Resumes and interviews are vehicles for candidates to “tell” what they can do and what they have done. However, they don’t allow them to actually “show” their aptitude for certain competencies required. Nor do they let candidates demonstrate how they would perform in a typical work scenario. In jobs requiring high levels of skill, for example, it may be necessary to verify that candidates actually have the required special skills. Depending on the job’s complexity, various kinds of tests and activities can be done to uncover a candidate’s professional skills, ability, and aptitude.

In some cases, the sensitive nature of some jobs—such as working with children or hazardous chemicals—may dictate examination of the candidates’ backgrounds to confirm that they are suitable for a role. Since new technology offers opportunities to investigate the ways in which people put themselves forward to friends, family, and colleagues, you can now take other steps to make sure candidates are a good organizational fit.

Expert assistance will probably be required to help you conduct most of the in-depth assessments to ensure that you select the best person for the job. Ask your HR director to recommend assessment professionals. You can even consult psychologists and test publishers. But regardless of your consultant’s knowledge, it is your responsibility to understand what information you need to know about each candidate—this will arm your experts with the knowledge to create the most effective tools in obtaining this information.

The assessment center is your opportunity to scrutinize candidates against the selection criteria you outlined in the job description and person specification. In addition to measuring job skills, an assessment center also requires candidates to adapt to a variety of different challenges under the watchful eyes of qualified assessors who observe their behavior while they perform tasks and participate in activities. The nature of the exercises and activities included will depend on the type of job to be filled and should require candidates to demonstrate the skills and abilities that they would actually need on the job.

At a typical assessment center, exercises might include: online or paper-and-pencil tests to assess personality, aptitude, and skills; exercises based on day-to-day work situations; interviews; role-play and simulation scenarios; presentations; and group activities. For more senior and complex roles, the exercises may take several days. The event could be held at your organization’s head office or a neutral location, such as a hotel, leased office space, or convention center. Consider how many candidates must attend when deciding how much space will be needed.

Creating an assessment center requires the involvement of experts to design the exercises and to assess candidates. Expert advice and analysis are especially needed when you want to use psychological testing in your selection process. The International Task Force on Assessment Center Guidelines underscores that training assessors is crucial to an effective assessment center. It recommends that when you are choosing assessors, take into account their knowledge and experience with similar assessment techniques, plus their familiarity with the organization and the job to be filled. You may want to train people from within your own organization as assessors, but you could also consider using professional psychologists.

Psychometric tests measure psychological variables such as intelligence, aptitude, and personality traits, and they are available from credible psychometrics providers. They often involve answering multiple-choice questions, and many can be administered both off-line and on-line. Sometimes these assessments are used to develop psychological profiles of candidates, covering personality and intellectual ability. They can also be used to measure emotional intelligence, preferred work style, candidates’ ability to learn, and their potential to achieve in the future. An example of a psychometric instrument is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. With this tool, users’ responses to a series of multiple choice questions determine which of 16 personality types they most closely match.

A thorough study of the manual that comes with each test will help you understand the research that has been conducted to assure the particular assessment’s effectiveness. Statistical information outlining its reliability, predictability, and other factors can help you decide if a particular test is right for helping you find out what you want to know.

How do you know if candidates can do what they say they can? With certain types of professional skills, it is easy and cost effective to find out by testing for them. Today, it is possible to measure many skills using web-based tests, and it is possible to give candidates a choice as to where they take the tests—at a specified location, such as during an on-site assessment centre, at their home, or wherever there is access to the Internet.

  A skill testing service will be able to provide you with myriads of tests that gauge proficiency in specific IT disciplines, foreign languages, administrative operations such as credit management, payroll and office software, industrial specialities, and virtually every kind of job in business that involves processes, technical knowledge, or data usage. Expect test scores to be accompanied by a report that analyzes the results, so that those making the hiring selection can understand candidates’ individual strengths and weaknesses in depth.

Aptitude is more about a person’s propensity for a particular type of thinking or reasoning, which is necessary to succeed in the role, than it is about a well-developed skill. For example, an individual who understands the relationship between shapes, dimensions, and space could be said to have an aptitude for spatial reasoning, the focus of some specialized aptitude tests. Abstract reasoning, or the ability to analyze information and solve problems, is another common theme of aptitude testing. Aptitude for a given discipline can be very important, particularly when filling jobs in which you expect the successful candidates to undergo future training to become qualified or proficient at the job.

