It's all in the Mind

Psychological and Psychometric Testing in Workplaces - Do they really lead to good hires?

We have worked with a number of clients across multiple industries and are often asked our opinion on pre-employment testing and screening processes including psychological testing and the value that it can offer employers.

For many years, psychometric and psychological assessments have been used to measure aptitude, intelligence and personality of a candidate. But recently we have noticed a steep increase in their usage in the employment industry, as many companies nowadays have started using them to help in better recruiting practices.

Psychometric tests include personality profiles, motivation questionnaires, reasoning tests and ability assessments mostly, used to assess the quality of potential employees.

Mostly, psychometric tests are designed to reveal behavioral traits and personality which does not easily can checked during the interview process. The other type of psychometric assessments comes in the form of an aptitude or ability assessment. All these tests can provide objective data for subjective measurements so that you can make an impartial judgment.

Here are our top 5 reasons how psychometric tests results can enhancing your recruitment practices.

1. Psychometric Assessments Beats Human Instinct - Human instinct is much better for taking any hiring decisions but for sake of the cost of a bad hire, these tests can give you better results. Psychometric assessments increase standardisation of the recruitment process by removing the senseless and (sometimes unconscious) biased decisions.

2. Results Are Measurable - With Psychometric assessments, a you can easily quantify and analyse the data which can often be a difficult task.

3. You Don’t Need A Psychology Degree - You do not need a psychology degree to understand the tests results. Psychometric assessments providers nowadays are providing such features. For example, Evalground, Mettl, HackerRank etc. provide easy to read reports that can now be instantly accessed online. Simplified real world language and graphics based results that tells you exactly what you need to know about the candidate.

4. All It Can Create A Positive Company Brand - The use of standardized hiring processes can create a powerful first impression of any employer’s brand image. Applicants nowadays can be attracted to modern recruitment as they seek for the objective approach to assessing their capability as a primary reason behind their satisfaction with the recruitment process. This is particularly useful for those individuals from different cultural backgrounds as psychometric assessments provides a level playing field where everyone’s merit is equally judged.

5. It Helps Shape Your Recruitment Strategy - Quality data is essential to shaping a truly effective recruitment strategy. Many hiring managers rely on a number of different inputs to make decisions and psychometric assessments are another tool that produce important objective data.

So how much weight should employers give to psychometric and psychological testing?

Before engaging in any kind of psychological or psychometric testing, you should have a clear idea about what you are trying to achieve by requiring candidates or employees to be tested. If there is any uncertainty about the purpose of the testing or whether the objective can reasonably be achieved, psychological or psychometric testing may not be an appropriate recruiting tool for you.

Where there is a clear purpose, you should then consider the method of testing and how much weight will be placed on the results. If the testing has been conducted to assess an individual’s mental fitness to perform their duties, then the opinion of a qualified and experienced medical professional will be highly significant. If, on the other hand, psychometric testing is more of a recruitment formality then it is unlikely to be determinative and may even be redundant.

Assessing the right candidate is a highly complex and subjective process, and psychometric assessments are a good way of objectively assessing candidate’s “hidden” traits.

Psychometric assessments can help any hiring manager make informed recruitment decisions. And it is big business. According to recruitment company Potentia, there are 500 tests available in New Zealand alone and "worthwhile tests vary in price from $75 to over $3000"

Choosing the right candidate can be tricky and time consuming. Psychological and psychometric assessments can help to simplify your options. It can help you by filtering most unsuitable applicants, however it will not be suitable for every role in every industry.

The appropriateness of psychological and psychometric testing should be carefully considered before any testing commences. You should consider whether the testing is necessary in the first place and how much weight will be given to test results.

Disclaimer

This article, and any information contained on our website is necessarily brief and general in nature, and should not be substituted for professional advice. Yellow Consulting does not accept liability for any loss or damage arising from reliance on the content of this blog, or from links on this website to any external website. You should always seek professional advice before taking any action in relation to the matters addressed.