What is online assessment?
In very simple terms, an online assessment may be defined as an evaluation of a person’s abilities, behaviours and/or characteristics. This test is conducted over the Internet by using available web technologies. An assessment may set out with clear objectives such as:
- To test the knowledge or learning of a candidate.
- To select suitable candidates from a huge pool of applicants.
- To identify the strengths and weaknesses of the test taker
- To identify specific personality and character traits
- To provide clues in career counselling and identify the suitable training, job or career for the test taker.
Online assessments are becoming quite popular and are being used quite extensively in various sectors including education, government and corporate companies. The corporate sector has taken up to online assessments with quite a lot of enthusiasm and in a huge way. These online tests have some clear benefits over the traditional methods of assessment both for the corporate entity as well as the candidates themselves.
Types of online assessments
There are more than 20 different types of online assessment tests. A few of the most popular tests cover skill assessment, communication assessment, cognitive assessment, behavioral assessment, etc.
The tests are conducted over the internet to measure a candidate’s job-related skills and personality. Compared to pen and paper methods of assessments, online or e-assessment methods are less labor-intensive and more secure.
How can online assessments help in hiring & workforce development?
Online assessment tools are scientifically designed to help recruiters test aptitude, cognitive ability, communication, and many other skills. These tools come with auto-evaluation, report generation, and even grading features that transform a slow recruitment process into a fast-paced one.
The tests also enable organizations to assess if the skills of existing employees are at par with the industry standards. The test results can also be used by Learning and Development teams to provide training required for upskilling or reskilling the workforce.
How is an online assessment platform helpful for HR?
Online assessment platform is helpful for HR in incredible ways. While candidates worry about the time gaps in the recruitment phases, HRs are concerned about filling the requisitions at the earliest; without making a wrong hire. And that’s one of the areas where an online assessment platform is helpful for HR – in reducing the time taken for recruitment. Through various personality and behaviour tests, online assessment platforms reduce the possibility of wrong hires. However, problems don’t come to an end even after a successful hire. Sometimes the selected candidates don’t turn up, and at other times, the candidates select to take another job. And such assessment tools also help candidates in knowing more about the company.
Online Assessment Platform can be used for the following purposes for HR:
- Quick initial filtration especially in case of bulk hiring. Save administrative hassles, efforts and time.
- Reports give a clear idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the candidate.
- Quantification of skills helps in reducing bad hiring as interviewers may be biased in personal interviews.
- Helps in informed decision making for offer as candidate details like current salary, location and suitability are captured.
- Statistics on recruiting team’s performance.
- Helps LnD( Learning and development) department for internal skill testing.
Why choose online assessment over traditional assessment?
An online assessment gives you the advantage of speed and accuracy when compared with a traditional assessment method. The robust online tools eliminate any chances of malpractice, streamlines hiring, and guarantee a positive candidate experience.
Many institutions are relying on the online assessment for various reasons that are as follows:
- Online assessment saves lots of time and money
- No need to hire specialist
- Ensures consistency in the exam session
- It is accurate and secure
- It can be tailor-made according to the learner
What are online assessment platforms?
Online assessment platforms contain all the tools required to administer the examination, measure talent, assess domain-specific skills, create comprehensive test reports, and more.
Most of the platforms come with a plug and play feature and can be used on multiple devices.
Online Assessment Platforms Offered by MeritTrac
MeritTrac’s online assessment platforms, namely Pariksha, CodeTrac, SpeechTrac, AceTrac, SmartTest, etc. help to accelerate test delivery and result processing.
The ISO certified platforms enable recruiters to hire the right candidates in less time and effort.
Online assessment in education
The educational sector has been able to streamline their examination processes with online assessments, be it test preparation, campus recruitment, entrance exams, or semester exams.
How can online assessment be helpful for students?
Online assessment helps students in a plenty of ways from improvement in learning skills to enhanced student engagement. These assessments are carried out using an online assessment platform that makes the assessment conducting process incredibly simpler and productive.
Here are a few benefits of online assessment which is helpful for students that are as follows:
- Students can give exams on any device.
- It is quick to mark answers
- It offers quick feedback
- Offers friendly environment
- Students can give exams from anywhere and anytime.
Online assessment for recruitment
There is a dearth of quality talent in the market and a quick and streamlined recruitment process is the only remedy to the situation for any corporate company. MeritTrac’s end-to-end online assessment solutions are designed with this sole aim.