  In some cases, instead of measuring aptitude, you may need to get an idea of candidates’ abilities to communicate and use basic arithmetic. A verbal ability test would typically cover word usage, spelling, different parts of speech, reading, and following instructions. Multiplication, division, and reading charts and graphs might be included in a numeric ability test.

You’ve been getting some insight into your candidates’ aptitude and personality traits—now you will see them put their skills, experience, social abilities, and work habits to use in simulated workplace events. This is where you and your assessors will have to work your hardest to observe and record actions and responses. This blend of verbal communications and body language should fill in many of the remaining blanks about your candidates—for example, their ability to work in a team, how well they think in stressful conditions, and whether they are effective listeners. Although cultural differences may affect a person’s nonverbal behavior, you can often glean hints about someone’s attitudes by observing basic facial expressions and body language.

Keep the rules simple and clear: specific time allowances must be met, the target goal of a team project must be defined, the guidelines for giving a presentation must be outlined, and the characters and scenarios to be portrayed in role-play events must be understood by the participants. The exercises must be well planned and pose genuine challenges to the participants. However, their structures must not be so complicated that participants are confused instead of stimulated.

Do you want your role-play exercises to involve only your job candidates? Or do you want at least one of the roles taken on by an uninvolved player? Remember: the more candidates you involve in the exercise, the more qualified observers you will need on hand to ensure that each job applicant is carefully and equally assessed. Sometimes assessment center organizers bring in actors who are skilled in dramatic improvisation to portray other characters in role-play exercises so that observers can focus their attention on the candidates. Bringing in additional experts will boost the cost of your assessment center, which may already be expensive. However, the importance of getting the right person for the particular role or roles you are filling could justify the extra cost. An actor could also facilitate a chaired discussion, unless you would like to put a candidate in the role of chair. Putting one candidate in the role of chair can be an effective tool to assess that person’s ability to facilitate a group discussion or project. However, that could lead to the participants getting the impression that the person portraying the chair is the favored candidate to get the job. Rotating candidates in and out of the chair’s role may draw better performance from the group as a whole.

It is obvious that an organization needs to be certain that new recruits will bring to the new job all of the education, qualifications, skills, and experience they claim to have, in order for the organization to benefit. You want to believe everything candidates say on their resumes and in interviews, and trust that they have told you everything. But strong competition for particular jobs and tightened employment standards in certain industries mean there is a greater likelihood of candidates falsifying, or omitting, necessary information from their applications. Failing to take steps to confirm candidates’ identity and background can leave your organization vulnerable to a number of serious risks such as employee fraud, legal liability and litigation, theft of sensitive organization and customer information, damage to the organization’s reputation, and costs stemming from negligent hiring procedures.

Senior-level roles, certain specialized jobs, and positions with access to sensitive information or vulnerable people may require more extensive and complex checks of candidates. You may want to outsource complicated screening to a specialized agency. But consider first which checks would be most relevant to the job, organization, and industry involved.

The most basic vetting procedure is to check references for past education, membership in professional organizations, and employment details that candidates have given you. However, previous employers may be reluctant to confirm details other than dates of employment because of possible legal action if the candidate does not get the job. Get candidates to help you with simple methods of confirming identity and address by having them bring in identity documents with a photograph (such as a passport or driver’s license), a recent bank statement (within the last three months), and a utility bill addressed to them at their current home. Foreign candidates must provide documentation that they are currently eligible to work in your country.

Research by job site CareerBuilder.com revealed that in the US, one-third of the hiring managers who screened candidates via social networking profiles reported they dismissed some from consideration after finding inappropriate content. Material regarded as deal-breakers included information about using drugs, badmouthing employers or colleagues, lying about qualifications, criminal behavior, and making discriminatory remarks related to race, gender, or religion. However, 24 percent reported finding content that helped solidify their decision to hire a particular candidate, if, for example, their profile reflected achievement or creativity. To use such sites effectively, you must know what information you are looking for.

To find out more about a candidate’s professional affiliations, contacts, and background on-line, first type that person’s name into your search engine to see if any web mentions come up. If a listing appears, click on the link related to a business-focused social networking site. Ultimately, however, it may be best simply to avoid social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace, which focus more on personal life.

  Your decision to research candidates on social networking sites must be based on your organization’s values. If your organization has a conservative culture, exploring such sites may result in your finding material that turns a previously appealing candidate into a less interesting one. But if your organization has a creative culture, your view of some candidates could be enhanced if their web pages feature an innovative design or information about a meaningful project.