How HR Managers Can Use Aptitude Tests to Find Quality Candidates

How can HR managers and hiring managers find the right candidates for the job — not just ones who will fill a seat, but who will be high performers and stay for the long term? 

There’s a great solution for this question: using aptitude tests and data to sort out an applicant’s chances of success. 

What Are Aptitude Tests? 

SHRM defines aptitude tests in hiring as measuring an applicant’s ability to learn a new skill. But the definition is often applied broader and covers the skills an applicant has today as well as their future potential. These tests can include: 

• Skills tests: examining whether candidates have the basic skills needed for the job. 
• Knowledge tests: testing a candidate’s grasp of the knowledge the role requires about the field, industry, or specific topics. 
• Psychometric tests: objectively examining a candidate’s personality and aptitude for the role. 

Using psychometric tests to measure a candidate’s potential for success is something most organizations should consider, especially for more specialized or higher-ranking roles. Testing current skills is helpful if the job requires certain proficiencies, but personality and fit can tell you more about potential and retention. 

How to Use Aptitude Tests Effectively 

Creating a long list of potential skills a candidate should have can result in looking for a perfect candidate who simply doesn’t exist, especially in a hot hiring market. Here’s how you can use aptitude tests to achieve maximum results.

1. Look at Your Existing Team

A great aptitude test should incorporate data from the existing team to find what makes them successful. What are the qualities that people in the role or on the team actually have that make them great at what they do? 

Looking into what makes the current people on your team successful is helpful, and so is investigating any existing gaps that a new person could fill. 

For example, if you have a team full of technical and product experts but lack project management capabilities, you can then decide to look for a candidate with those specific traits. 

This data will help you create a much more accurate test than one that simply guesses or assumes the qualities and skills a candidate needs. 

2. Cover a Spectrum of Skills

To be truly effective at building a high-performing, engaged team, aptitude tests shouldn’t cover only hard skills like how well applicants can use a specific kind of software or complete a task. 

They should also help your HR team look at an applicant’s soft skills, such as communication, critical thinking, and problem-solving. That’s why psychometric tests, when used wisely, are so effective because they can measure both types of skills as well as future job performance. 

3. Use the Right Assessment System

Aptitude tests are just one part of the whole hiring process, but they do play a key role in narrowing down a pool of potential candidates no matter when in the hiring cycle you use them.  

Cangrade’s 14-minute Pre-Hire Assessment uses psychometric testing to deliver instant candidate feedback on their core strengths, areas for growth, and what motivates them.

Get Started Now 

By testing for soft skills and hard skills, Cangrade predicts how likely your candidates are to stay and succeed if they’re hired. So, you reduce rehires by finding the right candidate the first time. 

To learn more about how Cangrade can help you develop a comprehensive, bias-free hiring process with data and aptitude tests, contact us today.