Our online assessment platforms are scientific in nature and highly adaptable to varied recruiting situations. SmartTest, CodeTrac, SpeechTrac, SSPQ and Learning Branch are some of the platforms we have for the corporate sector. Companies can choose one or a combination of these platforms to meet their unique recruiting needs and training requirements.
Using an online assessments tool for recruitment provides several advantage:
- They're a quick and simple way to narrow down a vast pool of candidates to a select few, ensuring that you make the most excellent hiring selection possible without having to see each one.
- An online assessments tool assesses participants' learning and mastery of a subject.
- Recruiters can use them to determine candidates' abilities, knowledge, or learning capacities.
Applications of online assessments
As far as the corporate sector is concerned, online assessments have the following applications:
- Campus recruitment: Companies tend to conduct campus recruitment to hire fresh talent for entry-level positions. An online assessment can help them manage the huge numbers by acting as a first-level screening. At the end of this screening, the recruiters will have a manageable size of candidate pool with the right talent for them to select the job-fit candidates for open positions.
- Walk-ins: Similarly, when open positions are notified and a huge number of applicants apply, an online assessment can prove useful in quickly selecting the candidates with the right skill sets.
- Workforce development: A suitably developed online assessment helps identify the strengths and weaknesses of the company’s workforce. It can be used by the L&D department to come up with the right training program for workforce development to fill the gaps.
- Succession planning: At an individual level, an online assessment can be used to assess an employee and plan his/her career progression.
- Brand promotion: By simplifying and quickening the whole recruitment process, companies give a better experience to the applicants. It helps promote the company to the group where it matters and positively impacts the employer brand which further helps in attracting high-quality talent in future.
Type of questions asked in online assessment
The type of questions varies from one assessment to the other depending on the domain and the expertise required of the job role. The questions are presented as MCQs, MAQs, fill in the blanks, true or false, etc.
MeritTrac offers a vast library of tests that feature questions created by subject-matter experts and psychometricians.
Online assessment tests may include -
- Verbal Reasoning
- Numerical Reasoning
- Inductive Reasoning
- Personality Questionnaire
- and more
Why Do We Use an Online Assessment Tool?
Companies have to go through a long, tedious and complex process to hire candidates. And many a time, the hires are not even the best fit for a particular role. Alongside, interviews take up a great deal of time to screen the best of the best. Additionally, these companies have to incur large costs to conduct hiring examinations But with the advancement in technology, we are coming across some platforms which play an important role in reducing these costs, time and complexity of hiring process. Let me elaborate this point through my experience. As a CS student when I had to appear for a hiring drive during campus placement, I was introduced to this new concept of online hiring assessments. I had my doubts about this new platform, known as TalentDecrypt, which I was supposed to be using to write my codes, but I was quite surprised with the efficiency that it exhibited.
An online assessment tool can be used in multiple ways, depends on who is using it.
- An online assessment tool can be used in multiple ways, depends on who is using it.
- For recruiters, it's the most effective way to hire talented candidates
- For Colleges, it is a way to connect with new companies to increase their placement count
MeritTrac is one such online assessment platform that offers all the above facilities.It has a vast pre-assessed candidate database of 4lac+ students and connections with 2100+ top companies, 3800+ colleges with a PAN India Support!. If you are looking for the best online assessment tool, MeritTrac should serve the purpose
FAQ
1. What differentiates an online assessment to pen-and-paper assessment?
A pen-and-paper assessment requires extensive human effort, time and money in order to maintain the reliability, integrity and accuracy of the assessment. An online assessment once properly designed can quickly deliver accurate and reliable results with minimum human intervention.
2. What are the advantages of an online assessment for a corporate company?
An online assessment acts as a first-level screening to select the right talent from the pool of applicants. It delivers quick, reliable and credible results, making the whole recruitment process absolutely convenient for the recruiters.
3. How do the candidates benefit from an online assessment?
Candidate applying for an open job position at a company can take up the online assessment anywhere, anytime. Only on clearing the online assessment, the candidate has to travel to attend the face-to-face interview. Therefore an online assessment helps candidates perform their best and saves them from unnecessary travel and expense.
4. Why choose MeritTrac’s online assessment?
We have in-depth expertise, dedicated content research and development team, suite of assessment services, scientific assessment platforms and certified processes. Our assessment solutions ensure a seamless and reliable recruitment process for businesses to hire with confidence.
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