Concepts & Knowledge Tests

Welcome to Alooba's guide on the Concepts & Knowledge test. This test is a cornerstone of our assessment platform, designed to evaluate participants' proficiency in over 40 essential skills. Whether you're assessing candidates for hiring or gauging the skills of existing employees, this customizable test offers a comprehensive solution. In this article, we'll walk you through the process of setting up, customizing, and understanding the Concepts & Knowledge test to meet your organization's unique needs.

What is the Concepts & Knowledge Test?

The Concepts & Knowledge test is a multiple-choice test designed to gauge participants' knowledge and understanding in specific areas. This test plays a pivotal role in the Alooba assessment journey, offering insights into a participant's subject knowledge and aptitude for various skills. The Concepts & Knowledge test is the most versatile test within Alooba as it covers many different skills. With its customizable nature, you can fine-tune the test to evaluate skills that are crucial for the specific roles you are evaluating for.

Adding the Concepts & Knowledge Test to Your Assessment

To integrate the Concepts & Knowledge test into your assessments and gain a holistic view of your participants' capabilities, follow these step-by-step instructions:

1. Navigate to the Assessment Configuration page: Start by accessing the assessment where you want to include the Concepts & Knowledge test. This can be a new assessment or an existing one that you wish to enhance.

2. Find the "Add Test" button: Scroll down to the bottom of the Assessment Settings page, and you'll find the "Add Test" button. Click on it to proceed to the test selection.

   

3. Select the Concepts & Knowledge test: Upon clicking the "Add Test" button, a dialog will appear, displaying a list of all available tests. Look for the Concepts & Knowledge test in the list, and click "Add Test" to add it to your assessment.

   

Note: You can only have one Concepts & Knowledge test per assessment. Once the test has been added to the assessment it will no longer be selectable within the Add Test modal.

Customizing the Test

The Concepts & Knowledge test offers three critical sections that allow you to tailor the assessment to your precise needs: Settings, Skills, and Passing Conditions.

Settings

In this section, you have the flexibility to set various parameters for the test:

• Number of Questions: Define the total number of questions that participants will face during the test. This will influence the overall depth of the assessment.
• Test Duration: Choose the time limit for the test in minutes. Ensure that the allocated time aligns with the selected number of questions to ensure that enough time is given for participants to effectively answer all of the questions.

• Difficulty Level: Adjust the difficulty level of the generated questions to match the skill level you are assessing for and the experience level of your participants.

  Questions in Alooba are categorized as either Easy, Medium, or Hard. Changing the difficulty level of the assessment will change the distribution of the question difficulty.

  • Standard: Will include mostly Easy questions, some Medium ones, and just a few Hard ones.
  • Advanced: Will include lots of Medium questions, with some Easy, and some Hard ones.
  • Expert: Will include lots of Hard questions, with some Medium ones, and just a few Easy ones.

It's really important to find the balance between the number of questions, and the test duration. The more questions, the more comprehensive and reliable the results will be, however, it may negatively impact your attempt rate if you make the test too long. The longer the test duration is the less likely people will take the time to do it. However, if you don't give enough time for the number of questions, some people may not be able to complete the assessment in time which will drastically affect their results as incomplete questions will be marked as incorrect.

Note: Upon changing the settings, you will see an estimation of the seconds per question, and a suggestion for decreasing or increasing the Test Duration when the time is too long or short.

Skills

The Skills section allows you to pick the specific skills you want the test to evaluate. You must have at least one skill and can add up to 10.

To add a skill:

1. Click on the "Add Skill" button to access the list of available skills.

   

2. Select the skills you wish to include in the assessment. For each chosen skill, you will find a detailed summary on the right of what Alooba covers in that skill, aiding your decision-making process.

   

3. Control the distribution of questions for each skill by adjusting the percentage of questions within the test that will be dedicated to that skill. This allows you to weigh the outcome of the test, as well as get a more comprehensive view of the skills that are most relevant.

   

Note: The percentages of all skills must add up to 100%. If the sum is lower or higher than 100%, the info box will notify you to increase or decrease the skill percentages.

