With the prominence of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation employers increasingly feel the need to hire staff with in-demand technology skills. However, most employees who work in the education sector rarely deal with AI, but regularly interact with colleagues, students, parents, and community stakeholders.
The needs for education support staff are in soft skills areas such as communication, collaboration, negotiation, and creativity skills. In fact, LinkedIn’s 2020 Skills Report identified soft skills as one of the top differentiators for employees. However, even though soft skills play a large role in selecting education support staff, candidates also need basic digital literacy and office administration skills.
These are the top skills and abilities to look for in education support staff.
Interpersonal Skills
As the need for soft skills continues to grow, measuring them accurately is becoming an essential component of the candidate screening process. The difficulty is that while you can objectively measure most job and technical skills, judging interpersonal skills such as communication, empathy, and collaboration is not as straightforward.
Therefore, organizations must employ a consistent, valid measurement of behavioral characteristics. eSkill’s Interpersonal Skills In a School Setting Test provides a quantitative, measurable analysis of job-seekers’ soft skills. It is a behavioral assessment that shows statistical correlations between how test-takers respond to specific questions and their projected performance on-the-job.
Using eSkill’s science-backed approach to evaluating behavioral characteristics takes the guesswork out of determining if applicants’ personalities are the right fit for a role.
Basic Digital Skills
A 2019 IBM report estimated that 120 million workers globally will need retraining within the next three years due to the rapid evolution of technology. As expected, jobs in education have not escaped the acceleration of digital transformation. As a result, demand is increasing for education support staff with digital literacy skills.
Today, identifying candidates with digital literacy skills is critical for any organization. eSkill’s Digital Literacy Skills Test provides employers with data-driven insights into candidates’ technology skills. The test evaluates cybersecurity knowledge, using online communication tools, organizing information and content, and using digital devices.
Combine eSkill’s digital literacy test with any education skills test to create a robust and comprehensive evaluation.
Administrative Skills
Education support staff in administrative positions must have superior office management skills because they are responsible for timely and accurate record-keeping and reporting, information distribution, planning and scheduling events and meetings, and managing projects.
eSkill’s Office Administration Skills Tests enable employers to gauge how well-suited a candidate is for a position with a high level of office management responsibilities.
With eSkill, hiring teams can create a comprehensive evaluation by selecting multiple single-subject administrative skills tests, such as:
- Office Filing Skills Test
- Multitasking Simulation Test
- Email Etiquette Skills Test
- Accounting and Bookkeeping Principles Skills Test
- Event Planning Skills Test
- Project Management Skills Test
- MS Office® Skills Test and Simulations
- Basic Math Skills Test
- Form-Fill Data Entry Typing Test
- Typing 10-Key Data Entry Test
- Typing Business Text Skills Test
This is only a snapshot of the many office administration skills tests that eSkill offers. With hundreds of customizable job- and subject-specific tests, eSkill makes employment testing simple.
Bilingual Skills
Not surprisingly, more and more education support positions require candidates to speak a second language. Approximately 5 million US students identify as English Language Learners (ELL) and 3.8 million Spanish speaking students make up the majority of that number. Therefore, the need for bilingual staff is growing.
eSkill’s language proficiency tests streamline candidate evaluations. Rather than requiring candidates to complete multiple employment tests, eSkill enables employers to bundle tests into one, seamless evaluation and quickly and accurately assess applicants’ ability to speak, write, and translate various languages including Spanish, Arabic, Portuguese, and many more.
Clients can easily customize education support and administrative skills tests with the assistance of their dedicated U.S.-based Client Success Manager. These assessment experts will walk you and your team through the test selection and customization process from start to finish.
Your organization can feel confident in partnering with eSkill because of its extensive experience in developing and administering legally defensible employment tests. eSkill boasts a nearly 20-year record free of litigation and compliance with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s’ guidelines.
eSkill’s education skills tests enable employers to create smart hiring workflows that lead to data-driven hiring decisions and its user-friendly platform enables employers to leverage customizable skills tests and make informed, objective hiring decisions. Let eSkill’s advanced technology streamline the arduous and monotonous tasks of screening candidates.

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