The Value of Practical versus Verbal Assessments in Artisan Interviews

With the tightening of the competitive job market, organizations are focusing on how best to ensure talent fit for their jobs. This becomes even more important when dealing with artisans. Artisans, such as carpenters, electricians, masons, and welders, are skilled hand workers, and their jobs involve not only the application of technical skill, but also creativity and problem solving. Despite the hands-on and practical nature of the work, conventional recruitment methods tend to put a lot of emphasis on the verbal and written components of the job application process. For this reason, it becomes important to have a balanced offered to the artisans by integrating verbal and practical components of the artisan interview.

The Constraints of Oral Interviews

The most frequently deployed kind of assessment in the recruitment cycle consists of oral interviews. Usually, a panel of interviewers queries a given candidate about their experience, technical aspects of a given role, and a few problem-solving exercises. While oral interviews allow the assessment of a candidate’s communicative ability, thinking on their feet, and theoretical understanding of a given subject, they are deeply ineffective in evaluating artisans skills. To illustrate, numerous adept artisans in any trade may have little or no verbal skills. The gap might stem from not being “formally trained”, fear related to any initiative, or merely languages and geography. I do not mean to imply that the candidates in consideration are not skilled in some sense, and in fact, may be skilled communicators with other candidates.

Think of yourself as a master carpenter, who with years of practice and etiquettes have perfected that craft. He will always have trouble explaining his ideas in a theoretical context about woodworking. When that same person is asked to perform carpentry tasks that involve building or jigs, they undertake sharply difficult tangents, and their skills are beyond clear analysis. Reliance on oral interviews in such a case is a lack of attention that costs a firm inestimable talent.

The Case for Practical Assessments

The opportunity to demonstrate a person’s skills and what they can provide is a privilege that should be valued. The act of evaluating practical tasks can be anything from welding metal frames to installing an electrical circuit or repairing a mechanical device. Practical evaluation tends to one’s skills, functionality, and one’s real potential without the focus being on the interview and the possible communication issues that come with that. It is a way to assess an individual to the focus of the real issue: the tasks at hand. Time is not wasted on conversations and can be spent on finishing tasks and evaluating the real potential of a candidate.

The truth is not all artisans can confidently and clearly explain what they know. Some even perform poorly under the stress of a formal interview and excel only when they are given a practical task to mindlessly perform. Defining one’s potential and talent involves a strong bias towards the practical side and for that reason, employers should be able to recognize poorly articulated knowledge on a hands-on task. Not all high potential artisans can express knowledge with their weak communication skills and hands-on tasks should be the basis of one’s potential evaluation.

Balancing Verbal and Practical Assessments

Practical assessments are important, but verbal interviews still have a place. Communication skills are important in most artisan jobs, especially in those that have some degree of teamwork, interfacing with customers, and meeting safety requirements. A candidate’s skills can best be captured with a balanced assessment that includes practical and verbal elements.

Such a balanced assessment could have three steps.

Initial Verbal Screening. The candidate is being evaluated based on the profile comprised of qualifications, employment history, and communication ability. This helps narrow down the candidate pool by weeding out candidates who have no awareness or do not possess the minimum qualifications.

Practical Evaluation. Those who make it through the first step complete trade-relevant practical tasks. For example, electricians could be asked to wire a panel and masons asked to build a sound wall. This step is all about real world skills, precision and problem solving.

Combined Assessment Discussion. After practical tasks, the candidate can be asked to explain their reasoning, approach, and self-assessment verbally. This gives craftsmen a chance to articulate their methods, demonstrating a blend of practical and communication skills.

Collectively, these stages provide a thorough assessment of the candidate, preventing the oversight of potential skills and abilities.

Effects on Quality and Diversity of Workforce

The implementation of practical and verbal assessments benefits quality and diversity of the workforce in a multitude of ways. To begin with, it makes it possible for organizations to recruit craftspeople on the basis of merit, which and improves overall skills and productivity. It also provides opportunities to people who are disadvantaged in the conventional verbal assessments, including those from non-schooling settings or those who have restricted verbal skills. This provides an opportunity to develop a more diversified workforce, which is valuable for innovation, cooperation, and diverse problem resolution.

In addition, practical assessments assist in minimizing bias that may come in employment opportunities. Studies suggest that hiring managers largely depend on their subjective assessments when conducting verbal interviews—these subjective assessments may involve biases regarding aspects such as the candidate’s physical appearance, accent, or other sociological or demographic characteristics. Contextual assessment methods enable employers to concentrate on more objective facets of candidate performance yielding a more equitable and merit-driven hiring process.

Issues and Solutions

It’s worth stating that, while it’s useful to combine task-based and verbal assessments; it does require considerable time and resources. Creating practical tasks can be a lengthy process and may need specific resources and/or oversight. For fairness to be achieved, tasks need to be standardized and there should be specified parameters for ratings. Furthermore, interviewers who are performing a verbal assessment should be instructed about bias and how to ask questions that support, rather than eclipse, the practical evaluation.

