What Is the Best Employee Assessment?
How to Choose the Right Assessment for Job Fit
Many organizations search for the “best employee assessment”, hoping for a single tool that works for every role. That assumption is the first mistake.
The best employee assessment depends on the job, the decision being made, and the level of risk associated with getting the hire wrong. They also accurately predict performance for a specific role.
This page explains what “best” actually means in the context of employee assessments and how to choose the right assessment to support job-fit hiring decisions.
Why There Is No Single “Best” Assessment
here is no universally best employee assessment for all situations.
An assessment that works well for screening frontline roles may be inappropriate for selecting leaders, sales professionals, or safety-sensitive positions.
The best assessment is one that matches the complexity and importance of the hiring decision.
The Role of Job Fit in Assessment Selection
Job fit is the strongest predictor of long-term performance and retention.
Assessments that ignore job fit often identify capable individuals who are poorly matched to the actual work. Over time, this leads to disengagement, turnover, and underperformance.
The best employee assessments are designed to evaluate how well an individual aligns with the true demands of the job.
What High-Quality Employee Assessments Measure
High-quality employee assessments measure more than one dimension.
They evaluate how a person thinks, how they naturally behave at work, and what types of work motivate them. This whole-person view provides far more predictive insight than single-trait tools.
Assessments that focus on only one factor rarely provide enough information to support important hiring decisions.
Matching Assessment Depth to Hiring Risk
Not every role requires the same level of assessment depth.
Entry-level or high-volume roles may only require basic screening. Roles that impact revenue, leadership, safety, or long-term success require deeper, diagnostic insight.
Choosing the best employee assessment means matching the depth of the tool to the risk of the hire.
Using Assessments Correctly in Hiring
Employee assessments should support hiring decisions, not replace them.
The best assessments inform interviews, onboarding, and development conversations. They provide objective data that reduces bias and improves decision quality.
Misusing assessments as pass-fail tools undermines their value and increases legal risk.
Where Occupational DNA® Fits
Occupational DNA® provides the framework for determining which employee assessment is best for a given role.
By defining what success looks like in the job, Occupational DNA® ensures assessments are selected and applied correctly. Candidates are evaluated against the job requirements, not ranked against one another.
This approach improves hiring accuracy and consistency across the organization.
Next Steps
If you are evaluating assessments or already using PXT Select, the next step is to determine whether it is being applied correctly to your roles.
Assessment tools do not create results. Processes do.
We help organizations build the right ones.
About the Author
John P. Beck, Jr. is the founder of The Assessment Company, established in 1993. He has over 30 years of experience helping organizations make better hiring, promotion, and development decisions using validated assessment tools and performance modeling.
John specializes in job-fit diagnostics, Occupational DNA modeling, and the responsible application of PXT Select. His work focuses on reducing turnover, improving performance consistency, and ensuring assessment data is used in a fair and defensible manner.