Pre-Employment Skill Set and Aptitude Tests?

stumbler asks: "I just had a lengthy conversation with my boss and co-workers about the value of giving skill set tests (programming ability) and aptitude tests (like reasoning or logical ability) to technical employees before they are hired. (We currently have no such tests.) For those that work in companies that require pre-employment tests, have you seen an impact in the quality of technical employees hired?"

Comments

Re:Some I gave during interviews

[mrgrey]

If I remember, those who past generally were well liked by the others who interviewed them.

Then there's the grammar test....

our usual test

[Anonymous Coward]

we give the subject a relatively simple question with no real answer that they should be able to analyze and generate opinions of on their own. Then we check the browser history and see how they posed it in Ask Slashdot. If they didn't provide any insight or guide the conversation in any way, then that's generally bad :-)

Re:Oh great.

[ColaMan]

Well, good for you :-)

To me, that would look like you are somewhat inflexible and unable to cope with last-minute changes or pressure.
And the fact that you are unwilling to wait it out for something that your interviewer has to deal with that might *just* possibly be more important than your interview suggests that you value yourself a little too highly ;-) Of course, the polite thing to do would have your interviewer come back after a minute or so and explain the situation.

Anyhow, the comments I have made were strictly light-hearted as I've seen them happen... the wrong address thing to me personally. The other, was when a trainee manager was being interviewed and the managing director gave him some paperwork, went to "deal with stuff" and then suddenly realised she was late for a flight and ran off! I wander past about an hour later and this poor bugger's still in the office, wandering around aimlessly. Our conversation went like :
Me : "Hey, need a hand in here?"
Him: "No, just waiting for X to return"
Me: (pause) "Er, she's not coming back"
Him: "No, no, she said she'd be back in a tick"
Me: "Er, she's on a flight to Sydney"
Him: (crestfallen) "oh."

Still, he got the job... must've been a sucker for punishment.