiring solution, consider using Recruiterbox. If you’re looking for a free recruitment tool, Recooty is an excellent choice.
From our research, here are some of the best recruiting software you can explore for different business goals:
- ClearCompany – Best for talent management
- JazzHR – Best for high-quality candidate sourcing
- BambooHR – Best applicant tracking system
- Recruiterbox – Best for collaborative hiring
- Recooty – Best free recruiting software