Indeed assessments are a waste of time, and in my opinion… abilist.
All of these jobs I apply for I am qualified for or over qualified for. When I apply for jobs, yes I want it to be easy and quick. I avoid companies that make you enter all the information on your resume into their company application process that takes 40 minutes and they want phone numbers of references without any promise of interest and no human will see it, this is just to make their robot scan info easier.
Now, employers love their assessments indeed. Why? Why wait 30 minutes taking three or four of these ridiculous assessments you can take 10 minutes asking me for a quick phone interview. Your job post tells me there are 100+ applicants so to increase my already slim chance I need to spend an extra thirty minutes of my unpaid time taking your stupid assessments. That's me doing the work FOR THE COMPANY. UNPAID. I'm literally doing the work of of them hiring applicants for them.
Assessments are also a barrier. Their voice interviews? Are you kidding me? What if I live in a loud environment and don't really have privacy. That should disqualify me from an onsite location? What if I'm mute and don't have a voice. Or I am deaf and the sound of my voice allows you to discriminate against me before I can even get an interview.
Their other assessments also bar people with low vision or who are blind and can't afford the fancy accommodations tech to allow them to take these assessments accurately. Instantly discriminating before an application is complete.
For me, I am neurodivergent. Autistic and ADHD. These tests they have me take are not a fair comparison of my real skills. Finding a complicated pattern between squares and triangles six times over for ten minutes IS NOT an accurate representation of my abilities and intelligence. It's so dehumanizing! I'm smart and capable and creative in so many ways, just because I suck at finding patterns in shapes or I can't solve a complicated math problem in two minutes doesn't mean I'm not cut for the job.
I have never been fired, I have only ever been promoted and praised for my work performance because me being different, being neurodivergent has forced me to always think outside of the box when it comes to problem solving because I had to accomodate myself and because I see the world differently and think differently I come up with different solutions that neurotypical people would not have thought of and that's why I'm a valuable asset to any team.
Different people are important, this is why diversity is important. It allows things to move forward! It really bums me out when a good job randomly asks me to take 30+ min out of my day to take tests, unpaid. Now, I just never complete them and only continue applying for jobs who don't waste people's time with that crap. For other people, it may seem like a nuisance. But for people with disabilities, we know all too well it's just a clever legal loop hole way to ween out the people they can't discriminate against to our face, but robots can.
TL;DR: Indeed assessments lack accommodations for people with disabilities thus barring people who would be able to thrive at the job with or without accomodations because they can't complete unrelated to the job robo tests that are designed only for people who do not have disabilities.