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1. Which is the usual order of stages in a recruitment funnel?
- A. Sourcing → screening → interviews → offer → joining
- B. Offer → sourcing → interviews → screening → joining
- C. Screening → joining → sourcing → offer → interviews
- D. Interviews → sourcing → offer → screening → joining
Answer: A. Sourcing → screening → interviews → offer → joining
Candidates are first attracted (sourcing), then filtered on CVs or tests (screening), interviewed, made an offer, and finally join. Each stage narrows the pool, which is why it is called a funnel.
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2. A job received 400 applications and 80 candidates were shortlisted after screening. What is the screening yield ratio?
- A. 80%
- B. 20%
- C. 25%
- D. 5%
Answer: B. 20%
Yield ratio = candidates moving to the next stage ÷ candidates at this stage × 100 = 80 ÷ 400 × 100 = 20%.
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3. A company made 25 job offers in a quarter and 20 candidates accepted. What is the offer acceptance rate?
- A. 20%
- B. 25%
- C. 125%
- D. 80%
Answer: D. 80%
Offer acceptance rate = offers accepted ÷ offers made × 100 = 20 ÷ 25 × 100 = 80%. A low rate can point to uncompetitive pay, a slow process or a poor candidate experience.
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4. What does the recruitment metric “time to fill” usually measure?
- A. The number of days a new hire takes to become fully productive
- B. The length of the candidate’s notice period
- C. The number of days from when a job opening is approved until a candidate accepts the offer
- D. The total time spent in interviews per candidate
Answer: C. The number of days from when a job opening is approved until a candidate accepts the offer
Time to fill tracks how long a vacancy stays open, from the approved requisition or job posting to offer acceptance. Time to productivity and notice period are different measures, and interview duration is only a small part of the process.
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5. A team started the month with 200 employees and ended with 220. 7 employees left during the month. Using average headcount, what is the monthly attrition rate?
- A. 3.5%
- B. 3.18%
- C. 3.33%
- D. 7%
Answer: C. 3.33%
Average headcount = (200 + 220) ÷ 2 = 210. Attrition = 7 ÷ 210 × 100 = 3.33%. 3.5% divides by the opening headcount only, and 3.18% by the closing headcount only.
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6. Over a year, 36 employees left a company whose average headcount was 240. What is the annual attrition rate?
- A. 15%
- B. 12%
- C. 6.7%
- D. 36%
Answer: A. 15%
Annual attrition = employees who left ÷ average headcount × 100 = 36 ÷ 240 × 100 = 15%. 36% wrongly treats the number of leavers as a percentage.
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7. Which of these is an example of voluntary attrition?
- A. An employee is dismissed for misconduct
- B. An employee resigns to join another company
- C. An employee’s role is made redundant
- D. The employer decides not to renew a fixed-term contract
Answer: B. An employee resigns to join another company
Voluntary attrition is when the employee chooses to leave, such as resigning for another job. Dismissal, redundancy and non-renewal are decided by the employer, so they are involuntary.
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8. A company spent ₹6,00,000 in total on recruiting (job boards, agency fees, interview costs) and hired 15 people. What is the cost per hire?
- A. ₹4,000
- B. ₹90,000
- C. ₹40,000
- D. ₹60,000
Answer: C. ₹40,000
Cost per hire = total recruiting cost ÷ number of hires = ₹6,00,000 ÷ 15 = ₹40,000. Include both external costs (ads, agency fees) and internal costs (recruiter time) when you calculate it at work.
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9. What are the two main outputs of job analysis?
- A. Salary slip and appointment letter
- B. Balance sheet and profit and loss statement
- C. Attendance register and leave record
- D. Job description and job specification
Answer: D. Job description and job specification
Job analysis studies a job to find out what it involves and what it needs. The job description records duties and responsibilities; the job specification records the qualifications, skills and experience required.
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10. What does a job specification describe?
