Off-the-shelf personality tests and generic aptitude assessments have dominated hiring for decades. They are easy to administer, cheap to buy, and come with impressive-looking reports. But there is a problem: they often do not predict job performance.
Here is why generic tests fail — and what to do instead.
The Problem with Generic Assessments
Generic assessments are designed to be applicable to any role in any organisation. This universality is their selling point — and their fatal flaw.
When an assessment is designed for everyone, it is optimised for no one. The questions are broad enough to be relevant across industries and roles, which means they are rarely specific enough to predict performance in any particular job.
Consider a generic "problem-solving" assessment. It might measure abstract reasoning ability — a useful trait in many roles. But it tells you nothing about whether a candidate can solve the specific kinds of problems they will encounter in your organisation, using the specific tools and processes you use.
The result is that hiring decisions based on generic assessments often come down to the same factors they always did: interview performance, CV presentation, and gut feeling.
What Makes a Good Recruiting Assessment
A good recruiting assessment has three characteristics:
It measures the right things. The skills, knowledge, and behaviours assessed should be directly relevant to the role. This requires a clear understanding of what the job actually involves — not just what the job description says.
It is realistic. The best assessments simulate the actual work of the role. A coding assessment for a software engineer should involve writing code, not answering multiple-choice questions about programming concepts. A customer service assessment should involve responding to realistic customer scenarios, not rating agreement with abstract statements.
It is fair. A good assessment gives every candidate an equal opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities, regardless of background, education, or communication style. This means avoiding assessments that inadvertently favour candidates from particular backgrounds.
The Custom Assessment Advantage
Custom assessments — designed specifically for your roles, your organisation, and your competency framework — outperform generic ones on all three dimensions.
They measure the right things because they are built around the specific requirements of your roles. They are realistic because they incorporate the actual tools, scenarios, and challenges your employees face. And they can be designed with fairness in mind from the outset.
The objection to custom assessments is usually cost and complexity. But this is changing. Modern assessment platforms like Selectic make it possible to design and deploy custom assessments quickly, without the need for psychometric expertise or large budgets.
Practical Guidance for Better Hiring Assessments
If you are reviewing your recruiting assessments, here are the questions to ask:
Are the assessments predicting performance? If you have been using the same assessments for several years, analyse whether high scorers are actually performing better in the role. If not, the assessment is not doing its job.
Are the assessments testing the right skills? Talk to your best performers. What skills do they use every day? Are those skills being assessed in your hiring process?
Are the assessments realistic? Would a strong candidate find the assessment relevant to the role? Or would they find it abstract and disconnected from the actual work?
Are the assessments fair? Are there patterns in who passes and who fails that might indicate bias? Are candidates from different backgrounds performing differently on the assessment, even when they perform similarly in the role?
Selectic designs custom recruiting assessments for any role, built around your specific requirements. Learn more about our Recruiting Tests service.