Advice and guides / For employers
Why the highest test score is often the wrong hire
A score is a sort key, not a verdict. Treating it as a verdict is how a hiring process ends up interviewing the best test taker instead of the best candidate.
Give four hundred people the same paper and you get a clean ranked list. The list is useful. The temptation is to treat the top of it as the answer, and that is where high volume hiring goes wrong.
What a score actually measures
A screening score measures performance on a set of questions, under time pressure, on one particular day. That correlates with capability. It also correlates with several things you are not hiring for: familiarity with the test format, how recently someone revised, how good their internet connection was, and whether they had thirty uninterrupted minutes.
None of that makes the score useless. It makes it a sort key, which is exactly what you want at the top of a funnel of four hundred.
What it misses
- Whether the CV is true. A score says nothing about whether the four years of experience on the CV happened.
- Judgement in ambiguity. Multiple choice cannot test what someone does when the brief is incomplete and the client is wrong.
- Whether they will still be there in a year. No thirty minute paper predicts retention.
- How they handle being corrected. Which is most of the first six months in any job.
The check that catches the gap
Ask two questions built from the candidate's own CV, and read the answers next to the score.
Someone who scored 82 and then could not describe the order they did their own work in, or who described it in language that could apply to any job anywhere, is a different proposition from someone who scored 64 and answered with a system name, a sequence and the thing that always broke. The first is the most expensive row on your list, because their score means they get interviewed first everywhere, including by you.
This is why our reports carry a three state flag next to the score: the answers stood up, they were thin, or they did not stand up. A candidate scoring 70 whose CV does not stand up is worth less than one scoring 45 whose CV does, and we say so in words rather than hiding it inside a number.
How to use a ranked list properly
- Sort by the CV verdict first, the score second.
- Read the actual answers for your top ten. It takes twenty minutes and it changes the order.
- Look at time per question. Very fast on a question that needs thought is worth a second look.
- Do not set a score cutoff high enough to do your filtering for you. Cutoffs remove people, they do not choose people.
- Interview the thin ones too, with sharper questions ready. Thin often means shy, not fake.
The honest limit
None of this decides who you hire. A screen orders the pile so a person can start at the top with better information than a CV gives them. The interview, the judgement and the offer stay entirely with you, and they should.
You can see exactly what a report contains on what you receive, and we will send you a sample with the candidate details removed before you commit to anything. Ask for one.