Appraising talent with domain assessments

A sludge of applications, tight deadlines and a lack of resources together impose a daunting challenge on recruiters. How must they cope? Perhaps the solution lies in employing tools that can help quickly narrow down the number of applications. Pre-employment assessment is one such effective tool.

There are various types of pre-employment tests that evaluate a variety of skills: technical skills, psychometric criteria, teamwork and industry-specific knowledge, among others.

Recruiters often administer a combination of one or more of these tests as a means to screen applicants and expedite the hiring process.

However, domain assessments have now garnered special attention. Why?

Case for domain assessments

Let us assume that you want to recruit a data scientist for the financial industry. Shortlisting customers for credit card issuance is part of the job. An excellent data scientist will know everything there is to know about data cleaning and models. However, one who understands the subtleties of the industry will understand how to prepare the data and which model to apply to obtain the most accurate results.

In today’s competitive economy, employees who understand the operational realities of a specific business or domain have the scales tipped in their favour.

Furthermore, low-code platforms reduce the need for hard-core coding skills. Companies are now looking for skills such as problem-solving, designing, understanding the business and so on in their prospects.

The increased demand for domain specialists necessitates undertaking domain assessments to guarantee that you choose the most-qualified applicant for the job.

Evaluate role-fit, get insights

Organisations want to hire people who are competent at their jobs and will stick around for a long time. This is understandable given that hiring is an expensive and time-consuming procedure. Firms must maximise their available resources and apply all the tools at their disposal to succeed.

Here’s where domain assessment tests come in handy. With this, recruiters and HR professionals can:

• Qualify just those candidates who have the required expertise and filter out others.
• Obtain accurate, quantitative and bias-free results.
• Improve recruiting decisions by standardising the evaluation process.
• Save time, effort and money for all stakeholders.

These evaluations are also significant from the perspective of candidates. The transparency of the grading system demonstrates that the evaluation procedure is fair and without bias. Rapid evaluation means that candidates who do not make the cut can be notified as soon as possible. This improves a candidate’s experience even if it entails rejection. No time is wasted and prospects can continue their job search.

These tests can also be used to evaluate candidates’ industry expertise. They will allow you to identify areas for improvement and plan appropriate training programmes.

A peek into the types of domain assessments

The market has a number of industries and roles. The combination yields a million domain assessment possibilities.

The following verticals—sales and marketing, operations, human resources, accounting and finance and customer support—make up all organisations. They are digitised in almost all firms. As a matter of course, professionals who are hired to build and/or maintain software pertaining to any of these verticals must pass the assessment for that domain.

The list is not exhaustive; rather, it is just a glimpse into the various functional assessments that you can administer.

You deserve the best

Making hiring decisions is no easy feat. You need to pull all the plugs and apply every trick in the book.

The market has many domain assessment providers. But you are the best judge of what you need. So, choose a provider who has a rich repository of questions and is willing to customise the test to your specific needs. Rest assured, you will congratulate yourself on a job well done!