Why Employers Are Giving You Tests: A Guide to Pre-Employment Assessments

You applied for a job. Maybe you submitted a resume, answered a few application questions, and expected the next step to be an interview. Instead, an email arrives asking you to complete an assessment.

It might contain math problems. It might ask you what you would do in a difficult workplace situation. You might be shown patterns and asked what comes next. You may be asked whether you strongly agree or disagree with statements about yourself. Or you may be given a small task that resembles the actual job.

If you were not expecting it, your immediate reaction may be: Why am I taking a test just to get a job?

Pre-employment assessments are not new, but online hiring systems have made it much easier for employers to include different types of testing and assessment at various stages of the hiring process. The important thing to know is that not all employment assessments are testing the same thing.

A cognitive aptitude test is different from a personality assessment. A situational judgment test is different from a skills test. A work sample is different from all three. Understanding what you are being asked to complete, and what the employer may be trying to learn from it, can make the experience considerably less intimidating.

1. Why Is an Employer Testing Me?

A resume can tell an employer quite a bit about you. It can show where you have worked, what responsibilities you have held, what education or training you have completed, and what skills you say you possess. But a resume cannot answer every hiring question.

An employer may want additional information about your ability to solve problems, perform a specific task, understand written information, make decisions, interact with other people, learn new material, or respond to situations you may encounter on the job. That is where assessments can enter the process.

The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recognizes numerous types of employment tests and selection procedures, including cognitive tests, personality tests, sample job tasks, physical ability tests, and other methods employers may use when evaluating candidates. Employment tests remain subject to federal anti-discrimination laws, and employers are responsible for ensuring that the selection procedures they use are lawful and appropriate for the job.

An assessment is best understood as one piece of information in a hiring process, not as a magical device that reveals everything an employer needs to know about a person. Before you start one, it helps enormously to know what kind of assessment you are looking at.

2. Cognitive or Aptitude Tests

Cognitive ability tests are designed to measure abilities involved in thinking, such as reasoning, memory, verbal ability, mathematical ability, perception, and problem solving. They may also be used to estimate how readily someone can learn and apply new information.

One well-known commercial example is the Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test, or CCAT, which includes verbal, math and logic, and spatial-reasoning questions. Criteria currently describes the CCAT as a 50-question assessment with a 15-minute time limit and notes that most candidates do not finish all 50 questions. Other cognitive or basic-skills assessments may focus more narrowly on reading, math, reasoning, attention to detail, or workplace problem solving.

The employer is not really interested in your ability to calculate fictional clinic appointments. The question is testing whether you can understand numerical information and apply a basic percentage calculation.

Another question might give you several statements and ask which conclusion logically follows from them. A spatial-reasoning question could show a sequence of shapes and ask you to identify the next one in the pattern.

Where Might You Encounter This in Pink Collar Hiring?

Cognitive, reasoning, or basic-skills assessments may appear in hiring for administrative assistants, executive assistants, medical assistants, office managers, customer service positions, recruiting or HR coordination, operations roles, and management-track positions.

Commercial assessment providers also market aptitude and basic-skills tests for occupations including administrative assistants, medical assistants, office managers, legal assistants, and executive assistants. That does not mean every employer hiring for those jobs uses these tests. It simply gives you an idea of the kinds of positions where you may encounter them.

3. Skills and Job-Knowledge Tests

A job-knowledge test asks a different question: What do you already know?

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management describes job-knowledge tests as assessments of technical or professional expertise in particular areas. Unlike an aptitude test, which may examine your ability to reason or learn, a job-knowledge test evaluates knowledge you possess at the time you take it.

A skills assessment may instead ask you to demonstrate something you will actually need to do.

These are different from tests asking you to recognize a numerical pattern or complete a verbal analogy. The skill itself is the point.

4. Situational Judgment Tests

A situational judgment test, commonly shortened to SJT, presents you with a workplace problem and asks what you would do.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management describes SJTs as job-related scenarios that may be used to evaluate areas such as interpersonal skills, problem solving, conflict management, teamwork, and decision making. Applicants may be asked to choose the best response, identify what they would be most or least likely to do, or rank several possible responses.

USA Hire’s Occupational Judgment Assessment, for example, is designed around decisions in common workplace situations involving colleagues, customers, and other people.

The employer may not simply be trying to determine whether you are “nice.” The assessment could be evaluating judgment, communication, policy awareness, conflict management, or whether you understand when a situation should be escalated.

Where Might You Encounter This?

Situational judgment assessments are particularly relevant to jobs involving regular interaction with other people. That can include healthcare support, childcare and early childhood education, customer service, hospitality, retail, community services, administrative roles, supervisory positions, recruiting and HR, and management.

That makes this type of assessment especially relevant to a great deal of Pink Collar work.

5. Personality, Behavioral and Job-Fit Assessments

Some assessments do not look much like a traditional test at all.

