Make Maritime Recruitment Easier with Martide's English Tests

As a small to medium sized shipowner or manning agent who uses Martide’s Software as a Service to help run your maritime recruitment and crew planning operations, did you know how useful our English Test function is?

If you’re recruiting seafarers for you, or your clients', vacant jobs at sea, you probably want them to have a decent level of working English.

This is where our online English Test can help so you can make sure you have the right seafarer for the job.

Obviously being able to understand and communicate in English is crucial for seafarers which is why we’ve made it easier for shipowners and managers, as well as manning agents, to quickly see which of their candidates have an aptitude in the language and are therefore suitable for moving on to the next stage in the recruitment pipeline.

When you’re sourcing candidates for your seafarer jobs there can be a lot of boxes you need to check: Their work experience, sea time and qualifications to name just three. Their seafarer skills, their time in rank, their competence in the English language and their medical history to name four more.

So what if there was a way you could filter your applicants or the seafarers in Martide’s candidate database so you only need to spend your time checking the seafarer profiles of those who fulfill all of your criteria.  

The good news is - there is!

Martide’s filter and search options lets you find seafarers with relevant skills, from certain countries, and who hold the right visas and documents - to name just a few.

You can then reach out to those candidates directly via Martide's built in messaging inbox.

Even better, once you've found seafarers you like the look of you can add them to a seafarer pool so that you can easily find them again.

Side note: Your seafarer pools function as a talent pipeline. In Martide’s platform they allow you to add candidates based on their skills, qualifications and other criteria to a pool.

It’s a way of gathering candidates who have potential so that you can contact them when a position becomes available.

But back to the English Test feature!

Make maritime recruitment easier with Martide's English Test for seafarers

First of all, you’re going to need to know how to set an online English Test for your candidates to take as part of your maritime recruitment pipeline.

And now for the really good news! All you need to do is choose a couple of settings because Martide has done all the hard work for you. You don’t need to sit down and spend hours writing the test as it’s already in our system.

How to set an English Test

To create an online English Test for seafarers log in to your Martide account. At the top right of the page you will see your profile picture. Click on it and then on Settings in the drop down menu. That will take you to the Settings page where you will then see English Test:

You will now see this page:

Here you can:

• Choose which countries you want to be able to skip the test. For example, if you hire seafarers from countries that have English as a native or second/official language you might not want candidates from those countries to have to take the test. You can add as many exempt countries as you like by clicking in the Exception Countries box and typing the first few letters of the country's name. Candidates from those countries will not see the test in their recruitment pipeline.
• Add an English Test to the list by clicking the +Add English test button on the top right. (If you do not see the English Test you require, please contact support@martide.com and we will add one for you.
• Enter the minimum score that anyone taking the test must achieve. This score is your pass/fail rate and you decide how high or low you want it to be.
• Edit or delete a test by clicking the pen icon (edit) or the trash can icon (to delete.)

One of the great things about the Exception List feature is that you can add as many nationalities as you like to this list. It also saves both you and the seafarer time because you don’t have unnecessary stages cluttering up your maritime recruitment pipeline.

How to set your minimum pass/fail rate score

Click the little pen icon to the right of the name of the English Test:

You will see this pop-up box:

Enter your fail/pass rate into the minimum score box and click Save.

How to add and check a candidate’s English Test results

We’re sure you know that if you want to view a seafarer’s profile you just need to click on the Candidates Page and then click on a seafarer’s name.

Doing so will give you access to all the information you need to know about someone who has applied to one of your vacancies. The Candidates Page looks like this:

Once you’re in a seafarer’s profile you will be able to see all relevant information about them including their personal and contact details, work experience, physical specs, education, employment history and documentation.

And you will also be able to see if they have taken an English Test, and if so their results and which, if any, answers to the test that they got wrong. You can also edit this section.You’ll find the English Test section towards the bottom of a candidate’s profile. To reach it, either scroll down or click on English Test in the header shortcut bar:

You can see that in our example below, the candidate passed their test with a full score of 100.

If they had of failed, the section would instead look like this:

How to add a candidate's English Test results

Click on the blue text that says + Add English test (see the image above.) You will see this pop-up box:

Here you can:

• Select the test you used from the English Test Type drop down menu.
• Enter the candidate’s test score in the box below.
• Upload the candidate’s results/correct answers.
• Upload the candidate’s failed test results (if they have any.)
• If the candidate got a perfect score and didn’t fail any questions, click the No failed questions box.

The system assumes the candidate has failed at least some of the test’s questions. Therefore you have the option of uploading the test results and the failed results, as seen above.

If the candidate passed with flying colors and didn’t get any answers wrong, you can check the No Failed Questions box and it will remove the option to add failed answers. That screen looks like this:

And that’s it! We hope that you’ve found this post about using the online English Test for seafarers function useful and that you also find that being able to view a candidate’s test results in their seafarer profile helps streamline your maritime recruitment process.

If you’d like more help regarding the English Test feature, the best place to find it is on our support website. Click here for the English Test’s dedicated page.

On the support website you’ll also find 'how to guides' for virtually all aspects of Martide’s maritime recruitment and crew management platform for both shipowners and managers, and manning agents.

(We’ve also got seafarers covered, so if you have any candidates or hires who need any help or advice relating to using Martide, you can point them in the right direction!)

As always, if you do have any questions about any of our platform or website’s features and functions, you are always more than welcome to contact us.

This blog post was originally published on July 18th 2019 and was last updated to reflect new design changes in the English Test function on October 25th 2022