With a degree no longer enough, job candidates are told to prove their skills in tests
Among the many frustrations ahead for millions of Americans thrown out of work by the pandemic is one that may surprise them: To get a new job, it’s increasingly likely they will have to take a test.
As the number of candidates balloons while health risks make it hard for hiring managers to meet with them in person, a trend toward “prehiring assessments” - already underway before the novel coronavirus swept through the country - is getting a huge push.
With so many applicants, “you need filters,” said Richard Price, a research fellow at the Christensen Institute, which studies innovation. “You’re creating a quasi-audition for jobs.”
The recession and health crisis is speeding momentum for job tests that, before the pandemic, was driven by more than just logistical considerations. Skeptical that university degrees are the best measure of whether candidates have the skills they need, employers were already looking for ways applicants could prove themselves - including in fields where that was not previously required.
“It’s like try before you buy,” Price said.
Growing equity concerns resulting from the explosion of racial justice protests now are also playing a role in this. They give companies another reason to stop relying principally on academic degrees when hiring, because candidates who are black are less likely than white candidates to have one, according to the U.S. Department of Education, for reasons including cost and access.
“With employers fielding a lot more applicants, how do we help create equitable processes for people at the top of the funnel?” said Stephen Yadzinski, who works on innovations in workforce technology for Jobs for the Future - an advocacy group that makes its own job finalists take on workrelated projects as a part of the decision process.
By removing the requirement of a degree, this process holds the promise of opening doors to capable candidates who never got one, he and others said.
“We’ve conflated employability with university degrees. We shouldn’t,” said Jacob Hsu, CEO of Catalyte, which conducts tests designed to find job candidates who have the potential to become software engineers, whether or not they went to college.
If a college degree was the only measure of potential, he said, no one would have ever hired Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates or Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who all dropped out.
Employers “are starting to recognize that there are people with the talent they’re looking for that don’t come from Harvard or the other colleges they have historically recruited from,” said Alex Linley, a co-founder and CEO of the testing firm Cappfinity.
Nearly one in four businesses now conduct such assessments, the National Association of Colleges and Employers reports; nearly 40% of hiring executives expect them to become widespread within three years and 70% within five, according to a survey conducted in 2018 by Northeastern University’s Center for the Future of Higher Education and Talent Strategy.
Now, with far more applicants in the pipeline, “I only see pre-hiring assessment gaining momentum,” Price said.
An interview will still come at the end of that process, “but this is a way to cut 10,000 people to 1,000 and then figure out how to sort them,” said Jack Buckley, president and chief scientist at the testing technology start-up Imbellus.
Further driving this trend are advances in technology that make it possible to evaluate how people think and not just what they know, to paraphrase one testing company’s motto. The tests are designed to measure such things as whether applicants can work in teams, communicate and make good decisions.
It’s also a response to falling confidence in university degrees as measures of career preparedness. Only about one out of 10 business leaders in a Gallup poll strongly agreed that college graduates were ready for the workplace. Some employers, including Apple, Google, IBM, Bank of America and EY - formerly Ernst & Young - have dropped college degree requirements for some new hires altogether.