Psychometric Testing – Mumbo Jumbo or an Effective Business Tool
In the current economic climate, companies need to control their budgets tightly. HR professionals with a responsibility for the expenditure inevitably feel this pressure. Surely it is easier to return to ‘tried and tested methods’ and cut out any cost that seems unnecessary.
There are many benefits of psychometric assessment but most important are the time and cost savings. Have you ever employed the wrong person? If so you will realise the financial costs associated with that decision. Testing will provide objective information to support your recruitment, therefore saving money by reducing poor decision-making.
It is estimated that the cost of a bad hire can be three times employee salary if you consider all the recruitment costs, time spent recruiting, advertising, training, salary and benefits. What about the hidden costs such as managing poor performance, unhappy customers and lost sales?
Psychometrics can also save you time by screening out unsuitable applicants at an earlier stage in the process.
What happens when the role changes, but not the individual in that role? The challenge is deciding what are the specific competencies now required for that role and will they be best measured by a subjective interview? This is a great opportunity to agree objectively what you are looking for and then decide on the key essential and desirable competencies?
What are these psychometric tools?
Psychometric tools are questionnaires or tests that help businesses to select the right people, facilitate individual and team development and increase organisational effectiveness.
Generally they fall into the following key categories:
Personality Questionnaires – powerful methods of predicting how someone will typically prefer to behave in a work situation. With more than 3.5 million questionnaires completed worldwide every year, the Myers Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) questionnaire is the most widely used personality questionnaire describing an individual’s personality preferences. It is based on over 50 years of research and development and is available in 19 languages.
Ability tests – measure aptitudes such as how someone will perform when solving problems or reasoning with verbal information; many measure potential rather than the current level of knowledge. There are online and offline tests available for Executive, Managerial, Professional, Graduate and Administration recruitment.
Career Interests – help to identify the types of work to which someone would be suited.
360o feedback – gather information on an individual’s performance or personal attributes from a range of sources.
A successful organisation is made up of people with different working styles that compliment each other. By understanding how your people work and helping them understand how their personal style interacts with that of their colleagues is an essential building block when creating a dynamic team.
Any psychometric tool used should be:
q Objective – the results obtained from it are not influenced by personal preferences or biases
q Standardised – it is administered or scored to standard procedures and compared to known benchmarks
q Reliable – it measures in a consistent way
q Valid – it measures the characteristic that it sets out to measure
q Discriminating – the test should show clear and meaningful differences between individuals on the behaviour being tested
Why use psychometric tools?
It is now readily accepted that the effective use of psychometric tools can add value to your organisation. Individual tests are amongst the best predictors of job performance and are even more powerful when combined with other tests or interviews.
Not just for use in recruitment – leadership development, team building and organisational changes are three other contexts where psychometric tools are proven to deliver excellent results.
To find out more about how psychometric tools can be used as an effective business tool in your company, please call David Evans on 0118 940 5100 or email davide@pursuitnha.com
