Many organisations hold different kinds of selection tests to know more about the candidates or to reject the candidates who cannot be called for interview etc. Selection tests normally supplement the information provided in the application forms. Such forms may contain factual information about candidates.
a. Aptitude Tests:
These measure whether an individual has the capacity or talent ability to learn a given job if given adequate training. These are more useful for clerical and trade positions.
b. Personality Tests:
At times, personality affects job performance. These determine personality traits of the candidate such as cooperativeness, emotional balance etc. These seek to assess an individual’s motivation, adjustment to the stresses of everyday life, capacity for interpersonal relations and self-image.
c. Interest Tests:
These determine the applicant’s interests. The applicant is asked whether he likes, dislikes, or is indifferent to many examples of school subjects, occupations, amusements, peculiarities of people, and particular activities.
d. Performance Tests:
In this test the applicant is asked to demonstrate his ability to do the job. For example, prospective typists are asked to type several pages with speed and accuracy.
e. Intelligence Tests:
This aim at testing the mental capacity of a person with respect to reasoning, word fluency, numbers, memory, comprehension, picture arrangement, etc. It measures the ability to grasp, understand and to make judgement.
f. Knowledge Tests:
These are devised to measure the depth of the knowledge and proficiency in certain skills already achieved by the applicants such as engineering, accounting etc.
g. Achievement Tests:
Whereas aptitude is a capacity to learn in the future, achievement is concerned with what one has accomplished. When applicants claim to know something, an achievement test is given to measure how well they know it.
h. Projective Tests:
In these tests the applicant projects his personality into free responses about pictures shown to him which are ambiguous.
