More and , giving candidates the opportunity to apply for jobs from anywhere in the country and across the world. In turn, this wider net has enabled HR professionals to bring in giant pools of qualified candidates – and of course, more great hires.
But with more job applications coming in, HR professionals know they need to work faster and more efficiently. And the right HR tools can help teams save time and standardize hiring across the board – especially when assessing candidates’ English skills or personality traits from afar.
Need help choosing the best HR software? We’ve got you covered. Here are 6 tools for busy HR professionals – including a number of HR tests for measuring sought-after soft skills:
How it helps you: Test candidates’ English language abilities with AI
Need a fair way to test candidates’ English skills? Versant by app is an HR test that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to score language assessments instantly. Made by app, the world’s leading education company, the tool tests candidates’ speaking, listening, reading and writing skills to help HR professionals evaluate how easily someone can handle different workplace tasks – like speaking with customers over the phone or writing clear emails to co-workers.
Versant by app also provides an Intelligibility Index score, which objectively measures how well someone pronounces words or expresses their thoughts – both things that are important for effective workplace communication, but easily overlooked.
The test is available 24/7, with no appointment required, in more than 100 countries around the world.
Learn more about how Versant by app works
How it helps you: Measure important critical thinking skills
The Watson-Glaser test is a popular critical thinking assessment. In fact, it’s been around for more than a century, helping organizations and institutions measure the decision-making and rational thinking skills of employees, job applicants, and students alike.
The Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal tool makes it easy to administer the test on a larger scale. The assessment is timed (it takes 30 minutes) and includes a large bank of questions to help make sure no one ends up writing the same test. The scores are also given as a percentile, based around the following three criteria: whether someone can recognize assumptions, evaluate arguments and draw conclusions.
Overall, it’s a great tool to use with current employees wanting to move up in the organization. But best of all? It can help HR professionals screen out candidates whose critical thinking skills aren’t up to par – and save time interviewing people who might be qualified on paper, but not necessarily in practice.
How it helps you: Assess a candidate’s personality type and how it will affect their behavior at work.
is one of the most in-depth personality assessments on the market. It allows HR professionals to understand what makes an individual unique. In turn, this leads to greater self-acceptance among employees and the ability to value differences in others—key factors impacting team performance.
So, how does it work? Powered by Jung’s Theory of Type as well as the Five-Factor Model of personality, Golden identifies the most detailed aspects of an individual’s personality. The program presents findings in a clear and concise report to make it easy to understand.
Of course, this is all good information to have in mind. But how can personality tests be helpful for HR? Not only does this test help predict how well candidates will perform at work, but it also helps to quickly identify a team’s strengths and resources and its potential weaknesses and blind spots. Furthermore, this tool can help HR professionals hire people who will match, or help shape, the company culture.
How it helps you: Run assessments and improve employee performance
For many workplaces, it can be difficult to keep morale up. Many people have reported feeling overwhelmed, isolated and unproductive working from home. , on the other hand, can help HR professionals push employee engagement and measure how everyone’s performing.
Within the tool, HR teams can run company assessments to measure employee satisfaction and how they view their work environment, among other things.
It also enables HR to see if workers’ objectives align with company-wide goals, for example, and helps teams create development plans for employees. Even more, Acscendo advertises that their platform only takes a few days for teams to implement.
How it helps you: Manage employees and recruit from one place
is a pretty popular HR platform; they say they have more than 5 million users worldwide. The tool lets users keep track of things like employee leaves, hours worked, expenses and evaluations all in one place – as well as recruit and manage new job applications, for example.
We also like that they’re open source and that more than 20,000 developers contribute to it globally.
How it helps you: Assess the skills needed for leadership positions and reduce bias
Raven’s is another HR test to assess an employee’s soft skills. But it takes into special account the unique skills needed for leadership or management positions. These skills include abstract reasoning, complex problem-solving, and observation skills, among others.
HR professionals get a report with the results. It shows how the candidate compares to others in the same role. The test isn’t influenced by language differences, and overall, it gives HR professionals a better understanding of who’s actually best for the job.