A personality or behavioral assessment may give you statements and ask how strongly you agree or disagree with them. OPM describes employment personality tests as tools designed to gather information about motivations, preferences, interests, emotional characteristics, and styles of interacting with people and situations.

Job-fit assessments may compare a person’s interests, values, personality, or workplace preferences with characteristics of a particular job or organization.

These are illustrative examples, but the format is typical of many self-report workplace assessments.

So What Is the Right Answer?

For many personality and behavioral assessments, thinking in terms of a conventional “right answer” is not particularly useful. The assessment may be looking at patterns across many responses rather than whether you selected the supposedly desirable response to one statement.

Trying to guess the personality you think the employer wants can also produce inconsistent answers. If you indicate in one part of an assessment that you strongly prefer detailed procedures and later indicate that you strongly dislike structure, the overall response pattern may tell the assessment something very different from what you thought you were engineering.

Read each statement carefully and answer as accurately as you can. You are describing yourself, not auditioning to become an imaginary perfect employee.

6. Work Samples and Job Simulations

Some employers take an even more direct approach. Instead of asking whether you can perform a task, they ask you to perform something similar to it.

OPM defines work-sample tests as exercises in which applicants perform activities that mirror actual job tasks. One of OPM’s own examples is particularly relevant to Pink Collar Jobs: an applicant for an Administrative Assistant position might be asked to transcribe an internal memo using a word processor or accurately file paperwork.

Modern versions can take many forms. An executive assistant might receive six meeting requests, two scheduling conflicts, and several priority instructions and be asked to build a workable calendar. A customer support applicant might respond to fictional customer complaints using sample company policies. A social media applicant might write several posts promoting a fictional community event. An event coordinator could review an event brief and identify what information is still missing. An administrative applicant might compare records and identify errors. A writing or editing candidate might edit a short passage for grammar, clarity, and tone.

For applicants who do not yet have extensive experience, a relevant work sample can actually create an opportunity. Your resume primarily demonstrates what someone has previously hired you to do. A work sample gives you an opportunity to demonstrate what you can do now.

There should still be reasonable limits. A short hiring exercise is different from being asked to produce hours of usable work for a company without compensation.

7. How Should You Prepare for a Pre-Employment Assessment?

First, determine exactly what you are being asked to take. Do not click through opening screens so quickly that you accidentally start a timed assessment before you are ready.

Before beginning, find out whether the assessment is timed, how much time you should set aside, whether you can pause once you begin, whether calculators or scratch paper are permitted, whether you need a webcam or microphone, whether the assessment should be completed on a computer rather than a phone, and whether an official practice assessment is available.

If the provider gives you instructions, read them carefully because different tests have different rules. USA Hire’s Occupational Math materials, for example, permit materials such as scratch paper and a calculator. Other assessment providers may prohibit calculators or outside materials entirely.

This is also the point to think about accessibility. If the practice materials or instructions make you realize that a disability or medical condition will prevent you from completing the assessment under the standard conditions, do not begin the actual assessment and hope to fix the problem afterward. Contact the employer or assessment provider first and request the accommodation you need. USA Hire itself advises applicants who determine through practice testing that they may need a reasonable accommodation not to begin the actual assessment until they have requested one.

Free Official Practice Assessments

If you have never taken a modern employment assessment, practice can be useful simply because it removes some of the surprise. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management provides a free USA Hire Practice Assessment library designed to show applicants the types of questions and the general look and feel they may encounter. The practice versions are shorter than the actual assessments and do not contain every possible question type.

The current USA Hire practice library includes Occupational Reading, Occupational Reasoning, Occupational Math, Occupational Judgment, Occupational Interaction, Early Career Talent, and Federal Supervisor assessment resources.

If an employer tells you the name of the company providing its assessment, look for official candidate resources from that provider as well. Use practice material to become familiar with the format rather than trying to reverse-engineer a supposed secret formula for passing every assessment.

8. Don’t Use AI or Another Person to Take the Test for You

Using technology to prepare for an assessment is not the same thing as having technology complete the assessment for you.

If an employer says outside assistance is prohibited, assume you are expected to complete the assessment independently unless the instructions explicitly say otherwise. You can review percentages before taking a math assessment, practice reading-comprehension questions, familiarize yourself with the format of a situational judgment test, or learn what “spatial reasoning” means before encountering it under a timer.

But when the assessment begins, follow its rules.

Remember why the employer is administering it in the first place. They are trying to gather information about you, and eventually someone may hire you and expect you to perform the work represented by the result.

9. Is This Assessment Legitimate?

Not every assessment is equally useful, and employers cannot simply test applicants however they please without regard to employment law.

Under federal anti-discrimination law, employment tests can create legal problems when they disproportionately exclude protected groups and cannot be justified under the applicable legal standards. The EEOC advises employers to ensure that selection procedures are properly validated for the positions and purposes for which they are used and that the tests are job-related.

You do not need to become an industrial-organizational psychologist every time someone emails you a test. But it is reasonable to ask yourself: Does this assessment appear to have some connection to what this employer needs to know about someone doing this job?

