A pre-employment assessment is a standardized method of collecting necessary information from aspiring job applicants and cross-checking whether the information matches their hands-on skills to make effective hiring decisions. Pre-employment assessment not only ensures bias free hiring but also significantly reduces hiring cost and time.

Blue-collar workers are the ground level workers for any industry, who perform a huge amount of manual labor. Ground-level workers need to be skilled, to maintain the quality of work, attend to urgent situations, adhere to deadlines, or manage any crisis. So, ensuring a right candidate for a blue collar job is the aim of a pre-employment assessment. 

Despite the umpteen advantages, skill-testing for blue-collar roles is rare. The reason for this could be that blue-collar jobs involve manual labor as compared to desk work of white-collar jobs, so busine

Different ways to test the suitability of candidates for a given blue-collar position/job

Job simulations

Simulation tests are used to assess how a job aspirant would react to situations he/she can encounter while working. It gives an insight of his/her problem-solving skills. Job simulations are typically conducted during interviews. They’re the most reliable and objective way to screen CVs. Instead of evaluating candidates based on how well they write a CV, you can test them on skills required for a position. If you use job simulations as an evaluation tool, you’ll need to ask your applicants to imagine being in a specific scenario. Further, you’ll ask them to explain how they’d approach the problem to solve the issue at hand. For example, for an audio engineer role, you could ask your candidates to explain how they’d deal with signal loss during transmission.

Job simulations assess the candidate’s general preparedness and comprehension skills related to the work. These questions are highly valuable when combined with a structured interview and a pre-employment skills assessment.

Job trials

Job trials as the word suggests means putting the job aspirant on trial. They are a popular way to assess the skills of blue-collar workers. During a job trial, you put your candidates in their future work environment i.e., office and simply give them a challenge like the work they’ll be doing if hired. This gives you a good overview of the candidate’s skills and aptitude, however this assessment method is not useful for jobs where additional training is needed.

Job trials are done after the aspirant passes the initial screening in the form of interview and are reserved only for shortlisted candidates, as they’re very resource-intensive, both for you and the candidates. During the trial, you need to follow them closely while making sure your team’s productivity is not hampered by the presence of an applicant. You must also let them know the duration of the trials and whether it would be a paid trial or not.

Pre-employment skills tests

Online pre-employment skills tests are yet another way to assess a candidate's skills to ensure they fit the job. Online skill tests are not only effective for white-collar jobs but also are equally valuable for hiring candidates for blue-collar jobs.

Skills tests evaluate applicant’s cognitive abilities, role-specific skills, and behaviors with various kinds of personality tests. Skill tests minimize bias, hire faster, and predict future job performance with a high degree of certainty.

With skills tests you can measure job-specific skills such as time management, communication etc. as well as personality traits essential for the job. You can do all of it while minimizing the effect of unconscious biases on the hiring process, which ultimately helps reduce discrimination. Skill tests focus on a candidate's skills and knowledge and ignore irrelevant personal information.

Be it white-collar or blue-collar job, hiring the right candidate is a crucial step in any job vacancy. And this step is usually very exhaustive and time consuming. Pre-employment assessment makes this task a lot easier and more effective. It is a standardized method of collecting necessary information from aspiring job applicants and cross checking whether the information matches their hands-on skills to make effective hiring decisions.  Job stimulation, job trials and pre-employment skill tests are various types of pre-employment assessment that can be used when hiring for blue-collar jobs.