Passing Conditions

In this section, you can define the passing conditions for the Concepts & Knowledge test:

• Auto-Rejection: If the assessment has multiple tests, you can set a specific percentage score threshold that candidates must meet to move on to the next tests in the assessment. This improves candidate experience by avoiding wasting their time on more tests if they have already failed to meet your minimum expectations and allows you to focus on top performers. To know more about the different passing conditions and the auto-rejection feature, please refer to the Automated Candidate Rejection article.

Note: The "Passing Conditions" section is not available for Alooba Growth exercises, since it is specific to candidate evaluation and hiring.

Reviewing Questions

Once all tests have been configured, you can proceed to the next step by clicking on the "Save & Next" button at the bottom of the Assessment Settings page. This action will direct you to the questions page, where you gain further control over the evaluation process by editing which questions are included and in what order.

Question Selection

With the default Standard question selection, Alooba will automatically select the best questions to include in your test based on the configuration you defined. You can then review these and replace any questions you don't think suit your test. You can also remove, or add questions, however, note that doing so will change the total number of questions in the test and you may want to review the test duration to ensure it still makes sense. This ensures that every participant sees exactly the same questions so that they can be compared on an apples-to-apples basis. However, if you're not so concerned with picking the specific questions and ensuring that all candidates see the same questions, you may select a Random question selection, which will generate a unique set of questions for each participant while still meeting the skill percentage and difficulty requirements configured. Randomizing the questions is a good way to avoid potential collusion between candidates if that is something you're concerned with.

Question Order

All questions are grouped within the test by their skill, ensuring participants won't be constantly context-switching throughout the test. The order in which the skills were added on the previous step will dictate the order of the skills within the test. However, if you opt for a Standard question selection, you will be given the option of defining the question order within each skill. A Standard question order will mean that all participants will see the questions in the same order, and will allow you to reorder the questions by dragging and dropping the question numbers. If you select Random per skill the question order will be randomized for each participant within their skill groupings.

In case you added the Analytics Programming skill with the option to allow participants to decide which programming language they'll see questions for, you will notice that there are two tabs for the different versions of the test depending on if they choose Python or R. Participants will be presented with the choice of the language they are most comfortable with before the start of the test. And so, they will be answering the respective questions in the chosen language.

To delve deeper into the question editing process and maximize the potential of your assessment, please refer to our dedicated guide on Reviewing and Managing Test Questions. After you're satisfied with the content of the test, click "Save & Next" to save your work.

Now, you're done!

Participant Experience

The Concepts & Knowledge test provides a seamless and user-friendly experience for participants:

• Test Instructions: Before commencing the test, participants receive clear instructions, ensuring they understand the assessment process.

  

• Question Navigation: During the test, participants can navigate between questions using the left-top panel, allowing them to review and revisit questions as needed.

• Answer Selection: Participants can choose their responses from five multiple-choice options displayed on the right side of the screen.

  

• Submission and Confirmation: Upon answering the final question, participants can submit the test. A confirmation dialog will provide valuable insights, such as any missed or unanswered questions.

  

Grading

As the Concepts & Knowledge test is a multiple-choice test, the grading is very straightforward and fully automated. Each question has one and only one "correct" answer. Each question may be worth a different amount of marks, typically ranging from 1 to 5 within the Concepts & Knowledge test. For any question the participant gets correct they earn the full marks for that question. All unanswered or incorrect responses will receive 0 marks. Their total score will be the sum of marks they received for their correct answers over the total amount of available marks within the test.

Conclusion

The Concepts & Knowledge test is a powerful tool that empowers you to make informed and data-driven hiring decisions. Its extensive customization options, coupled with the ability to assess a diverse range of skills, make it an invaluable asset in identifying top talent for your organization. As you embrace the capabilities of Alooba's assessment platform, we are confident that you will achieve your hiring objectives while creating a world where everyone can secure the job they deserve.

For further assistance or inquiries, feel free to reach out to your account manager or our support team.