Recommended tests for assessing nonprofit sectors skills
Putting together the right battery of tests for your recruitment is really important, and can drastically improve the quality of your hires. The following tests are all suitable for different roles within the nonprofit sector.
Emotional intelligence test
Emotional intelligence tests are a great way to learn more about the character of the person or people you might be about to hire.
They seek to give you a better indication of each candidate’s ability to get along with others; their understanding of boundaries, integrity and empathy; how self-aware they are; and how able they are to embrace change.
The test is timed, and uses hypothetical scenarios to probe candidates on all of the above. Results should give a well-rounded picture of how emotionally intelligent someone is.
Verbal reasoning test
Verbal reasoning tests are designed to assess comprehension skills.
The timed test usually requires candidates to read through a dense passage of text, on a potentially unfamiliar subject, Candidates are then asked to use the information in front of them to answer a series of multiple-choice questions.
How they answer will demonstrate how good they are at differentiating between fact and inference, whether they’re able to hold key pieces of information, how adept they are at taking things in under pressure, and whether they can easily make informed conclusions.
These skills are all really useful in the nonprofit sector, where communication is key.
Adaptability test
An adaptability test can be used to determine how well someone is able to adapt to meet changing scenarios. It’s a really vital skill for any fast-paced industry, or for businesses reacting to changes outside of their control.
The test uses scenario-based questions to put candidates in challenging situations requiring flexibility to see how they fare. They’ll be asked to choose from a set of possible responses to show how they’d tackle a specific situation.
As adaptability is a soft skill, it can be hard to see whether a candidate possesses it from a resume alone. That’s why it can be such a useful test to use as a pre-screening device.
Teamwork test
Teamwork is essential in many sectors, but especially nonprofit where limited budgets and resources can make achieving a shared objective a bit more challenging.
Assessing a candidate's teamwork skills is really important if you want to find a candidate that will gel well with an existing team, and demonstrates the ability to work constructively with others to achieve a common goal.
This test will use multiple-choice, situational-based questions to see how individuals react to a variety of common workplace challenges.
Interpersonal skills test
Interpersonal skills are the skills we use to communicate with, and work alongside and engage with others. This focused test is designed to see how emotionally intelligent, articulate, and good at communicating each candidate is.
Just as with the other skills tests listed, this is a timed exam that uses multiple choice answers to place candidates in certain scenarios in order to gauge their personal responses.
Interpersonal skills are vital in the nonprofit sector, which values relationship-building and communication highly.
