Deciding Whether to Test Applicants

Testing of job applicants is supposed to help you pick the best candidate by giving you information that is valuable to your selection process. Here's a good rule to apply: If you feel that the information that you can get from a test outweighs the cost, you should administer the test; otherwise, you should not. Consider these questions when deciding whether to test:

If you do test, make sure that you check out our guidelines for administering tests.

If you have fewer than 15 employees. Unless your business is covered by state antidiscrimination laws, the repercussions of testing are mostly in terms of the time that it takes to administer them and the money needed to pay for the medical and physical tests. Chances are, you aren't going to want to get too deeply into many of these tests, particularly since the costs usually outweigh the benefits.

If you have 15 or more employees. You are subject to specific federal antidiscrimination laws, and testing conjures up plenty of opportunities to be accused of discrimination and creates recordkeeping duties. Before testing, check with your attorney.