The 7 best assessments for manufacturing jobs

Assessing manufacturing candidates properly is essential for avoiding the painful side effects of mis-hiring, like mechanical malfunctions, increased time spent on break-fix tasks, and decreased overall productivity. Companies should use pre-employment testing to screen candidates, find top talent, and save money with high-performing hires.

However, it can be difficult to know which skills to evaluate when hiring manufacturing professionals – and even harder to find assessments tailored to the manufacturing industry. 

To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of the seven best tests for manufacturing jobs, covering both hard and soft skills. This way, you can quickly and easily find the perfect person for your manufacturing roles.

Best manufacturing assessment tests to identify top candidates

Mechanical Reasoning test

A successful manufacturing candidate should have a firm grasp of basic mechanical fundamentals. They should not only understand how components work but also be able to apply physics and mechanics concepts in real-world scenarios. 

TestGorilla’s Mechanical Reasoning test screens candidates on three critical mechanical concepts:  

• Movement and force

• Velocity

• Pulleys, gears, and wheels

Understanding these concepts is vital for a manufacturing professional because even the simplest gear can malfunction if a professional installs it incorrectly or improperly calibrates its movement or force. This scenario could even jeopardize the safety of those who use the machine.

This test ensures that the candidate you intend to hire is proficient in mechanical roles and functions and knows how to handle complex equipment.

Attention to Detail (Visual) test 

When manufacturing any type of machinery, attention to detail is extremely important. Manufacturing professionals must interact with complex diagrams and graphics, including process flow diagrams, workflow charts, and Ishikawa diagrams, also known as cause-and-effect diagrams. 

The best manufacturing professionals can maintain laser-focused attention to visual information and cues. You can assess this skill by using our Attention to Detail (Visual) test. It evaluates a candidate’s ability to:

• Distinguish design details

• Identify patterns

• Find differences in images 

• Match identical images 

Candidates who perform well on this test can understand visual information and won’t discount subtle details. They can flag minor errors that could significantly impact equipment functionality.

Attention to Detail (Textual) test 

Manufacturing professionals must also have the ability to interpret written text. They must also be able to spot numerical and grammatical mistakes, as small errors could have large and costly impacts.

Use TestGorilla’s Attention to Detail (Textual) test to evaluate your candidates’ ability in this area. The test measures individuals’ skills in:

• Matching information

• Checking information consistency

• Comparing statements to spot similarities and differences

• Filtering information

Candidates who can find answers using details that are otherwise easy to overlook will excel at this test.

Basic Electrical Skills test

A good manufacturing professional needs to possess fundamental electrical skills. Lacking a basic understanding of electricity could prove hazardous and even deadly for a manufacturing worker. No company wants to be at the center of unsafe working conditions or, worse yet, lawsuits due to hesitant or incompetent manufacturing workers.

TestGorilla’s Basic Electrical Skills test examines candidates’ knowledge of foundational electrical concepts, including electric circuits, power, and digital logic. 

Candidates who succeed at this test will possess the basic electrical skills to perform maintenance and standard operations safely and effectively.

Problem Solving Test

Machine fabrication, maintenance, and troubleshooting require a worker to identify problems, accurately analyze and interpret data, and apply logic and creativity when decision-making. Ideally, you want to hire someone who can identify the problem and break its solution into manageable parts.

Our Problem Solving test presents candidates with diverse problem-solving scenarios. These task candidates with interpreting and applying logic, analyzing text and numbers, and determining the correct order of actions to solve problems.  

This test reveals which manufacturing candidates can successfully identify key problems and arrive at the correct solutions under a time limit. These candidates should be able to perform similarly under on-the-job pressure. 

Critical Thinking test

The best manufacturing professionals can analyze, evaluate, and apply their knowledge to find innovative solutions to mechanical problems. To avoid costly mistakes with equipment construction and setup, the worker must possess critical thinking skills. 

TestGorilla’s Critical Thinking test assesses a candidate’s ability to: 

• Recognize when they can safely make assumptions

• Use deductive reasoning

• Evaluate cause-and-effect relationships 

Candidates who think independently, possess high-level analytical skills, and can innovate solutions to complex problems should succeed at this test. Such skills should translate into the ability to address the challenges and complexities of a manufacturing job, including risk assessment and product compliance. 

Numerical Reasoning test

In many manufacturing roles, workers must interpret relatively complicated data in forms such as graphs, tables, diagrams, text, and images. Manufacturing professionals should be able to identify numerical patterns in this data and be comfortable working with fractions, percentages, and whole numbers.

Testing your candidates’ numerical reasoning skills is, therefore, essential. TestGorilla’s Numerical Reasoning test makes this easy to do. It measures individuals’ ability to:

• Perform complex calculations 

• Interpret charts, diagrams, and graphs

• Understand text and tables

• Use numbers to solve problems and predict trends

A candidate’s test results will reflect their skill with numbers, revealing whether they can excel in various manufacturing roles – from production and quality control to process improvement and logistics management.

Hire the best manufacturing workers with TestGorilla

Hiring talented manufacturing workers is essential for any manufacturing company because they’re responsible for not only the products that the company sells but also product safety. Under-qualified manufacturing workers could spell disaster for a company’s products, reputation, and bottom line. 

For this reason, it’s vital to assess a candidate’s skills with pre-employment testing. Effective testing makes it easy to identify candidates with the skills needed to succeed in manufacturing.

TestGorilla offers an extensive test library with more than 300 tests to help you assess candidates for your manufacturing positions. Start by giving TestGorilla’s free plan a try to learn more about how we can help you hire the right people for your company.