Pre-Employment Tests For Managers
Top Skills and Abilities:
- Oral Expression
- Active Listening
- Reading Comprehension
- Oral Comprehension
- Making Decisions and Solving Problems
Top 3 Tasks:
- Oversee activities directly related to making products or providing services.
- Direct and coordinate activities of businesses or departments concerned with the production, pricing, sales, or distribution of products.
- Review financial statements, sales and activity reports, and other performance data to measure productivity and goal achievement and to determine areas needing cost reduction and program improvement.
Overview
"Managers" is an incredibly broad job category, and managerial roles differ widely by industry, job type, and the scope of work involved. However, virtually all positions that involve supervisory roles — in which people are charged with managing other employees and setting strategy — have important similarities.
Requirements
Managers who are charged with devising and enforcing policies, allocating an organization’s resources, and overseeing daily operations generally require the following attributes, regardless of industry or job title:
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Good critical thinking skills
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The ability to learn, digest and apply new information, and to make sound decisions based on this information
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Problem-solving ability
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Superior "people skills" and the behavioral profile to manage and motivate a team
The first three of these attributes are key components of what is often called general intelligence or cognitive aptitude. It is certainly true that plenty of very smart people do not make good managers—so aptitude is not a guarantor of success in a managerial role—but it is very rare to find good managers who are lacking in this area. It is for this reason that tests of cognitive aptitude are such a good predictor of success in higher-level roles such as managerial positions. They measure the precise characteristics — critical thinking, information processing, and problem-solving — that are so vital to managerial roles of all kinds.
Assessments for Managers
Criteria Corp's most popular pre-employment aptitude test, the Criteria Cognitive Aptitude Test (CCAT), has been administered to over 1 million managers and prospective managers. The test results provide suggested score ranges for a wide variety of different managerial roles and help organizations to make more informed hiring decisions when hiring for these positions.
Because personality and behavioral factors can also be vital in determining job fit and job success for managers, many organizations also use the Employee Personality Profile (EPP) as an additional data point when screening candidates. The EPP measures twelve different behavioral traits and includes a Manager benchmark that highlights the traits that are most predictive of success in managerial roles.
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Source: U.S. Department of Labor