An attention-to-detail exercise for a medical administrative position makes intuitive sense. A customer scenario for a hospitality job makes sense. A scheduling exercise for an executive assistant makes sense.

That does not mean every legitimate assessment must look exactly like the job. Cognitive assessments, for example, are designed to measure underlying abilities rather than reproduce specific work tasks. But an assessment should be part of a defensible selection process, not simply another unexplained obstacle placed between an applicant and an interview.

10. What If You Have a Disability or Need an Accommodation?

If a disability or medical condition affects your ability to complete an assessment under its standard conditions, you may be entitled to a reasonable accommodation in the hiring process.

The basic principle is important: an accommodation is not intended to change what the employer is measuring. It is intended to keep your disability from becoming the thing the test accidentally measures.

For example, if an assessment is intended to measure marketing knowledge, a blind applicant may need the material provided in an accessible format because vision is not the skill being tested. If a timed written assessment creates a barrier for an applicant with a qualifying learning disability, additional time may be appropriate. A deaf applicant may need written instructions or an interpreter when spoken instructions are not themselves the thing being evaluated.

The answer can be different when the affected ability is genuinely what the employer is trying to measure. If reading is an essential skill for the position and the assessment is specifically designed to measure reading ability, an employer may not be required to change the assessment into one that no longer measures reading.

If no formal process is provided, contact the recruiter, HR representative, hiring manager, or other person coordinating the application before beginning the assessment. You do not need special legal wording. A request can be as straightforward as: “I have a medical condition that affects my ability to complete this assessment under the standard testing conditions, and I would like to request a reasonable accommodation before beginning it. Could you please tell me the process for arranging that?”

Under EEOC guidance, an accommodation request may be made orally or in writing. An applicant does not need to provide their entire medical history simply to make the request. If the disability and the need for accommodation are not obvious, however, an employer may ask for reasonable documentation explaining the disability and why an accommodation is needed.

Depending on the assessment and the applicant’s needs, accommodations might include additional testing time, accessible electronic materials, Braille or another alternative format, written rather than spoken instructions, an interpreter, screen-reader compatibility, a reader, an accessible testing location, or another modification that allows the assessment to measure what it was actually designed to measure.

The employer may not necessarily have to provide the exact accommodation an applicant prefers if another effective accommodation is available. The objective is meaningful access to the hiring process without changing an essential skill or qualification the employer legitimately needs to evaluate.

An employer may tell applicants what the hiring process involves, such as a timed test, interview, or job demonstration, and ask whether an applicant needs an accommodation for that process. That allows candidates to request help without requiring every applicant to disclose whether they have a disability.

Employers should also use assessments that are appropriately related to the positions and purposes for which they are being used, provide a process for requesting accommodations, administer tests in a way that measures the intended skill rather than an applicant’s impairment, and treat disability-related information confidentially.

Using a third-party testing company does not eliminate the employer’s responsibility. The EEOC specifically advises employers to examine whether selection procedures are valid and job-related even when a vendor supplies the assessment. Employers should also consider whether another equally effective selection method could accomplish the same purpose with less discriminatory impact when a screening process disproportionately excludes a protected group.

This becomes especially important as employers adopt automated and technology-based hiring tools. A system can appear neutral because a computer administers it and still create accessibility or discrimination problems if the technology prevents some qualified applicants from demonstrating what they can actually do.

Before a conditional job offer, employers generally may not ask applicants disability-related questions or require medical examinations simply because they are applying for a job. Requesting an accommodation does not give an employer permission to turn the hiring process into a general investigation of your health.

Federal ADA employment protections generally apply to private employers with 15 or more employees as well as state and local government employers. Other federal protections apply in certain settings, and state or local disability-discrimination laws may cover smaller employers or provide additional protections.

If you think you may need an accommodation, ask before you begin the assessment whenever possible. Once a timed assessment has been submitted, it may be considerably harder to recreate the circumstances and determine what the result would have looked like with an appropriate accommodation in place.

11. Don’t Let the Word “Test” Psych You Out

The word test has a way of making people feel as though they have suddenly been transported back to school. You do not need to approach every employment assessment that way.

First, figure out what kind of assessment it is and what it is actually trying to measure. Is it reasoning, reading, math, customer judgment, job knowledge, communication, work style, or a skill you will actually perform?

Once you understand that, the assessment becomes considerably less mysterious. Follow the instructions, prepare appropriately, use official practice material when it is available, request an accommodation if you need one, and complete the assessment according to its rules. Do not try to become the imaginary person you think the employer wants. Do your best and let the employer evaluate the result.

Remember that the assessment is giving you information about the employer too. Was it relevant to the position? Were the instructions clear? Were you given enough information to prepare? Was there an accessible way to request an accommodation? Was the amount of time being requested reasonable? Did the company treat your time as though it had value?

The employer is learning about you, but you are still learning about them.