What Are Psychometric Tests & Their Benefits?
Failure to fill vacancies can have serious repercussions for your company. First, you risk putting extra pressure on existing employees to fulfil the required duties. This, in turn, leads to employee discontentment, absences, and perhaps even strike action.
Yet, you can’t simply fill a vacancy with a mediocre candidate to plug a gap. If they’re the wrong fit then you’ll have to go through the hiring process all over again. This, of course, drains time, money, and resources.
In recent years, many companies have faced significant recruitment struggles. 57% of employers say they have hard-to-fill vacancies and 29% expect to face difficulties filling those vacancies.
Psychometric testing and assessment is an apt solution to your hiring struggles. These tests and questionnaires will help you identify the right abilities and personality traits for specific roles and develop a streamlined, targeted process to attract and hire only the best, most suitable candidates.
What Are Psychometric Tests?
Psychometric tests utilise psychological theory and statistical analysis to measure a job candidate’s cognitive abilities, personality traits, and behavioural styles. For instance, psychometric testing might comprise aptitude tests to judge a candidate’s numerical and verbal reasoning capabilities. It may involve a personality questionnaire to evaluate a candidate’s motivations and/or suitability to fit into the existing team.
The purpose of a psychometric test or questionnaire is to gain a comprehensive understanding of an applicant's potential beyond traditional interviews and CVs. This leads to more informed hiring decisions, the ability to align candidates' strengths with job requirements, better team dynamics, and an informed outlook on future job performance. The standardised nature of psychometric tests also promotes fairness and reduces biases in the recruitment process.
The Main Types of Psychometric Assessments
There are a range of approaches to psychometric assessment. Although, the main types of psychometric tools used in recruitment relate to aptitude/ability, and personality. Employers may use profilers, questionnaires, and instruments as part of a wider psychometric assessment.
Here are some of the key types of psychometric assessments you may wish to use in the application process:
1. Aptitude Tests
These assess specific cognitive abilities such as numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, and abstract reasoning. They may assess skills such as comprehension, concentration, and accuracy.
Aptitude tests help determine how well a candidate can perform tasks and solve problems relevant to the job. Thus, you can more easily judge a candidate’s strengths, weaknesses, and whether they’ll succeed within the company.
2. Personality Questionnaires/Profilers
These evaluate an individual’s personality traits and behavioural characteristics. There are more generalised psychometric personality questionnaires such as the Myers-Briggs or Big Five Personality Tools.
Personality instruments like these help predict how a candidate will fit into the company culture and interact with others. They can also be used to report on the characteristics of a team and to create learning and development plans for existing employees.
3. Skills Tests
These evaluate specific job-related skills, such as software proficiency or technical knowledge. Skills tests ensure that candidates possess the necessary skills to perform the job effectively and whether their skill levels match those stated on their CV.
You may also wish to employ situational judgement tests (STJs) to assess how candidates respond to hypothetical, job-related situations. However, many prefer to look directly at the behaviours which candidates prefer, as found in ‘classic’ personality questionnaires and how these may relate to teamwork, leadership, communication and so on.
The Benefits of Psychometric Tools for HR Professionals
Psychometric tests are powerful tools for leadership, recruiters, and HR professionals. Here’s some practical advice on how to use them to your advantage:
1. Identify and Target the Best Talent
Use psychometric tools to identify the qualities you require in a new hire before you even put out a job ad. This can be achieved, for example, by testing your existing staff to establish what qualities make them successful at their jobs.
Psychometric assessments can also be used to create more effective, cohesive, and well-rounded teams. Perform a psychometric assessment across a team to discover which skills are missing from the current makeup and then seek these absent qualities in a new hire.
With thorough psychometric reports to hand, you can write targeted job descriptions that better represent the candidate you’re looking for, making it much more likely you’ll attract quality candidates.
2. Develop a Reliable and Objective Hiring Process
Humans are fallible. Psychometric tools use a standardised approach that provides you with a set of data on potential candidates. This means you can make an unbiased decision rooted in facts and figures as opposed to personal opinion.
You can use established psychometric instruments that have been perfected through years of comprehensive research, developed by experts, and proven to provide insightful results.
There’s also the option to adjust psychometric assessments over time so that they’re personalised to your company. As such, they will reliably meet your goals and requirements with each test iteration.
3. Make The Hiring Process Easy and Efficient
By offering a psychometric assessment during the application stage, you create a consistent, streamlined hiring process, saving time. It allows you to filter out candidates who don’t have the right skills or qualities quickly, meaning you only take the best candidates through to the interview stage, for instance.
Psychometric data further ensures easy, practical decision-making. For example, when presented with multiple strong candidates, you can use psychometric information to help you make a final decision about who is the right personality fit.
4. Hire the Best Candidates
There are several instances in which interviews may fall short as an assessment tool. But psychometric assessments provide insights beyond the traditional interview process.
For instance, a candidate’s nerves may hinder their ability to express themself fully. Adding psychometric data into the mix will provide a more complete picture of a candidate’s suitability for the job.
Conversely, a candidate may be able to ace an interview, saying the right things, and ticking your boxes. But, again, this doesn’t provide the big-picture perspective of what the candidate can actually do.
Psychometric tools allow you to hire the best candidates based on an objective view of their hard and soft skills as well as their potential to perform.
5. Enhance Employee Learning & Development
There are many use cases for carrying out psychometric assessments on existing employees, allowing you to take a more holistic approach to their learning and development. During the onboarding process, use testing to find the strengths and weaknesses of a new employee,where to place them, and what tasks to give them to get the most value from them.
Find areas in which existing employees need more support and training through aptitude tests. Use personality assessments to pick out individuals with leadership qualities whom you can cultivate and give enhanced responsibilities.
Collate data to establish employee engagement and satisfaction levels, allowing you to make changes that reduce employee turnover. Psychometric testing can also provide insight into aspects such as what makes for better teamwork, increased productivity, and more.
All in all, psychometric tools allow for intelligent decision-making that can improve operations and increase company profitability.
Simplify Hiring with Professional Psychometric Testing
Recruitment and HR professionals have an arduous task finding the right candidates to fill certain positions. Psychometric testing prevents the hiring of subpar candidates by comprehensively assessing the abilities and qualities of applicants.
It’s a vital tool that combined with traditional methods such as interviewing makes the hiring process simpler, more streamlined, and more likely to provide effective, long-term employees.
Eras offers a range of psychometric assessment services to enhance your recruitment and employee development processes. Our highly qualified consultants will help you select the most fitting psychometric tools for your company or develop tailored, custom assessments to suit your needs. If we’ve piqued your interest with this article, contact us today to learn more.