Consulting for Business Services

Business Services

Many companies use a variety of assessments to make critical personnel and business decisions. Whether for pre-employment screening, promotion and placement, or certification of skills, tests play an important part in human resource decisions. The costs of wrong decisions can be high. An unqualified employee given responsibility for a critical job can cost a company a great deal. This negative outcome impacts a company not just in purely financial terms. Lost business opportunities, client dissatisfaction, employee frustration and discontent are all very costly.

Most company tests are made by in-house content experts, rather than testing experts. Just because someone has the knowledge and skill to do a job well does not mean they can make a good test of that knowledge or skill. Making tests that provide dependable results is a very complex technical skill. Generally, tests made by staff with no formal training in test development foster poor management decisions. This is true even when they are absolute experts in the skill being tested. An analog from architecture holds the same truth: Just because a person knows what a good house is doesn’t mean they have the architectural skills to design and build a good house.