GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. -- Companies looking to make a few precious hires often turn to some form of pre-employment testing to screen top candidates.

Karen Kodzik of Cultivating Careers says she is seeing a lot of it when her clients are called back for interviews.

"Pre-employment testing is becoming more and more common as the candidate pools are large," said Kodzik.

"It's really gone to a new level, psychological testing, aptitude testing, personality testing."

Kodzik tells her clients to try to schedule these kinds of tests so they don't fall on the same day as the job interview.  Kodzik says both an interview and a battery of tests can stress someone to the point of where they won't perform at their best level.

Kodzik also advises her clients to find out from the employer how those tests will be weighed in the screening process.

"Some employers weight them very heavily in the process, and others just use them as a check and balance to the interview process," said Kodzik.

The company paying for the testing owns the test results, but Kodzik coaches her clients to find out in advance if they can get a copy of the results.

The reason, according to Kodzik, is if anything does turn up that employers would view as a negative, the job candidate can identify it and address it in future job searches.

On a final note, Kodzik says job candidates are better served by going with their gut when they answer questions on a pre-employment test.  Trying to "outsmart" the test can bring you a result you don't want, as Kodzik who adds standardized tests have "validation points" that check for that.

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