Hard skills aren’t limited to tech, engineering, and other STEM-related roles. Whether you’re hiring for marketing, customer service, UX, photo editing, graphic design, or something else, there are often some key hard skills that your candidates need to excel in their roles.
And if you want to gauge an applicant’s hard skills, you’re going to need some insights beyond the resume. Fortunately, you can integrate and curate a hard skill assessment that will give you an idea of how prepared a candidate is for the role.
Read on to learn more about how to leverage hard skills assessments in your pre-hiring process.
Hard skills are measurable skills needed to perform the duties associated with a role. Hard skills are generally objective, tangible, and strictly role-related skills gained through training, experience, or education. Unlike soft skills, which focus more on communication or interpersonal skills, hard skills relate to the technical competencies that candidates do or do not have.
Hard skill tests are generally easier to test for than soft skills because there are definite right and wrong answers to hard skills assessments, whereas soft skill competency can be subjective.
With hard skills, you can test for experience, knowledge, software and tool competencies, cognitive capabilities, technical skills, computer skills, writing skills, coding, risk management, and more.
How you use a hard skills assessment will depend on the needs of your role. If you’re hiring for a technical-heavy role, you may consider introducing the assessment before your interview (as part of the screening process). If the technical aspect is less important, you could use it after the interview as a final assessment.
Here are a few things to consider when using hard skills assessments:
Depending on the role you’re hiring for, there won’t be a question of whether or not a candidate needs certain technical and performance-based skills. Certain skills, experiences, and knowledge points will be necessary for certain roles.
Other advantages of using a hard skills assessment include:
You don’t want to take a risk on a candidate, regardless of their background, if you’re hiring for a highly technical role. Identify your core competencies for the role, and find an assessment that evaluates those skills.
Here are a few things you can test for in your hard skills assessment:
If you’re still unsure what to test for or how to integrate a skill assessment, check out our ultimate skills-based hiring guide.
You can test for a variety of skills with the following test template structures. Keep in mind that there are plenty of hard-skill assessment services out there, so be sure to try a few to find the best fit for your hiring needs.
Questions |
Strongly agree |
Agree |
Neutral |
Disagree |
Strongly disagree |
I have a strong understanding of the specified programming languages (Java, Python, Perl, Ruby) |
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I understand the technical requirements as specified in the job description |
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I am fluent in both English and _____, as listed in the job description |
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I have at least _____ years of experience in _____. |
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I am proficient in _____ software. |
Whether you’re testing for hard skills or soft skills, you need a reliable performance-based learning system to help you connect the dots between hard skill competencies and quality hires. Crosschq’s proprietary machine-learning technology will streamline that process for you, providing you with easy-to-read analytics and reports that will give you the best chance at landing a quality hire.
Benefit from hard skill assessments with ease, and sign up for a Crosschq demo today.