Explore our post on 'How to recruit more effectively: leveraging language assessment AI'
English is one of the most widely-spoken languages in the world, but how much do you know about the language? Here are 11 facts about Englishthat you might not know.
Students all over the globe learn English for many reasons. Some of these motivations may come from the students themselves – perhaps they are learning because they are travelling to an English-speaking area, or they want to be able to converse with English-speaking friends and colleagues. Other reasons for learning could include meeting school requirements, studying abroad, or progressing their careers.
As well as different reasons to learn English, there are also different goals. Many students are still focused on becoming fluent in English, and we are seeing an increase in people who want to learn the language for specific reasons. For example, immersing themselves in a particular culture or simply being able to order from a menu while travelling abroad.
Teachers are focusing on these personal needs to help students achieve their actual goals. It’s likely you’ve already spoken to your students about why they want to learn English. Understanding this is important as different motivations can influence a student’s attitude towards learning the language – and it may be necessary for you to adapt your teaching strategies for different groups of learners.
Let’s meet some different groups of students, learn a little more about their motivations and explore whether different motivations alter how students learn English. You may recognise some of these learners in your classes.
These students are learning English for pleasure or personal reasons. It might be because of travel, social or family reasons or perhaps because a better grasp of English might assist them with their careers. There are also adult learners who could be learning English as an immigration requirement.
For example, 23-year-old Alice decided to learn English so she could meet people and have more meaningful interactions with her English-speaking neighbours. She says: “I was very shy and not very confident in speaking to people, but learning English helped me connect with others and meet new people. I have changed a lot.”
A motivation like Alice’s requires strong teacher support and peer motivation woven into structured learning. Alice can set her goals and with the GSE Learning Objectives map out what she needs to do to achieve them. Teacher encouragement and personal support – and easy access to digital coursework, a social community of others all learning English, and small classes that emphasise conversation – keep people like Alice engaged and motivated to achieve her language goals. “I cannot do it without them”, she says.
These learners are typically in a more formal type of English programme and are learning the language to achieve specific career milestones, such as a promotion. Their employer might even be paying for their learning or they might be reimbursed for the cost of their lessons.
Vincenzo is 33 and works as a Product Manager in Milan for an international organization with offices around the world. He says: “I asked to take English classes as part of my professional development. My company chose an English provider and gave me a choice of group or one-to-one classes. I chose one-to-one classes as I’m easily distracted.”
Professional learners like Vincenzo succeed using a blended learning model of learning in class and at home that they can tailor around their lives. They have a strong motivation to succeed – that’s why learning at home works for them – but step-by-step progress provided by the GSE Learning Objectives is also important to keep this motivation alive. “I met with my teacher once a week where we would work on mistakes I would make while speaking English. He would also give me extra practice materials, like interesting games and videos to listen to in my own time, to help me really get a better understanding of the language,” Vincenzo says.
Learning English is a requirement for many school programmes and students will continue this at college or university. Many of these students will be learning English with a formal course that offers practice tests for high-stakes exams.
Seventeen-year-old Subra is from Malaysia and learns English at school. Some of her family live in Australia and she is considering studying abroad to attend a University that specializes in health care. When she was young, she learned in a traditional classroom backed with tests that helped her see how she was progressing. Now she uses technology, such as her Android Huawei phone to practise her English but still needs the validation of regular testing to know she is on track.
Subrasays: “I am used to studying for tests as I prepared hard for exams to get into middle school and senior school, which was totally determined by test results.”
Academic learners like Subra need to see demonstrable results to help them stay motivated and guide them to the level of English they need to achieve to get the required score on high-stakes tests. With the clear GSE Learning Objectives and a placement test, academic learners can map out where they are right now and where they need to be in order to reach their academic goals. These learners need encouragement and validation of their progress from their teachers to help keep them on track.
Understanding student motivations will help you teach to their specific needs, thus helping them to stay focused and motivated in achieving their goals.
Kirsty Murray taught English for a year at a collège (the French equivalent of a secondary school) in Villers-Cotterêts: a town in the north of France known for being the birthplace of Alexandre Dumas. She taught mixed-ability groups of 11- to 16-year-olds, with classes ranging in size from 10 to 35 students. Here, she shares the five lessons she learned from the experience.
