When a candidate has the opportunity to respond to short skills-based quizzes and tests, it can help you narrow down your applicant pool to identify your top candidates. This is helpful for two reasons. First, when a candidate takes a skills assessment, it indicates that they are interested in your job opportunity and willing to put in the work. Second, these short tests can help you see the applicant’s skills, experience and knowledge in practice.

Below, you will learn what Indeed Assessments are, how they can help you filter and screen applicants and how to add them to your job posts. (We also offer screener questions to help you quickly determine whether or not applicants meet your hiring criteria upfront.)

 

What are Indeed Assessments?

Indeed Assessments is a free* candidate screening tool that helps you find quality candidates for your open role(s).

*Terms, conditions, quality standards, and usage limits apply.

We developed Indeed Assessments to help you screen your applicants for skills that matter most to you — whether that’s hard skills, like sales or accounting, industry knowledge like medical billing or food safety, or soft skills like reliability and accountability. Indeed Assessments provide multiple ready-to-use skills tests to help you zero in on great applicants and decide who to contact for an interview. Using Indeed Assessments reduces an employer’s time to hire by 12% on average.[1]

Skills tests vary in length and complexity based on the topic or industry. Most take 10 minutes or less to complete, and use multiple choice questions or recorded responses to objectively measure an applicant’s skills. An assessment can ask questions that test an applicant’s knowledge, and how they apply that knowledge in practical situations they’ll face on the job. Your applicants would be asked to record or select the response that they believe best answers the question.

Here’s an example of a question found on an Indeed skills assessment:

An employee is on their way to help a customer when a second customer, Rachel, walks in and starts asking the employee about a product. What should the employee do?

• Suggest that Rachel go to the customer service desk
• Ask an available coworker to help Rachel and apologize for the inconvenience
• Focus on answering Rachel’s question and assume a coworker will help the other customer

 

How to add a skills test to your job post

When you post your job on Indeed, the Customized screening page will show you relevant assessment/test recommendations from our library of 200+ skills tests.

Once you have selected your assessments, you can choose to let Indeed send the assessment on your behalf to all applicants by selecting the checkbox agreeing to the Indeed Assessment Terms. If you prefer to handpick and invite applicants yourself, you can manually send the assessment to individual applicants once the job post goes live.

If you would like to add assessments to your job post after you have already posted it, go to the Jobs tab of your Employer Dashboard and select Edit Job under the title of the job you want to add an assessment to. Click on Skill assessments on the left-hand side of the page. From there, you can select relevant tests. We will recommend three different skills tests based on the job description and job title, but you can click View more topics to see more.

You can also send skills tests to candidates who have already applied. Simply visit your View Candidate Page, click More Actions and then Send Assessment.

Job seekers can also take Indeed Assessments without being invited by an employer and share their results with you. When they complete an assessment and show the results on their resume, you can see their scores automatically listed. You can also search Indeed’s resume database for job seekers that have passed a specific assessment, and invite them to apply to your posted job. This is a great way to fill your applicant pool with quality candidates.

 

Filtering and screening candidates based on their scores

When a candidate completes the test, you will receive their score (via email). You can also view their score in your Candidate Dashboard. Since all of your candidates take the same assessment for a given job opening (if they choose to take it), you can objectively see how candidates perform in relation to each other.

Indeed Assessments score levels are: Expert, Highly Proficient, Proficient, Familiar and Completed. A score of N/A will be given when a candidate has started but not completed an assessment yet.

Skills test scores can be a great indicator of a candidate’s ability to perform a certain job. However, consider taking a holistic view of candidates through resumes, cover letters, phone screens and interviews to get a full understanding of candidates’ skills and abilities.

Indeed Assessments FAQs

What is the difference between Indeed Assessments and screener questions?

Both Indeed Assessments and screener questions help you narrow down your applicant pool to find the right candidates for your open job(s). However, unlike assessments, screener questions are part of the initial job application process. When a candidate applies for your job, they will be prompted to answer the questions you selected in order to submit their application. Screener questions can be customized and can be yes/no, multiple choice and short answer. Examples of screener questions include: “Do you have a high school diploma?” and “How many years of experience do you have in XYZ?”

Indeed Assessments, on the other hand, are skills tests that candidates take after their job application is submitted. These assessments can give an applicant the opportunity to demonstrate their skills and experience in practice. Topics include typing, customer service, etc.

 

Can candidates retake Indeed Assessments?

Candidates may retake an assessment, but only after six months have passed since the last time they took it and if an employer specifically requests it.

 

Can you require applicants to take Indeed skills tests?

An employer can make an assessment required in their application process, but applicants may/may not decide to go through with taking the assessment. In this case, applicants that don’t complete or pass the assessment will be pushed to the bottom of your applicant list and grouped together as “other applicants”. This will appear as a collapsible section of your list that you can click on at any time to see these applicants.

 

Can I edit or customize skills tests on Indeed?

Because our skills tests are designed by a team of Industrial/Organizational (I/O) psychologists and other experts, they cannot be edited or customized.

Back to Hiring with Indeed.

1. Indeed data – worldwide