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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:

1. Versant by ����app

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

2. Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal

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.

3. Golden Personality Profiler

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.

4. Acsendo

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.

5. Odoo

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.

6. Raven’s

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.

There’s the saying, “There are two types of teachers with 20 years of teaching experience: the first are those with 20 years of experience and the second are those with one year’s experience repeated 20 times.”

Some believe most teachers want to be the first kind of teacher – constantly evolving throughout their careers – rather than repeating the same classes. Additionally, taking professional development courses can help us reach these new heights.

Doctors, engineers, lawyers and other professionals regularly have to seek training opportunities. This enables them to keep up to date with the latest technologies, innovations and changes in the wider world. It could be argued that teachers are no different.

Benefits of professional development training

There are several benefits to continued professional training for teachers. For instance, there’s always something new to learn as developments are happening regularly in the world of ELT. Whether it’s innovations in ed-tech, new research into how we learn languages or a new pedagogy, certain courses can help bring you up to speed with these!

Undertaking further training will help you to deepen your knowledge and widen your expertise. So rather than simply repeating the same method of teaching a grammar point over again, you’ll learn new approaches. In turn, you’ll be better equipped to find the tools that work to help your students reach their learning goals.

Another great thing about professional development is that it can lead to career progression and promotion. There are a number of courses that you can take to develop not only skills for teaching, but other roles in the ELT industry.
For example, you can train to become a director of studies, specialize in business or academic English, or enter ELT publishing or management. There are many options to explore through further education!

New trends in English language teaching

To be the best teachers we can be, it's important to be aware of new trends in the field of ELT. Some of the latest ones include:

Hybrid learning

Gaining popularity in recent years, hybrid learning is an approach to teaching. Specifically, it involves some students attending class in person, while others join the class virtually from home. This means that teachers must be prepared to simultaneously teach both students in person and online.

Flipped classroom

A flipped classroom means students are introduced to content at home. Often teachers introduce this via videos and then practice working through the new knowledge in class. This is the opposite of the more traditional method where they are given new content at school, and complete assignments independently at home.

Bite-sized learning

One method of teaching that has become more common is bite-sized learning. For example, breaking down information into smaller chunks instead of having learners listen to long, uninterrupted sessions, and this helps students absorb information and keeps them engaged.

If you’re not already familiar with these, there are lots of professional development courses that teach you how to use them in your classroom.

Formal qualifications in ELT

So what courses can you take? Here are some of the most common courses you can take for English language teaching.

• CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) - Cambridge’s Level 5 qualification is an internationally recognized ELT course. While this certificate focuses on teaching adults, language academies accept it for both adults and young learners.
• Trinity CertTESOL (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) - Like the CELTA, the Level 5 course is designed for people with little or no English teaching experience.
• Trinity CertPT (Certificate for Practising Teachers) - Trinity’s Level 6 is designed for teachers who have already been teaching for a minimum of six months. It aims to support teachers' further development and help them improve their teaching practice.
• DELTA (Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) - Cambridge’s provides professional development for teachers with at least one year’s experience. This level 7 qualification is also designed for those who want to progress into more senior roles such as head of English and teacher training.
• Trinity DipTESOL (Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) - Trinity’s is designed for teachers who have reached a stage in their career where they’d like to progress to a more senior level. Like the DELTA, it’s an internationally respected level 7 qualification for experienced TEFL teachers.
• Master’s degree - Master’s studies in English Language Teaching, TESOL, or applied linguistics, are great options to reach a more senior level in your career. Most people take them to become a director of studies or reach a management position.
• Specialized courses - If there’s an area of teaching that you’d like to specialize in, plenty of short courses cover a range of topics. These include teaching online, teaching with technology, teaching business English and teaching very young children. Check out , or to see what they offer.

If you’re unable to take a formal course, sharing ideas with colleagues is a great way to create professional development opportunities. You could exchange lesson plans and ask for feedback or input. There are plenty of podcasts, webinars and social media groups for teachers where you can find great tips and ideas from fellow teachers worldwide.

Whichever route you decide, remember that learning is a lifelong journey – not only for your students but for yourself too! There are always new things to discover that will help you develop as a teacher.

What do driverless car engineers, telemedicine physicians and podcast producers have in common? About 10 years ago . They are representative of a new technology-driven marketplace, which is evolving faster than employers, governments and education institutions can keep up.

As new jobs appear, others fall by the wayside. Today, it’s estimated that up to with currently available technology. Routine jobs like data entry specialists, proofreaders, and even market research analysts are especially at risk of becoming redundant within the next 5 to 10 years. Globally, that means between 400 and 800 million workers could be displaced by automation technology by 2030, according to McKinsey.

Moreover, will need to work in areas that do not exist in the current market. The question is, what can we do to prepare learners for a future when we have no idea what jobs they’ll be doing? Mike Mayor and Tim Goodier discuss this uncertain future and explain why English for employability is such a hot topic right now.

A rising level of English and employer expectations

Mike Mayor, Director of the Global Scale of English at ����app, explains that while he believes employability has always been a factor in English language education, it has become more important and more of a focus for students looking to enter the workforce.

“Expectations of employers have risen as proficiency in English language, in general, has risen around the world,” he says. “They’re now looking for more precise skills.”

Tim Goodier, Head of Academic Development at Eurocentres, agrees. He explains that English language education is primarily about improving communication and soft skills – which is key for the jobs of 2030 and beyond.

“There’s a convergence of skills training for the workplace and language skills training,” Tim says. “The Common European Framework of Reference (CEFR) has recognized and, in many ways, given a roadmap for looking into how to develop soft skills and skills for employability by fleshing out its existing scheme – especially to look at things like mediation skills.”

How the Global Scale of English and CEFR have surfaced employability skills

The��Global Scale of English (GSE) is recognizing this increasing prominence of English for employability. Mike explains that it’s doing this “by taking the common European framework and extending it out into language descriptors which are specific for the workplace.”

In developing a set of learning objectives for professional learners, Mike and his team have given teachers more can-do statements. “They are able to create curricula and lessons around specific business skills,” he says.

Tim comments that one of the most interesting things about the GSE is that it links can-do statements to key professions, which he explains “is another extension of what these can-do statements can be used for – and viewing competencies as unlocking opportunity.”

Showing how these skills and competencies relate to the real world of work can be a strong motivating factor for learners.

He says that teachers need to visualize what success will look like in communication “and then from there develop activities in the classroom that are authentic.” At the same time, he says that activities should be personalized by “using the learners’ own interests and adapting the course as much as possible to their future goals.”

Preparing students for the future workplace

Speaking on the role of publishing in English for employability, Mike says:

“I would say as course book creators we actually incorporate a lot of these skills into our materials, but… I think we could do to push it a little further.”

In Mike’s view, educators need to do more than teach the skills, they need to raise awareness of their context. In other words why these skills are important and how they will help them in authentic situations both in and out of the work environment.

Beyond teaching the language itself, he says publishers should be helping teachers ask:

• Are the students participating fairly in group discussions?
• Are the students actively listening?
• Are they interrupting politely?

These skills “don’t come naturally, and so just to begin raising awareness would be an added value,” he says.

Future skills: careers in 2030

In the same way we didn’t know that driverless cars would become a reality 10 years ago, we cannot say with absolute certainty which professions will arise and which will disappear. However, using tools like the GSE teacher toolkit, we can help our students develop the language and soft skills they need to navigate an ever-shifting job market. The future is an exciting place, let’s help our learners prepare themselves!

Watch the full interview with Mike and Tim below:��