Psychometric Test: The Best Way to Assess Candidates

Every organisation should strive to reduce their mistakes in hiring. Psychometric assessment can add a certain level of objectivity to the traditional hiring approach. It helps companies remove the unconscious bias that comes along with candidate selection.

When used correctly, cognitive and personality tests can provide a more objective overview of a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses, character and working style. For employers, cognitive and personality traits can help measure the candidate’s future performance and improve employee retention by making successful hiring decisions.

Why you should use psychometric assessment in recruitment

Psychometric assessment can measure attributes such as intelligence, critical reasoning, motivation and personality profile. Usually, employers will assess the skills and experience fairly accurately.

Psychometric testing offers objectivity to the pre-employment screening process and helps hiring managers receive accurate way of assessing candidates.  Many companies see psychometric testing as a way of employee screening a large pool of candidates during recruitment.

For hiring managers, psychometric testing can reduce workload which leaves more time frame to identify potential candidate from a suitable batch of applicants for the next stages of the interview process.

Xerox Corp. says personality tests have reduced employee attrition in high-turnover jobs. These tests allow managers to predict with more than 80s accuracy which employees will get the highest performance scores.
 

How to use psychometric assessment

There are different types of assessment that allow companies to measure how individuals differ in principles, opinions, motivation and priorities with regards to different tasks and situations.

These tests can also help analyse hidden traits of a person. For example, aptitude tests are helpful at analysing an applicants’ abilities than a formal education certificate. Personality tests are helpful at analysing the working style favoured by a candidate and how they interact with their environment and co-workers.

Psychometric tests can also help analyse hidden traits of a person.

Organisations, HR professionals, and hiring managers should also be mindful of legal companies when they add personality test to the recruitment process. The rise of psychometric tests has sparked criticisms on fears of the effectiveness of data-driven algorithms that determine a candidate’s future.

In the United States, the Disabilities Act requires test to respect privacy and not attempt to diagnose candidates in any way. Today, there are also laws that stops organisations from asking candidates to take any assessment that is designed for the purpose of diagnosing susceptibility to depression, and risk for mental or personality disorder. Because of anti-discrimination laws, employee assessment tools should be well validated.

Major companies that use psychometric testing

Microsoft

Microsoft’s personality test takes place over the phone. It comes after the competency and SHL tests. A person needs to have an impressive knowledge of Microsoft for the competency assessment. They also ask behavioural questions. The 24-question SHL test (mainly inductive reasoning) requires to be completed in 25 minutes.

McDonald’s

McDonald’s psychometric test is a personality test that needs to be completed right on the spot. It can also be taken home to be returned when finished by an applicant. It tests what kind of employee one will be by asking questions that measure their reactions under different situations.

Citigroup

Talent Q provides a set of numerical reasoning questions at Citigroup. Level difficulty increases with every question. A nonverbal pictorial test to test applicant’s logical reasoning are especially tough and are taken only by candidates into operations, technology, and HR job functions.

Free Psychometric Tests

Practice Aptitude Tests has numerical and verbal reasoning tests as well as situational judgement tests.

CareerOne has free aptitude and personality tests.

JobTestPrep provides an extensive amount of free psychometric practice tests:

• Free aptitude tests
• Free psychometric tests
• Free Watson-Glaser test
• Free in-tray exercise
• Free situational judgement tests
• Free personality tests
• Free Jung and Keirsey personality test

Is your company hiring? Try out the psychometric tests on your next candidates from AJobThing.com

This article is adapted from Psychometric Assessment: The Ultimate Employee Assessment Tool by Priyansha Minstry