PeopleClues is one of the fastest growing pre-employment test systems. As part of its growth, questions come up. Prior to a recent webinar, participants were asked to submit questions about our candidate testing. Many reiterated a few of the frequently asked questions (FAQS) about pre-employment tests. Below is a list of the questions asked and brief responses. To listen to the recorded session and full discussion, we hope you’ll watch this video, an excerpt from the PeopleClues Assessment System Overview webinar.
Is there a perfect or best PeopleClues score?
No. While 100% is a “perfect” fit, any pre-employment test should only be part of the selection decision. Personality job fit and even general reasoning are critical ingredients for on-the-job success. But experience, attitude, personal values, and motivation are important too. One hundred percent only indicates a candidate has all the right tools in the toolbox. But whether he or she has the skills or motivation to use them is a totally different subject. That’s the role of an interview and the PeopleClues Assessment System includes recommended behavioral interview questions based on the candidate responses and job fit percentage. To hear more about our candidate testing system, watch the video.
When is the best time to test candidates in the hiring process?
Often times the timing of the decision about when to use pre-employment testing is determined by budget. Cost of candidate testing obviously plays a role, but do best practices, company policies, and government regulations influence the decision? Most companies end up including a pre-employment test as part of the application or right before or after a phone screen. The only absolute “rule” of candidate testing is that a company must be consistent. If you test one candidate during the application or right before the job offer, you must be consistent. You can’t let some candidates skate through the hiring process while others are screened out earlier.
What more important: attitude or personality?
PeopleClues tests for both attitude and personality. Often times the results are contradictory. A rule of thumb is that a good attitude is more important than good personality fit. Even with a 100% job fit score (see the 1st question), an attitude with some or serious concerns might impact performance. For example, a candidate “scores” 100% but has serious concerns on the conscientious and hostility scales. Even though the candidate has a great ability to deliver top notch customer service, he or she may be consistently late or not show up at all. And when he does interact with co-workers and customers, he may feel anger is an acceptable response to disagreements and conflicts.
Is it possible to change the questions on the personality questionnaire?
No. Managers and HR often question the test questions. For any personality or pre-employment test, validation is essential. Rarely is one question the key to differentiating a good employee from a mediocre one; therefore it won’t help predictably identify the right employee or keep out the wrong one. (The same goes for a single interview question.) But the response a candidate provides combined with other responses creates a pattern. By removing a single question it can influence the pattern and that might corrupt the validation. A corruption of validation can reduce reliability and worse, it might raise the risk for adverse impact when candidate testing. With that said most home-grown assessments have not gone through the very specific validation processes required for psychometric tests and therefore are very much discouraged.
Is there a fee to compare candidates to different jobs and leadership roles?
One of the best values of the PeopleClues pre-employment system is that once a participant completes the personality questionnaire, his responses can applied to over 120 different jobs and leadership roles at no additional cost. Many other systems charge users by the test. PeopleClues charges by the candidate – one fee for all the different assessments (attitude, job fit, and employee engagement) and all the job reports. PeopleClues can be an affordable and convenient solution to help managers identify future leaders and managing employee mobility from one job to another.
To hear more questions and the answers, watch the video above or submit your questions by filling out the form below.