Cognitive ability tests - the decisive force for the hiring managers in candidate selection. But, how to access cognitive ability? How to assess if candidates are good enough to be hired?
When assessing a candidate's cognitive competencies, one must ensure that a one-size-fits-all test is not used. Different job roles require different competencies, so each test must be tailored, too.
However, this leads us to a question: how can we include cognitive ability assessment in an already-exhaustive recruitment process. A general recruitment process involves a number of interviews, hard skills assessment, and sometimes even that seems not enough.
So it is fair to wonder whether adding cognitive skills assessment would just add an additional round.
However, studies suggest cognitive tests have incremental and far-reaching benefits. These tests not only help us predict whether your candidates will be able to perform the role or not, but they also predict whether they are culturally fit or not.
So, let's dive right in. In the following sections, we’ll detail why cognitive ability tests are a prerequisite for any job role, what these tests consist of, and how to assess cognitive ability in an objective manner.
To learn about how iMocha creates cognitive ability assessments for IT job roles, visit here.
What are cognitive ability tests?
Cognitive ability tests help in assessing the potential of a candidate and not to check the knowledge. They are used to test applicants according to their abilities, experience, potential, and personality. These tests provide a comprehensive way to assess a candidate's future performance and the probability of success within the organization.
These tests are extensively used during university hiring. Cognitive ability tests are taken by companies to determine what fields the candidate would do their best.
There are many kinds of cognitive ability tests that assess personality, reasoning, and numerical abilities. When recruiting, situation judgment tests are popularly used to know how would they behave and work as an employee. These tests are timed tests and only a few in a group of candidates can answer them accurately which helps in narrowing down your choices.
Also Read: How To Create A Cognitive Test While Hiring?
What Do These Cognitive Ability Tests Consist of?
Cognitive skills tests can be broadly categorized into two categories, verbal reasoning, and non-verbal reasoning. These can be further categorized as follows:
- Verbal Reasoning: Verbal reasoning tests assess the language proficiency of the candidate. They check whether the candidate can read, understand, and respond to the passage.
- Numerical Reasoning: This type of test is conducted to assess how well the candidate can interpret data that is represented in the form of graphs, statistics, or charts.
- Diagrammatic Reasoning: This type of test evaluates the ability of a candidate to understand and interpret diagrams, data, identify patterns, and solve problems logically.
- Logical Reasoning: Logical reasoning checks the ability of a person to understand a situation and form a logical conclusion.
- Inductive Reasoning: This evaluation tests the ability of a candidate to solve problems when the given knowledge is unfamiliar.
Cognitive ability tests are widely used for recruitment in many industries and for various job roles that require highly specific skills. They are often used for high-pressure or complicated positions.
Here are few example sectors in which cognitive ability tests are used as an important parameter of assessment:
- Mechanical and technical jobs
- Software and IT industry
- Sales
- Banking and finance sector
- Writing and communication
- Management jobs and HR industry
Why should hiring managers use cognitive ability tests for recruitment?
Although there is no magic recipe for finding the ideal candidate every time, recruiters should use every tool that will help them improve the hiring process.
Cognitive ability tests, currently, maybe one of the most neglected tools in recruiters’ repository, especially so because using these would help them cut down their dependency on the hiring managers for the assessment process.
Here are some more reasons to begin using cognitive ability testing right away:
- Helps To Measure Learning And Problem Solving
Cognitive ability tests are helpful at predicting job performance and accurately indicate how nimble a candidate is when navigating an ever-changing work environment. Often, rather than what you already know, your job performance is determined by how rapidly you can learn on the job.
The stronger an employee's cognitive ability, the faster they will learn, adapt to change, and find answers to new issues.
- Helps To Save Time & Money
According to Schmidt's 1998 study, cognitive assessment exams are the most cost-effective way to hire exceptional personnel. Because pre-screening applicants based on cognitive capacity allows you to avoid interviewing too many prospects, you can save time and money.
Using platforms like iMocha, cognitive ability assessments cab be simply and economically performed online. You may reclaim hours of organizational time for a few dollars per test.
- Helps To Impress The Candidates
Taking the effort to properly vet potential workers demonstrates that you place high importance on recruiting the best people.
You demonstrate that you are forward-thinking, behave without prejudice and that everything your organization does is well-planned.
You're offering candidates a favorable glimpse into what it's like to work at your organization by using current screening technologies, asking insightful questions, and allowing them to demonstrate their intelligence.
- Helps In Improving Retention
Cognitive ability tests can help you retain employees by assisting you in hiring and impressing the right people from the start. Employee retention is frequently one of the HR team's most important KPIs (Key Performance Indicator).
Because the cost of losing an employee can range from tens of thousands of dollars to twice their annual income, hence, it's important to plan ahead.
That may appear exorbitant, but when you consider the costs of advertising the position, interviewing, screening, hiring, onboarding, training, management time, lost productivity, lost engagement, lost customer service, increased errors, ongoing training costs, and cultural impact, the costs start to add up!
- Helps To Identify Hidden Potential
Resumes tell us what a candidate has done in the past, but necessarily what they can do in the future.
You may identify the "diamond in the rough" individuals who may have thinner resumes but possess all of the skills required to succeed in your organization by evaluating cognitive ability.
This is especially useful when hiring for junior roles since few candidates are likely to have previous experience. You'll have smart personnel at every level of the company hierarchy if you hire quick learners and staff your organization with bright people.
How To Access Cognitive Ability During Recruitment?
The method of recruitment has changed drastically in 2021 and will undergo several modifications in the coming year. The best solution is to go for online skill assessment tests, where all types of cognitive ability tests are available.
Moreover, as we mentioned earlier, we must understand that each job role is unique, which means a single test for each job role would be a mistake.
For example, a software engineer needs to be proficient in perceptual speed, whereas a litigation expert should be proficient in verbal comprehension. This means, automating the process using pre-employment software would best suit your needs. Some of its other benefits include:
- These tests are remote-friendly, which makes it easy for recruiters to hire from home or offices.
- The time and effort an HR manager has to spend on designing cognitive ability tests are saved and the assessment is unbiased.
To help access the cognitive ability of the candidate easily, iMocha has also launched free tests available for candidates that can help them to know what cognitive ability tests look like and they can practice and self-introspect their abilities easily.
Summary
High performance on a cognitive ability exam is the best indicator of employment success. It's time to start employing cognitive ability tests in your recruitment process if you haven't already.
iMocha allows you to send cognitive ability tests to your applicants, allowing you to find the top candidates for your company in a fun, easy, and effective way.
To get started with iMocha, request a demo now!