- A. The duties and responsibilities of the job
- B. The qualifications, skills, experience and personal qualities a person needs for the job
- C. The salary and benefits offered
- D. Where the job sits in the organisation chart
Answer: B. The qualifications, skills, experience and personal qualities a person needs for the job
The job specification describes the person needed. Duties and responsibilities belong in the job description. Pay and reporting lines may appear in an offer or job advert but are not what the specification is about.
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11. What is the main purpose of job evaluation?
- A. Rating how well an individual employee performs
- B. Checking a candidate’s references
- C. Measuring whether a training programme worked
- D. Determining the relative worth of jobs in an organisation to build a fair pay structure
Answer: D. Determining the relative worth of jobs in an organisation to build a fair pay structure
Job evaluation compares jobs, not people, using methods such as ranking, grading or point factors, so pay grades reflect each job’s demands. Rating individuals is performance appraisal, and measuring training impact is training evaluation.
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12. A new hire joins on Monday. Which approach reflects good onboarding practice?
- A. Give them a laptop and let them figure things out on their own
- B. Hand over the policy manual and schedule a review after six months
- C. Put them on live client work in the first hour with no introductions
- D. Share key information before day one, assign a buddy, and have the manager set clear 30-60-90-day goals with regular check-ins
Answer: D. Share key information before day one, assign a buddy, and have the manager set clear 30-60-90-day goals with regular check-ins
Good onboarding starts before joining, gives the new hire a go-to person, and sets clear early goals with frequent feedback. Leaving people alone, waiting six months to review, or throwing them in without context leads to confusion and early exits.
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13. What is 360-degree feedback?
- A. Feedback given only by the employee’s manager
- B. Feedback collected from the manager, peers, direct reports and the employee themself, and sometimes customers
- C. A rating on 360 separate criteria
- D. A review held every 360 days
Answer: B. Feedback collected from the manager, peers, direct reports and the employee themself, and sometimes customers
360-degree feedback gathers views from all around the employee: above, alongside, below and self. It gives a fuller picture than a manager-only review and is often used for development rather than pay decisions.
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14. In Management by Objectives (MBO), popularised by Peter Drucker, how is performance appraised?
- A. The manager and employee agree specific objectives in advance, and performance is judged on how far they are achieved
- B. Employees are ranked from best to worst
- C. Each employee is compared with every other employee in pairs
- D. The manager records critical incidents throughout the year
Answer: A. The manager and employee agree specific objectives in advance, and performance is judged on how far they are achieved
MBO is built on jointly agreed, measurable objectives and review against them. Ranking, paired comparison and critical incident methods are separate appraisal techniques.
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15. What is a Behaviourally Anchored Rating Scale (BARS)?
- A. A method that places a fixed percentage of employees in each rating band
- B. A self-assessment form filled in only by the employee
- C. A rating scale where each point is anchored to descriptions of specific job behaviours
- D. A ranking of employees by length of service
Answer: C. A rating scale where each point is anchored to descriptions of specific job behaviours
BARS combines critical incidents with a rating scale: each score is tied to an example of observable behaviour, so raters judge actions, not vague traits. Fixed percentages describe forced distribution.
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16. What is the forced distribution method of appraisal?
- A. Employees are rated only by customers
- B. Employees are placed into predetermined proportions, for example top 20%, middle 70% and bottom 10%
- C. Each employee is compared with every other employee in pairs
- D. Employees write their own goals and rate themselves
Answer: B. Employees are placed into predetermined proportions, for example top 20%, middle 70% and bottom 10%
Forced distribution makes raters spread employees across set bands, which stops everyone being rated “excellent”. Its weakness is that a strong team may still have to place someone in the bottom band.
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17. A manager rates an employee highly on every criterion, including punctuality and teamwork, mainly because the employee gives excellent presentations. Which rating error is this?
- A. Halo effect
- B. Recency bias
- C. Central tendency
- D. Contrast effect
Answer: A. Halo effect
The halo effect happens when one strong trait colours the rating of everything else. Recency bias is overweighting recent events, central tendency is rating everyone as average, and contrast effect is rating someone relative to the previous person reviewed.
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18. A manager bases an employee’s annual rating mostly on a mistake made in the last month, ignoring eleven good months. Which rating error is this?
