We do work tests for all roles, operations or not. I think they are far and away the most valuable part of our hiring process.
The ones I have found the most useful for operations hiring:
Having people to work through hypothetical complicated financial problems like sending a candidate a list of rules for how transactions should be entered into a spreadsheet, then giving them a list of sample transaction with tons of mistakes and asking them to correct the mistakes, and then giving a list of new entries and seeing if they do it correctly.
Asking someone how the would resolve a hypothetical complicated situation involving HR compliance, financial compliance, etc. all bundled together.
The least helpful:
Asking people to write something (especially if the role involves communications) - folks interviewing often just don’t seem to know your organization well enough to communicate about it well prior to working at the org., and it’s really hard to compare these against each other besides on the basis of grammar, etc.
We do work tests for all roles, operations or not. I think they are far and away the most valuable part of our hiring process.
The ones I have found the most useful for operations hiring:
Having people to work through hypothetical complicated financial problems like sending a candidate a list of rules for how transactions should be entered into a spreadsheet, then giving them a list of sample transaction with tons of mistakes and asking them to correct the mistakes, and then giving a list of new entries and seeing if they do it correctly.
Asking someone how the would resolve a hypothetical complicated situation involving HR compliance, financial compliance, etc. all bundled together.
The least helpful:
Asking people to write something (especially if the role involves communications) - folks interviewing often just don’t seem to know your organization well enough to communicate about it well prior to working at the org., and it’s really hard to compare these against each other besides on the basis of grammar, etc.