The Pros & Cons of Skills Tests

The agency that I interviewed with on Friday, as well as the temp agency that I am registered with, requires some skills testing prior to sending people out on jobs. That makes sense in some respects because they have to have some quantitative way of measuring the skills of all the applicants. But do these tests really measure the skills accurately? I'm not so sure.

First, I did all of the testing at home on my laptop in my bedroom. Some on Saturday and some earlier today. This is great for convenience, but there are a lot of distractions that I didn't even think about beforehand. During Saturday's testing period, the doorbell rang (mailman), the phone rang (aunt) and my email notifier rang constantly with notices that friends had sent me things on Facebook. During today's testing period, my wireless connection went out! Fortunately, it went out just as I completed a test. But what a pain, right?

So I think there is a benefit to doing the testing at the agency on their computers because the distractions of home aren't present.

But there could be a downside there as well. Their computer network may also go down. There may also be a built in sense of nervousness from being in a strange environment and using strange equipment.

And I'm just wondering how accurate a test of practical knowledge these tests really are. I learned all of my skills "on the job". I do not have the degrees most people have in my line of work. But I have never had any difficulty in performing my job on a daily basis. These tests asked me to define terms I had never heard used on the job. It's a good thing I have an excellent command of English or I would have been in real trouble.

I was also asked to perform tasks that I had never done before on some of the software tests. If I have nearly 20 years experience and I've never needed to do these things, how reliable is my score on the test?

There is some benefit to having these tests as a baseline, but I don't believe they should be the sole basis on whether or not a potential employee is hired.

Your thoughts?