Testing
Opal Shaw
Ashford University
Human Resource Management
OMM618 (MWC1343A)
Professor: Heather Strouse
November 4th, 2013

According to the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Section Procedures (l978), they described testing ‘as a practice done by many employers and Human Resources Department to determining the suitability or desirability of a job applicant’. It can be in a written form, orally or otherwise, it is one of the employment tools use for hiring if implemented properly. for example, I am applying for a job at the University of Ashford, even though I may have the proper qualifications for the job, most organizations still run a test of relevance to see whether or not it will correlate with the necessary job performance you are intended to do. This will also give the employers an indication as to whether or not it is economically useful for them to select employees based on scores from the test.
Employees are the most powerful thing in any organization, they can affect an organization performance and profitability, therefore hiring or promoting people who are unsuitable cost time, money, and potential new business, carefully monitored employment test can provide organizations with a way to decide systematically and accurately as to which people have the ability to perform well on the job and there will not be any turnover or counterproductive behaviors.
A test can be considered as standardized, meaning that it can be a series of problems or questions that assess person knowledge, skills, abilities, or other characteristics. Using test can be very effective in the selection process as it can determine which applicants or employees would be most qualified for the a particular job, however testing must not be use as the sole decision in employment.
There are many reasons why recruiters do testing. These include the following:
So that individuals are treated equally
To get hard to get information
When there are a lot of applicants
The job requires certain attributes that may be hard to develop
Test is not right for every situation; the following are some of the reasons why you may not test:
: Cost: the budget must be in place to do so, so if you don’t have the necessary budget then it would not be wise.
Test may not be necessary if there are not many persons.
If you already have a good decision making process in place.
There are several different types of test, there are varied according to their mode of administration, for example, using a paper and a pencil or using a web-based. Most times the test consists of information as; interpersonal skills and mathematical ability. The following are a list of pre-employment test:
Cognitive test: this test assesses one reasoning, memory, reading comprehension and arithmetic.
Physical ability test: this test measure the physical ability of how someone can perform a particular task.
Sample job tasks: these test are perform tests, simulations and work samples
Personality test: this checks the degree to which a person has certain traits or dispositions, for example, dependability and co-cooperativeness.
Integrity tests: this test aim to predict the like hood that a person will engage in certain conduct for example, theft or absenteeism.
When doing testing, the test must be valid, in that it must ask questions that are only related to the employee performance. It must also organize that it the questions are ethical and legal and not have any discriminationary implications.
In an article done by Munches, George (October, 1989) 817, he said that, “in the employee hiring process the results of testing is to the advantage of both the recruiter and the applicant.” George went on to say that with the increasing emphasis being place on the people aspect of the organization, the correct hiring decisions is of crucial importance, as more and more employers are now able to use the instruments than in the past.