- A. Halo effect
- B. Recency bias
- C. Leniency
- D. Similar-to-me bias
Answer: B. Recency bias
Recency bias gives too much weight to recent events. Keeping notes or evidence through the year and holding regular check-ins help managers rate the whole period fairly.
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19. What are the four levels of Kirkpatrick’s training evaluation model, in order?
- A. Plan, Do, Check, Act
- B. Attention, Interest, Desire, Action
- C. Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing
- D. Reaction, Learning, Behaviour, Results
Answer: D. Reaction, Learning, Behaviour, Results
Kirkpatrick’s levels are Reaction (did participants find it useful), Learning (did they gain knowledge or skill), Behaviour (do they apply it on the job) and Results (did business outcomes improve). The other options are a quality cycle, a marketing model and a team development model.
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20. Three months after a negotiation skills programme, a company checks whether sales staff are actually using the new techniques with clients. Which Kirkpatrick level is this?
- A. Level 1: Reaction
- B. Level 2: Learning
- C. Level 3: Behaviour
- D. Level 4: Results
Answer: C. Level 3: Behaviour
Checking whether people apply what they learned on the job is Level 3, Behaviour. Level 1 is participant feedback, Level 2 is a test of knowledge or skill, and Level 4 would look at outcomes such as higher deal values.
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21. A training programme cost ₹2,00,000 and produced measurable monetary benefits of ₹5,00,000. Using ROI = (benefits − cost) ÷ cost × 100, what is the training ROI?
- A. 250%
- B. 40%
- C. 60%
- D. 150%
Answer: D. 150%
ROI = (₹5,00,000 − ₹2,00,000) ÷ ₹2,00,000 × 100 = ₹3,00,000 ÷ ₹2,00,000 × 100 = 150%. 250% is the benefit-to-cost ratio (5 ÷ 2) shown as a percentage, not ROI.
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22. Why are structured interviews generally more reliable than unstructured ones?
- A. Every candidate is asked the same job-related questions and scored against the same rating guide
- B. They are always shorter
- C. Interviewers are free to ask whatever they like
- D. They avoid asking about skills
Answer: A. Every candidate is asked the same job-related questions and scored against the same rating guide
Using the same questions and a common scoring guide makes candidates comparable and reduces personal bias. Length is not the point, free-form questioning is what makes unstructured interviews inconsistent, and structured interviews do assess skills.
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23. Behavioural interview questions such as “Tell me about a time you handled a conflict” are based on which idea?
- A. Qualifications alone predict job success
- B. Hypothetical questions reveal more than real examples
- C. Past behaviour in similar situations is a good guide to future behaviour
- D. Candidates should be tested mainly on general knowledge
Answer: C. Past behaviour in similar situations is a good guide to future behaviour
Behavioural interviewing assumes that how someone actually acted before is a strong indicator of how they will act again. That is why interviewers ask for specific past examples, often in the STAR format.
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24. A company had 150 employees at the start of the year. 12 of those employees left during the year. What is the retention rate for that starting group?
- A. 92%
- B. 88%
- C. 8%
- D. 96%
Answer: A. 92%
Retention rate = employees from the starting group still employed ÷ starting headcount × 100 = (150 − 12) ÷ 150 × 100 = 138 ÷ 150 × 100 = 92%. 8% is the share of that group that left.
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25. An employee files a formal complaint that their team lead regularly humiliates them in meetings. What should HR do first?
- A. Tell the employee to sort it out directly with the team lead
- B. Dismiss the team lead immediately
- C. Share the complaint with the whole team to collect their views
- D. Acknowledge the complaint, record it, and start a fair, confidential inquiry under the grievance policy, hearing both sides
Answer: D. Acknowledge the complaint, record it, and start a fair, confidential inquiry under the grievance policy, hearing both sides
A formal grievance needs a documented, confidential and impartial process in which both sides are heard before any decision. Sending the employee back alone ignores the complaint, instant dismissal skips due process, and broadcasting it breaches confidentiality.