If you’re reading this, you’re likely tired of sifting through countless resumes and conducting endless interviews only to find that your new hire doesn’t quite live up to their promises.
Perhaps you’re already a fan of skills-based hiring and understand its effectiveness but haven’t found the right skills tests needed to accurately assess potential candidates to ensure job performance and cultural fit. Or perhaps you’re just scoping us out (omg, we’re so flattered) and want to know how skills testing works. As in, who is creating these tests, and why should you trust them?
Our approach to creating skills assessments is both a science and an art, with a touch of Toggl magic sprinkled on top. By combining proven methodologies with our knack for efficiency and a lot of knowledge from our experts, we’ve created an assessment process that’s effective, reliable, and even, dare we say, a little bit fun (nerd alert!).
If you’d rather have a human explain this process to you live on a video call, book a free demo. If you’re introverted like us and don’t feel like speaking to someone, keep on scrollin’ to read more about our skills test creation process. 👇
The method to the madness
At Toggl Hire, we don’t mess around when it comes to skills assessments. We know that finding the right candidate for a job in today’s market is often overwhelming, time-consuming, and costly — it’s why we take our skills tests very seriously.
We don’t task interns with finding random questions online or ask our marketing team to whip up some last-minute questions just because they “sound good.” Nope, we go the extra mile (or ten) and enlist the help of actual experts in every industry.
We don’t put all our eggs in one basket, either. We crowdsource our skills test questions from multiple experts to minimize any unconscious biases and promote diverse thought.
After all, a core component of our mission is to help businesses test candidates on the skills that truly matter in their respective industries to ensure better hires and efficient hiring processes.
We’d be lying, thieving salespeople if we just threw a bunch of basic questions into our tests and presented them to you as accurate skills assessments. And honestly, that’s just not the vibe here.
How we source our experts
Okay, so maybe you’re thinking, “Great. You don’t source your skills test questions from Google or AI. But where do you source the experts from?” And the answer is simple: Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace.
Just kidding! We don’t settle for mediocrity. Instead, we follow a rigorous process to ensure our experts are top-notch and up to the task.
If you’re one of our competitors, feel free to click away now. We’ll wait…
…All gone? Now, if you’re a hiring manager or recruitment professional, let’s look at how we source our experts at Toggl Hire so you can learn more about who’s creating the test questions you’ll use to assess candidates.
🔎 Finding the experts
We start by identifying the crème de la crème of Toggl test takers. This looks different depending on what kind of expert we’re looking for.
Sometimes, we’ll reach out to former candidates who’ve scored an impressive 90% or more on an existing skills test. Other times, we’ll contact industry experts to test their skills.
Regardless of how we find the experts and where, they all have to pass internal tests to make it to the next round.
🏄 Onboarding and vetting
Once our experts accept our invitation, they undergo a two-stage onboarding process. As part of this process, we ensure the questions submitted by expert candidates are reviewed for expertise and adherence to question quality guidelines.
This is important because we honestly love to follow the rules — oh, and (duh) we only want questions that accurately and effectively test the skills you’re looking for.
👌 Review and approval
Next, our assigned reviewers, who are industry experts themselves, evaluate submitted questions. Based on their review, the questions are then accepted, rejected, or marked for revision.
Our reviewers are discerning and tough (in the best way possible!). We don’t accept any questions or experts that don’t pass our thorough evaluation process.
🧑💻 Becoming an expert
Only the best of the best successfully complete our onboarding process. Like, we’re talking top of your class kinda great. Once the select few make it to the final round, they’re elevated to the “expert” level and collaborate with us to create stellar skills test questions in their skill area.
What about question quality?
You don’t know what you don’t know, which is why we continuously review our questions and our experts. Because, hey, can you ever really master something 100%, especially in today’s fast-paced world?
Having senior reviewers and question performance data helps us weed out bookish questions and guarantee test quality. Here’s how we keep our questions on point.
Step 1: Initial review
Questions aren’t allowed to go live in the test library until a designated tester has reviewed them. This person checks the questions for accuracy, relevance, and difficulty level. They also ensure each question adheres to our guidelines and standards. We don’t want to put anything out there that could lead candidates astray.
Step 2: Ongoing monitoring
We don’t just set it and forget it when it comes to our skills tests. That’s boring (and honestly pretty ineffective). We have a team monitoring question usage and candidate feedback.
If a question is flagged as too complex or confusing, we’ll take a closer look. If we notice a feedback pattern on specific questions, we’ll investigate and adjust as necessary. Rinse and repeat.
Step 3: Manual reviews
To ensure we’re providing our users with the best skills assessment tests on the planet (at least, that’s what our moms call them), we periodically conduct manual reviews of our questions to ensure they’re still up-to-date and relevant.
Things change, after all, and we want to ensure we’re helping you test candidates on skills that are currently important and in demand.
Take a tour of Toggl Hire
At Toggl Hire, we know that our skills tests are only as good as the questions we ask. That’s why we’re committed to maintaining the highest quality standards and spend so much time looking for real experts to build our test library.
Our team of experts works hard to develop tests that are challenging and relevant to your industry. Our approach is based on data-driven insights and best practices in talent acquisition, ensuring that you get the cream of the crop.
Basically, with Toggl Hire, you can trust that you’re getting the best of the best, and we stand by that statement wholeheartedly. And if you don’t believe us, book a demo or take a sample skills test to see for yourself.
Elizabeth is an experienced entrepreneur and content marketer. She has nine years of experience helping grow businesses and has experienced first-hand the impact of skills-based hiring in today's global, digital world.