Best practices for artisan interviews include:

Set Standards: Develop measurable criteria for practical and oral components of the interview to enhance consistency and fairness.

Designed Practice Scenarios: Build practical assessment situations that mirror the realities of the workplace for the artisans to let them deal with the scenario.

Constructive Turn-Around: Offer practical candidates identifying areas for improvement to help skills stay and develop.

Flexible Expression: In the oral parts of the assessments, use clear and simple words, and let candidates verbalize, draw, or act out their reasoning for explanation.

The Good and Bad of Combining Practical and Verbal Assessments in Artisan Interviews

When it comes to hiring skilled artisans, there are plenty of things to consider. Considering the hands-on skills required by masons, welder, carpenters, and electricians, one have to pay attention to the technical skills in hands. Evaluating these skills can be challenging, however. Previous hiring practices have often depended on verbal interviews in which candidates simply recounted their knowledge and experience, and the means in which their problem-solving skills were used. While these verbal input can be valuable, it also is possible to underestimate a highly skilled artisan who is a poor verbal communicator. That said, many companies are starting to balance the use of practical and verbal assessments. But, as with all things, there are pros and cons to this.

The Good: Advantages of Combining Practical and Verbal Assessments

Because of the practical tasks, candidates can show real world skills described in a scenario. Verbal communication may be difficult especially for an artisan with little formal education, who may also be nervous, and shy. But, with hands-on tasks, like wiring an electrical panel, cabinet assembly, and welding a joint, one can demonstrate a great deal of skills. This means that real performance is being assessed, and not just the verbal description of skills.

Holistic Assessment

Employers gain an overall picture of a candidate’s capabilities as a consequence of the combination of a verbal and practical test. A verbal interview will assess the candidate’s theoretical knowledge, problem-solving ability, and how well they communicate. The practical will assess the candidate’s ability and accuracy. Together, they ascertain that the tradesperson is technically sound, capable of reading and understanding instructions, working safely, and detailing and discussing the process if asked.

Reduces Bias

Subjective impressions can have a considerable influence on verbal interviews. An interviewer can change their decision-making based solely, and without intent, on a candidate’s manner of talking, appearance, or obvious confidence. Practice-Based Assessments intervene on an investigator’s or interviewer’s unconscious bias, focusing on reality and observable skills. In this way, the best candidate rise above surface characteristics.

Identifies Hidden Talent

Poor performance in verbal interviews does not always imply that an artisan lacks practical skills. Some candidates may have legitimate skills, but rigid criteria in traditional job interviews can cause them to be overlooked. Practical assessments, which tend to be less intimidating than verbal interviews, can reveal these candidates’ abilities. This lets employers retain competent artisans that traditional methods of assessment may have disqualified.

The Bad: The Challenges of Practical Assessment and Verbal Assessment Combined

Resource Intensive
Practical assessments require a huge commitment of resources. Employers must provide materials, equipment and space, as well as time for supervisors to watch while carry out and assess these tasks. This can add to the cost of the recruiting process and add to the time, compared to verbal based interviews.

Difficult to Standardize
Standardizing the difficulty of the assessment across candidates can be difficult to achieve, it is hard to avoid possible variances in both difficulty and/or other conditions. Employers would need to come up with practical tasks that were standardized, clear and unambiguous. They would also have to develop objective scoring rubrics to apply to all candidates similarly.

Stressful for Candidates

Practical assessments that are observed may create anxiety in some Candidates, especially if the candidate is not feeling confident. If a candidate knows a supervisor is observing that candidate the context of the assessment may change, which may contribute to poorer performance. Because of this the assessor in essence can be underestimating the abilities of the candidate. The employer needs to establish as stress-free as possible environment for the candidates.

In-Depth Training for Interviewers is Needed

Evaluating practical performance accurately is both a skill and relies significantly on experience. An inexperienced interviewer may lack the ability to assess practical performance accurately, miss important strengths of competencies or candidates, or inadvertently prefer candidates in certain contexts for the evaluation. Good interviewers need to be trained so that they are scoring fairly and consistently.

Limited Assessment of Certain Competencies

There are some competencies or attributes that the employer may consider essential; such as teamwork, adaptability, or overcoming long-term problems that cannot be assessed observationally in short practical assessments. Therefore, verbal assessments will still be required in addition to practical assessments.

Conclusion

Hiring tradespeople is complicated and should not be done with a blanket approach. Turned off by the interview process, some highly skilled candidates will not show up for a verbal interview—and it would be a mistake to miss them. Even those individuals who have no fear of unplanned verbal interactions may also not be able to express their full level of knowledge or competence during a verbal exchange. If, in addition to a verbal assessment, the applicant is also given a practical assessment, the employer may feel more confident about their assessment of the applicant’s competence being comprehensive, fair, accurate and reliable. Research shows time and again, that when employers have a diversity of skills represented within their workforce, they also have greater diversity and inclusivity in the workplace and continued successes in the trades for many years . In a world that increasingly values skill and outcome, rather than just verbal communication skill alone, it is more than just good practice—it is required.