How to Do Well on the USA Hire Occupational Interaction Assessment

What Is the Occupational Interaction Assessment? 

The Occupational Interaction Assessment is a personality test used as part of the USA Hire process. It is an extensive questionnaire composed of over 150 questions about the candidate’s habits, interests, and workplace preferences.

Like many other personality tests, the Occupational Interaction Assessment asks candidates to rank statements in accordance with how much they feel the statement describes them or how often they perform the actions described or feel the emotions mentioned.

The Occupational Interaction Assessment is sometimes also called the Computer Adaptive Occupational Interaction Assessment, which means it makes use of computer algorithms to select the next questions that are going to be shown based on your answers to the previous questions. This means it is not possible to ‘game the system' by memorizing questions.

Occupational Interaction Sample Question 

Read the following statement and think about the answer that best describes you most of the time:

If I forget to fill out a form with information that others need, I make sure to follow up.

courtesy of USA Hire. Source

 

How to Answer This Question

This statement evaluates the candidate’s self-discipline, in this case, the ability to follow up and complete tasks that they have set, even though there may not necessarily be an external motivator (e.g. someone reminding them or a superior urging them) to take action.

Candidates with higher scores are viewed as more productive potential employees who can manage themselves and complete assignments on time, whereas lower scores are seen as describing less productive employees who have difficulty completing tasks and waste valuable time or give up easily on tasks. It would be ideal to have employees that motivate themselves rather than those that need to be motivated.

As such, you should choose answers that will result in a higher score associated with the self-discipline trait. 

Whereas self-discipline indicates a desire and ability to work and is therefore essential in the majority of jobs, other characteristics may be essential for one job but not so important for another. 

For example, another group of statements could examine strategic thinking and macro thinking. 
This might look like this:
"I am the kind of person who sees the big picture, focusing less on the small details."

Here, this quality is essential for candidates applying for managerial positions like heads of departments, team leaders, campaign managers, etc. However, it is less desirable for a position requiring attention to the fine details and doing a more meticulous work like analysts, accountants, and proofreaders.

How To Prepare for the Occupational Interaction Assessment

As you can see, there are two main capabilities that will ensure you succeed in answering personality questions according to what's expected of qualified employees: 

1. Identify the underlying qualities behind each question.

2. Know which characteristics and the most essential for your position and choose answers accordingly. These are the qualities your employer expects potential employees to demonstrate in order to become successful on the job. 

The only way to become skilled at quickly recognizing the qualities behind questions and choosing answers that show you possess essential qualities for your position is by practicing answering the test and learning from feedback.

See also: USA Hire Occupational Reasoning Test

Tips for the Occupational Interaction Assessment 

• Get a good rest the night before the test and eat a healthy breakfast
• Take the entire test in one sitting. This will ensure you’re focused and alert.
• Pay attention to the questions. If you get a low score, you will need to wait a year to retake the test.