Time management tests are designed to establish an individual's ability to prioritise tasks and perform them effectively.
A time management test is an assessment that helps employers determine whether a candidate has the ability to effectively organize their time and perform tasks in an optimal manner. The test will cover workplace scenarios related to time management such as prioritization, planning, execution and reflection.
To perform well in a time management test, a candidate must be able to demonstrate the ability to judge situations and make the best decisions around work-based priorities including deadlines, methods of working and judging the importance of tasks.
Other related skills might include accountability, communication and leadership. You might also want to consider a personality test which could be relevant to assessing time management skills, as planning and organisation are related to a candidate's conscientiousness.
Employees who manage their time well often thrive. It is an important skill to have and most job roles require great time management; particularly those where meeting deadlines is crucial.
Time Management Test
Time management is an essential but often overlooked skill that every employee should have. The impact that poor time management can have on businesses is huge, affecting productivity and results. It is therefore a core area a recruiter should test for before hiring new employees.
You might also consider testing time management skills on existing employees to identify skills gaps and areas of improvement.
Hiring well-rounded employees who can juggle deadlines and identify what tasks to prioritize ensures better productivity for your business.
A potential employee might list time management on their resume or online profile as a skill they possess – but if you don't test them, how can you know how good they are at it?
A time management test helps solve that problem and can make hiring decisions easier.
The test evaluates an individual's competencies using best practices in a professional environment. A recruiter can judge who has the best time management approach and compare them to other applicants.
Once you've assessed who can manage their time most effectively, you can move the best applicants to the next stage. This makes for a more efficient hiring process, as well as a more bias-free one.
Job types for which time management might be essential include:
Hiring without testing could result in employing someone with poor time management skills, which could end up costing you and your team time and money.
You are currently working on an important project and the deadline for the next deliverable is set for two weeks' time. However, a colleague had to take time off due to medical reasons and you have been asked to take over their project, where a report needs to be submitted by next week.
After looking over your colleague's progress on the report, you notice that they are quite far behind with what needs to be done. Judging from previous experience with similar tasks, you know that it will be difficult to complete the required steps within a week.
What would you do?
Tell your manager you are worried that the work on your colleague's report will affect your current project because the deadlines are too close to each other.
Inform your manager about the current state of your colleague's project and ask for a deadline extension, in order to be able to deliver quality work on both projects.
Prioritize your colleague's report and work on it until completion, planning to deal with your own project afterwards.
Ask your manager to assign a colleague to help you with both your projects, so that you can finish them on time.
Results for the Time Management Test along with other assessments the candidate takes will be compiled to produce a candidate report. The report is automatically generated and available both online and as a downloadable pdf so they can be shared with other team members and employees alike.
In Picked's time management test, candidates will need to answer a range of situational judgement questions that challenge a candidate’s competency in time management. The test is designed to indicate how well a candidate can make time management decisions based on a final test score, which can then be compared to the scores of other applicants.
The test presents a scenario for the candidates to review before selecting what they believe to be the most and least effective actions to take in response. The other available options are mostly generic mistakes or misconceptions, which makes the test challenging and helps measure a candidate's ability more accurately.
During the development process, the test was rigorously analysed to maximise reliability and validity in line with industry best practices. It was created and tested by business leaders and psychometric experts, and designed to assess time management in a sample of job applicants who have varying professional experience.
Each test is reviewed by a panel of individuals representing diverse backgrounds to check for any sensitivity, fairness, face validity and accessibility issues. This ensures each test-taker has a fair chance of demonstrating the true level of their time management ability and feels the test is high quality.
Our time management test is monitored to ensure it is up-to-date and optimised for performance.
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“Personality profiling allowed us to perform lookalike modelling of our most successful employees and use this as a blueprint for new hires.”
The five key elements of time management are: a conducive environment; being able to prioritize; eliminating less important tasks; goal setting; and forming the right habits. A time management test should incorporate testing these areas.
There are 3 core signs of poor time management, these are missing deadlines, rushed work and procrastination. When recruiting employees, you should try to spot any of these signs early as it could be an indication that they do not have strong competencies in this area.
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