Selection of right employees is critical to a businesses performance. Normally, the decision to hire an employee is based on personal interview. Organisations can however leverage other assessment tools that can support better decision making keeping in view quality of hires and their value addition to the business. 

These assessment tools can help assess knowledge, skills, attitude and personality of an individual. Some of them can predict the managerial potential, job performance, and cultural fitness of an individual for the position and organization as a whole.

Some tools that can be used to support the hiring and selection decision: 

1. Psychometric Test:

Psychometric tests objectively measure aspects of one’s mental ability or the personality. There are mainly two types of psychometric test, aptitude test and personality or interest test.

Aptitude test: They asses the logical reasoning of an individual. General ability test measures on one or more broad mental ability such as verbal, mathematical and reasoning skills. These skills are fundamental to success in many different kinds of jobs, especially where cognitive activities such as reading, computing, analyzing or communicating are involved.

Personality Test: Personality test provides an insight into whether a person is going to fit into a job in terms of personality, attitude, and general work style.

2. Achievement Test: Achievement tests, also known as proficiency tests, are frequently used to measure an individual’s current knowledge or skills that are important to a particular job. They are generally conducted in the following two formats:

Knowledge test involves specific questions to determine how much the individual knows about the job tasks and responsibilities. Work sample or performance test where in the individual have to actually demonstrate one of the job tasks or responsibilities.

3. Interview: Interview is one of the important tools which is being used to assess an individual such as competency based interview, behavioral event interview and critical incident interview etc.

4. In-basket: An in-basket is a simulation of the paperwork which includes memos, letters, reports, announcement and requests which present personnel, financial, accounting or procedural problems for the manager. The participant is given a calendar, background information, general instructions and paper and pencil for response. The participant needs to solve the problem by writing instructions, letter drafting, making decisions and setting meetings within a short period of time. The skills such as delegation, planning and organizing, management control and judgment can be assessed by in-basket exercise.

5. Written case analysis: In written case analysis an organizational written case is given and the candidate needs to prepare a set of recommendations on the case to higher management. The result can be prepared in written or through an oral presentation. It can be used to assess specific skills such as calculating a rate of return on investment etc.

6. Oral Presentations: In an oral presentation a short extempore speech needs to be made about a topic. It should be formal presentation about a case study. An assessor asks some questions on the presentation. This exercise is used to assess oral communication skill.

7. Business Games: Business games are conducted on various levels of complexity. These games have unstructured nature of interaction among the participants and actions need to be taken by the participants such as a leaderless group discussion, one on one interaction, presentation making, fact finding etc.These games provides an opportunity to assess on various dimensions such as strategic planning, team work and leadership.

8. Recommendation and reference checks

Recommendations and reference checks are used to verify education, employment, and achievement records already provided by the applicant in some other form, such as during an interview or on a resume or application form. They provide an incentive to applicants to be more honest with the information they provide safeguard against potential negligent hiring lawsuits.