You know what’s worse than preparing for a pre-employment test? Preparing for one and then discovering that there are many versions of it and then realizing that you studied for the wrong one.
As the years go by, pre-employment test course developers have taken strides in trying to set themselves as the ones to choose when it comes to improving the hiring process and increasing a company’s chances of hiring not only qualified but also talented and hardworking individuals.
On its own, there is nothing wrong with this, but when most of these assessments are primarily known through the name of the company and people rarely use the exam’s very specific name for a particular exam.
You won’t believe that a lot of applicants were turned away almost immediately because they failed to do well in the Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential because they spent their time with the Korn Ferry Cognitive Ability Test even though the job listing only specified ‘must pass Korn Ferry Assessment’ as one of the requirements.
Unfortunately, even if this is the case, it is very unlikely that your would-be employer would accept this as an excuse because you should have done well either way.
This means that you need to be at least familiar with every version of it so that you can present yourself as the prime candidate to hire even if which Korn Ferry assessment you have to take isn’t explicitly stated.
- The Korn Ferry Cognitive Ability Tests
If you are aiming for an entry-level position, these are the Korn Ferry tests that you are likely to encounter because they are designed to measure your work-related cognitive skills so that they can have an idea on how well you can function and perform the duties and responsibilities of the job you are applying for.
There are four main cognitive ability tests that you can encounter, namely:
- The numerical reasoning test, where your ability to perform simple to complex calculations is tested. Most of the questions will utilize a graph, table, or statistical or financial data sheet of some sort in conjunction with word problems, making it almost vital for you to study how each graph or table works.
- The verbal reasoning test aims to figure out how good your reading comprehension and grammar skills are.
- The logical reasoning test is designed to measure not only your critical thinking skills but also your problem-solving skills by providing you with a series of shapes or figures and you will need to discover what sequence or pattern it follows in order to select which of the choices fits the missing one.
- The e-tray test is meant to figure out how good your task prioritization skills are by presenting you with a number of tasks or emails and you will have to arrange them in order of most important to least important to do.
- The Korn Ferry Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs)
Depending on the needs of the company, a series of SJTs may be administered so that they can see a preview of a candidate’s decision-making skills and if it is compatible with the way things are done at the office.
In this exam, you will be presented with a scenario that is encountered by employees of the company regularly and you will have to either select which of the choices is the best or worst to take or rank the choices from most to least appropriate or vice versa.
To tackle this exam of the Korn Ferry effectively, you will need to research the duties and responsibilities of the position that you are applying for then try to find a middle ground between that and the branding or workstyle that the company is known for.
- Korn Ferry Assessment of Leadership Potential (KFALP)
Primarily administered to candidates vying for a job that contains a leadership role, this assessment is seen as the personality test of the Korn Ferry assessments due to it following a survey-like format.
When you take this exam, you will be presented with a series of statements, which are linked to a particular trait or quality that the Korn Ferry deems as necessary to have in an effective leader.
From here, you will need to input how you agree or disagree with it, similar to what you would do with a Likert-scale format.
In general, the KFALP aims to measure the candidate’s ability to team build, manage resources, encourage development within the organization, encourage innovation, maintain authority, and take responsibility both for themselves and their subordinates.
Although this looks incredibly hard to prepare for since there are technically no right or wrong answers in the assessment, a good way to know how to adjust your answers is to research the core values of the company and then try to apply it to the nature of the job that you are applying for.
It’s because the ideal leadership profile of each company is mostly patterned to comply with what is stipulated in their mission, vision, and values, the rest is then filled with what kind of leader is expected for that job.
For example, a supervisor must show that they can maintain authority well, manage resources well for that shift and even for the next one if needed, know how to build their team well so that there is a good cooperative atmosphere between employees, and they need to have a good sense of responsibility.
Being innovative and encouraging development may be on the low side, however.
Team leaders for those in sales on the other hand, are expected to be highly innovative and figure out ways to develop new ways to improve things or pitches in order to boost sales and other metrics.