HR Skills Assessment 2 — Questions and Answers
Question 1: Which type of skills assessment is best suited to evaluate a candidate's ability to write SQL queries?
- Situational judgment test
- Cognitive ability test
- Technical work sample test (Correct answer)
- Personality inventory
Correct answer: Technical work sample test
Work sample tests present real job tasks, making them the most valid predictor of technical job performance.
Question 2: An HR team wants to reduce adverse impact in a software engineer skills assessment. Which action is most appropriate?
- Require a college degree as a prerequisite
- Use job-relevant tasks validated against actual job requirements (Correct answer)
- Eliminate all timed sections
- Use only unstructured interviews
Correct answer: Use job-relevant tasks validated against actual job requirements
Job-relevant, validated assessments minimize adverse impact by focusing solely on skills necessary for job performance.
Question 3: What does 'test reliability' mean in the context of HR skills assessments?
- The test measures what it intends to measure
- The test produces consistent results across administrations (Correct answer)
- The test predicts future job performance accurately
- The test is free from legal challenges
Correct answer: The test produces consistent results across administrations
Reliability refers to the consistency and repeatability of assessment scores under similar conditions.
Question 4: Which federal law most directly requires HR professionals to ensure skills assessments do not result in unlawful discrimination?
- The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA)
- Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Correct answer)
- The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA)
- The Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA)
Correct answer: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964
Title VII prohibits employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, including through testing.
Question 5: A software company administers a coding challenge that screens out a disproportionate number of women. Under EEOC guidelines, what must the company demonstrate?
- The test was developed by an external vendor
- The test is job-related and consistent with business necessity (Correct answer)
- Women scored lower on average than men
- The test was administered anonymously
Correct answer: The test is job-related and consistent with business necessity
Under the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, employers must show adverse-impact-causing assessments are job-related and necessary.
Question 6: Which metric is used to identify adverse impact in an employment assessment?
- Cronbach's alpha
- The four-fifths (80%) rule (Correct answer)
- The Pearson correlation coefficient
- Standard error of measurement
Correct answer: The four-fifths (80%) rule
The four-fifths rule flags adverse impact when the selection rate for a protected group is less than 80% of the highest-scoring group's rate.
Question 7: What is the primary advantage of using an adaptive skills assessment (computerized adaptive testing) for HR software hiring?
- It eliminates the need for job analysis
- It adjusts question difficulty based on candidate responses, improving measurement precision (Correct answer)
- It guarantees zero adverse impact
- It removes the need for scoring rubrics
Correct answer: It adjusts question difficulty based on candidate responses, improving measurement precision
Adaptive tests tailor item difficulty to the test-taker's ability level, yielding more precise scores in less time.
HR Skills Assessment 2
Which type of skills assessment is best suited to evaluate a candidate's ability to write SQL queries?