How To Conduct A Technical Assessment

When you are recruiting for the perfect candidate for a role, assessments can make it simple to find the most qualified and suitable applicant from a large pool.

In this article, we will discuss what a technical assessment is and why it is useful, as well as the types of technical assessment that you could use in your recruitment processes.

Following this, we will detail the steps you should take to implement technical assessments into the recruitment process and best practices when it comes to conducting a technical assessment, including how to choose the right assessment, and how to communicate with applicants.

What is a technical assessment?

In simple terms, the technical assessment is an evaluation of technical abilities. It is also referred to as a role-based test or a domain test.

Technical assessments help to identify top talent by asking questions relevant to the role that you are advertising for. These can include things like specific skills, the use of particular software or technology, or just competencies that are unique to the role.

The idea of using a technical assessment is to give the candidate the opportunity to ‘prove’ that they have the skills needed for the role; or that they have enough background knowledge of the domain to be teachable in company-specific ways of using tech and software.

The technical assessment is usually administered early in the recruitment process, usually just after the initial paper shift.

Most recruiters use technical assessments alongside other psychometric or aptitude tests to help choose the most suitable candidates, which is useful when recruiting at volume or filtering through applicants for a popular job role.

Why is a technical assessment important?

The technical assessment is important in more than one way.

Firstly, the technical assessment can be used to confirm the level of competency that a candidate has when it comes to technical aptitude. This can be useful when an applicant claims they have certain skills on their CV or in their application form - the results of the test can confirm whether this is true. The technical assessment can also highlight proficiency in candidates that might not have been mentioned in the application form too.

Secondly, the technical assessment can be used to see if the candidate has the technical intelligence that is needed for them to learn on the job - inherent aptitude in a specific area usually means that a candidate will be able to pick up new knowledge, making them ready for training in a specific field.

Technical assessments can also assess:

• Critical thinking

• Spatial ability

• Logical reasoning

• Problem solving

The technical assessment can also highlight whether the candidate has the right passion for the industry that will help them be successful, and the ability to retain and implement new learning by solving domain-specific problems.

Types of technical assessments

Technical assessments are used in many different industries and job roles, including:

• IT

• Law

• Retail

• Accounting

• Engineering

• PR

• Healthcare

They can vary in content and question type, depending on the need of the role.

Some technical assessments are about specific skills and proficiencies, such as coding and programming languages.

Other assessments might be job preview tests that are similar to situational judgment assessments, where the questions are about work-related issues and the way problems would be dealt with.

Other types of technical assessment include:

• Typing

• Case studies

• Projects

• Job knowledge

• Software skills tests

The main thing to remember when it comes to technical tests is that it is important to ensure that the questions being asked are structured and relevant, and that the assessment itself is high quality and easy to administer.

Steps to conduct a technical assessment

If you are thinking about introducing a technical assessment for your recruitment process, there are a few steps to take and considerations that you need to make at each stage.

Below are a few of the things that you need to think about.

1. Determine the assessment type

Every job role will have slightly different needs, and the ideal candidate will have to be able to demonstrate certain skills.

When it comes to technical assessments, you will need to know exactly what type of skills you are looking for in that ideal candidate, and choose the type of assessment that fits best.

For example, if you are recruiting for someone in an administration role, you would be looking for particular technical skills like typing, rather than coding skills.

2. Define the assessment criteria

The criteria you are using to select the right applicant is of utmost importance. When you are coming up with the job role description that is being used during the recruitment process, you will have decided on the skills, aptitudes and competencies that the candidates need to be able to demonstrate, and these are the ones that you should be focusing on in the technical assessment.

These skills can include:

• Programming languages like Java, Ruby, and C+ for software developers

• Sales skills for those working in retail

• Database management skills for data analysts

• Accountancy job knowledge for finance professionals

• Leadership skills for management candidates

The assessment criteria will provide the benchmark of skills in the technical assessment.

3. Choose the right type of assessment

When deciding on how best to deliver the assessment to the candidate, you will need to think about what the test structure should be, and what the assessment materials should look like.

For some job roles, this might be in the form of a scenario-based test, where the candidate is provided with job-related situations that they need to solve using one of the provided courses of action.

Other technical assessments might be in the form of a case study, where the candidate has to treat the evaluation like they would if they were already in the role, providing analysis and evaluation as well as presenting the best solution.

Other technical assessments might be simple multiple-choice questions that need to be answered.

4. Administer the assessment

In most cases, technical assessments are delivered online, and the candidate will complete them at home and in their own time.

Candidates usually complete these assessments via an email link, and they can take them when it is best for them (within a given period). Results are usually available immediately for the recruitment team, so they can see which candidates have performed the best.

5. Evaluate the results

When picking a technical assessment to use, recruiters should have an idea of what an ideal candidate will look like - and this should inform the results.

Most recruitment teams will create a benchmark score, which is the minimum score needed to pass to the next stage of the recruitment process. This is a relatively easy way to make a decision - only those who have achieved the right score will be allowed to progress.

Other recruiters might look at the score as a comparison to other test takers - whether that is in the same cohort, or those that have taken the test previously. This is usually done using percentiles, and the recruitment team might select only the candidates who have scored in the 80th percentile or above, for example.

6. Provide feedback

An engaging recruitment process has many benefits to the hiring organization, but it is also important for the candidates too.

Part of this is providing timely and useful feedback, so that each applicant knows where they stand and what the next steps might be.

After the technical assessment, feedback should be provided to every candidate, whether or not they were successful. Constructive feedback reports can provide candidates with an overview of their performance as well as suggestions for improvement, which is obviously helpful for every applicant but especially those who may not have been successful.

While it might not be possible to send personalized responses to every single applicant due to time constraints, a technical assessment that produces a performance report will make it easier to give good, engaging feedback.

7. Make hiring decisions

The results of the technical assessment will help you as the recruiter to decide which candidates have demonstrated that they have the necessary technical skills and aptitudes for the role, and these will be the ones that you invite for an interview.

Using the data from the assessment gives you unbiased and reliable information about who should be taken forward for an interview, making informed decisions simply and ensuring that no more time is wasted on interviews - those that make it as far as the interview process have already shown that they would be capable.

Final thoughts

Technical assessments, like other pre-employment assessments, are excellent ways to gather useful, unbiased, and reliable data about the suitability of a candidate for the role they have applied for.

They can show which applicants have the required aptitude, knowledge, and skills to be successful in the role, and can also highlight hidden skills and abilities that might be useful in the future.

However, also like other pre-employment assessments, the results of the technical assessment are only useful if they are evaluating the right skills and competencies, so the test that is selected needs to be relevant and of high quality.