Just asked by your employer to complete assessments?

We understand the nerve-wrecking feelings when first coming across an assessment. Fret not! Here are some tips to prepare yourself for assessments: -



TABLE OF CONTENTS




1) Stay Focused and Manage Your Time

Putting yourself in a conducive environment ensures that you are free from environmental distractions is highly important. As assessments often demands quite a large amount of thinking, cognitive processing and time-bound, any distraction may cost you precious mental resources and time. Think of the assessments as school exams - you would not want to be completing exams in a room with crying babies and constantly ringing phone! 


Therefore, it is a good idea to learn how long it takes to complete the assessment(s) you are invited to complete and set aside a dedicated period of time to complete them. It may also be a good idea to find out when is the deadline to complete the assessments. Also, you may not need to complete ALL assessments in one sitting, try to find out if you are allowed to take breaks between the assessments to plan your time ahead. You may often find these information in the instruction section before the assessments start and/or invitation from your employer.




2) Well-Rested Mind

Getting a good night of sleep may seem like a common sense; yet, getting enough sleep may not be the first thing coming to mind when it comes to preparation for assessments. Never under estimate the effect of sufficient sleep on one's ability to focus on tasks! Studies have shown severe sleep deprivation may have similar or more severe impact to one's consciousness than alcohol. Therefore, it may be beneficial to approach assessments as your first task in the morning while your mind is well-rested and clear from other distractions.




3) Understand what kind of assessment(s) you are approaching

Often, employers would include in the invitation the type of assessment(s) you are invited to complete. Take some time to understand what are the kind of assessment(s) you are being asked to take.


Personality/Values Questionnaires

Answer Honestly

Having been through a long way since the first personality test was dispensed, personality and values questionnaires today are hard to manipulate. They are often built with benchmarking mechanisms to detect candidates' vulnerability subjected to socially desirability effect. It is recommended that you answer while being true to self such that your results appears consistent and reliable to the employer.


Keep Work Environment in Mind

It is important to contextualise while responding to questions. While our behavioural preferences may be slightly different when we are at different context with different individuals, it is important to keep work environment in mind - what would I prefer if I were at work?


Don't Sit on the Fence

Many people like the comfort of being "neutral". However, answering a middle score for every questionnaire may project you as inconsistent and unsure of your preference, which, often are not what organisations delight to see. Today's questionnaires are also often benchmarked and designed with central tendency in mind, thus an all-neutral scoring pattern may actually be recognised as inconsistent answering behaviour and be flagged to the employers.



Cognitive/Aptitude Tests

Read the Instructions Very Carefully

It may be another common sense tip but one can never emphasise enough on the importance of reading the instructions carefully prior to approaching the assessments. Instructions displayed prior to the assessments often contain critical information which may directly impact how you approach assessments, which, in turn, affects your assessment performance. For example, at times assessments are designed with more questions than one could answer within the time limit, and guessing is penalised with negative scores, thus one is encouraged to skip questions that they couldn't answer - if one were to miss this instruction, the candidate may panic over the timer and randomly guess the answer, result in extremely low scores.


Practice Before You Start

Cognitive tests often comes with practice questions before the actual assessment begins. While not all of the assessments work the same way, do feel free to utilise the opportunity and use the sample questions to practice and ensure that you understood how to solve the problems or derive on the right answer before you jump into the actual assessments.


Keep an Eye on the Timer

Tick-tock! The time's ticking! Keeping an eye on the timer (When applicable) is crucial to remind yourself to not spend too much of your precious time on non-critical tasks such as trying to understand a difficult concept. Do skip and revisit the questions that you are stuck with when possible to ensure you score as many questions correctly as possible!


Have your Tools at Your Disposal

While it is not a must, it is always a good idea to keep a calculator, some papers and pens for note taking close to you. Online assessments are designed to be completed even without invigilating/proctoring, thus they often have taken into account of usage of tools in the designing. Be aware, however, sometimes it may take longer to transfer information from your brain into calculators and notes then into the computer than processing the information mentally!