Cognitive assessment allows the evaluation and measurement of a candidates’ learning, problem-solving and new idea comprehension abilities, which helps gauge his/her capability to achieve performance targets. Cognitive skills play a major role in determining employee success at work.
Given the importance of English in the business environment, English comprehension tests form an important part of the cognitive testing process. A well-designed English comprehension test can assess all the four language skills of the candidate namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. A reading comprehension test analyses the reading and understanding capabilities of the candidate.
Cognitive Skills Determine Work Performance
Cognitive skill assessments measure a candidate’s ability to interpret data, facts, and figures. They can provide deep insights into accurately predicting a candidate’s attitude towards changing situations, proactive participation and meet and/or exceed performance benchmarks. Knowledge about these character traits can help recruiters make an informed and correct decision about selecting the right candidates. Combined with behavioural, personality and domain assessments, cognitive skills assessments help choose the candidate who not only has the necessary knowledge in their field, but they are also good with numbers and language and have the right attitude.
Employees with these skills and traits are an asset not only within their own team but to the entire organisation. They can bring about a positive change in the workplace and create an environment that is conducive to success.
With cross-team collaboration within an organisation being the norm of the times, communication skills are a prized asset. From mail communication and report generation to attending meetings and presentations, language skills play an important role in the day-to-day functioning of employees. All these skills require strong language skills, without which even highly qualified, knowledgeable and experienced candidates may face a roadblock.
Based on the needs and requirements of the job role and company culture, candidates may be presented with suitable online English comprehension tests to analyse listening, speaking, reading and writing skills.
These language comprehension tests can also identify the skill gap and help design a suitable training program to bridge the same for the employees of the company. In this manner, you can train your employees suitably so that they can positively contribute to the company’s growth and success.
Application of Comprehensive Skills Assessment
Comprehensive skills assessment tests play an important role during the hiring process. They come in handy both for campus and fresher recruitment processes as well as lateral hiring that deals with candidates having work experience. The IT/ITES, BPO, e-commerce and banking sectors where communication and language skills play a major role owing to the customer service-oriented nature of the business, comprehension is even more important. Therefore, an English comprehension test offers a lot of support in making an intelligent hiring decision.
Even in the case of existing employees, a language skills test including a scientifically designed online reading comprehension test can help assess the shortcomings so that a suitable bridge course can be developed to address the issue. Such a training program can greatly influence the ability of the team of employees to deliver their best and contribute to the company’s growth and success.
Leveraging MeritTrac to Manage Talent Development
MeritTrac Platforms for Cognitive and Comprehensive Skills Assessments
To make the entire assessment seamless, quick and error-free, MeritTrac designs the assessment and also provides a platform for administering it. Following assessment platforms are offered by us for testing reading comprehension:
Pariksha: An innovative online examination platform that allows recruiting teams to create, design and schedule the reading comprehension test, assess the candidates, and deliver the results. The platform is highly adaptive and cloud-ready for easy deployment, suitable for multiplatform OS, mobile ready and comes with plug and play option for easy setup and use.
SmartTest: An ideal platform when you want to screen and filter candidates meeting your skill set requirement. With a user-friendly interface and built-in analytics, the platform is easy for the candidates as well as recruiters. Its versatile test catalogues allow the creation of tailored English comprehension tests to suit the hiring needs and requirements. The plug-and-play feature allows for deployment anywhere, anytime on any device irrespective of geographic location.
SpeechTrac: It is an automated spoken English assessment platform that can objectively evaluate the verbal skills of non-native speakers of English. It uses the patented Carnegie Speech engine and evaluates the English skill of candidates based on pronunciation, grammar, vocabulary, and fluency. It comes in handy for fresher and/or lateral level hiring as well as customising training programs to fill in the skill gaps of employees.
Written English Test: A part of the communication assessment suite, it helps evaluate grammar, content, vocabulary, spelling, and punctuation for recruitment of freshers as well as lateral hires with advanced written skills in English.
MeritTrac Advantage
MeritTrac’s reading comprehension tests are backed by scientific research and will help you select the right kind of talent with the required cognitive and comprehension skills. We have successfully delivered more than 20 million tests and assessed over 45 million candidates to help select people with the right kind of skills for businesses across the world. Plug and play feature, customisable test catalogues, mobile and multiplatform readiness and detailed analysis of results add to the ease of MeritTrac’s assessments.
FAQ
1. What are cognitive and comprehensive skill assessments?
A. It is an evaluation of a person’s learning, understanding, problem-solving and language skills.
2. Why are comprehension tests used for recruitment and training?
A. The results of the English comprehension tests can predict employee success at work in terms of performance and achieving targets, which can make the whole recruitment process efficient, reliable and effective.
3. What are the advantages of using reading comprehension tests?
A. As these test results are able to ensure reliable, efficient and successful identification of skills, they form an important part of the recruitment and training process.
4. What are the different types of cognitive and comprehensive skill assessments used in recruitment?
A. Analytical, numerical, quantitative and language skills including listening, speaking, reading and writing skills are some of the important skill assessments used in recruitment.
5. What are the USPs of MeritTrac's cognitive and comprehensive skill assessments?
A. MeritTrac’s assessment tests are designed by subject-matter experts with many years of research and experience in the field. In addition, the tests are based on advanced scientific research and technology to deliver reliable results and analytics. They help the recruiters take an unbiased, informed decision for better outcomes.