Why & How to Use Psychometric Testing to Better your Hiring

Like most things in the world, the recruitment industry has evolved considerably since its inception.

Starting with face-to-face interviews, soon after came cover letters, before intelligence, skills and personality tests made their way onto the scene. And now, post-COVID-19, video interviews have surged, proving that the industry is ever-evolving. 

You may be wondering why the recruitment process is seemingly becoming more and more complex with more and more steps, but we promise it’s for good reason.

As most business leaders will know, hiring a new employee is an expensive exercise. Whilst the long-term goal is for the employee to do their part to make the business profitable, recruiting someone doesn’t come without risk. Candidates might embellish their CVs, provide false references, or struggle to integrate into a team environment… the list is endless.

Without experiencing someone’s work and personality, it is difficult to determine if they’ll actually be able to live up to the added value they boast from their CV. This is why probation periods exist and also why the recruitment process is made of several steps. Simply put, they help ease potential friction, ensure the expectations of both parties match reality and determine to the best of our ability if the investment is worth the risk. 

In today’s economic climate, marked by inflation, labour shortages, and geopolitical tensions, companies must ensure that new hires possess the necessary skills or the ability to learn and adapt effectively.

Then comes the need to determine cultural fit. This is crucial as it will either disrupt or enhance your existing team and operations. Ascertaining a new staff member has the appropriate natural abilities or personality traits to be successful in their chosen role within your business is not necessarily easy to assess just by looking at their resume.

This is where psychometric assessments come into play. They provide valuable insights into a candidate’s cognitive abilities, personality traits, and behavioural tendencies, helping to ensure a better match for both the company and the candidate.

What is a Psychometric Test?

A psychometric assessment (also known as psychometric test) consists of a set of questions that measure the extent to which a candidate’s personality and ability match those required to perform a given position. 

Based on our research, such tests were first used in the 19th century. Some believe it originated in a laboratory in England, whilst others state that it has roots in France, where it was used to separate patients with mental illnesses. Despite not being able to definitely pinpoint its origin, we know that these tests were and still are developed according to a scientific method, and are designed to be objective and unbiased.

Here are the main types of psychometric tests:

1. Personality test

This test enables employers to evaluate a candidate’s suitability based on their behaviour and how they approach their work. Usually presented as a questionnaire, it explores behaviour, attitudes, preferences, motives and/or values. 

Typically, such tests request the candidate rate statements from “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree”. Such statements may include:

– “Artistic expression influences everything I do.”
– “When in a group setting or meeting new people, I am comfortable starting up a conversation.”
– “I tend to let my emotions get the better of me.”

Ability test

The ability test, also known as cognitive ability tests assesses a specific or general set of skills required to perform the role. They usually involve numerical, verbal, and abstract reasoning tests. For instance, numerical tests might require interpreting data from tables or graphs, verbal tests might involve understanding written information and answering questions related to it, and abstract reasoning tests might involve interpreting visual patterns or sequences.

They are commonly used in pre-employment screening as a way to give an overview of a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses over a broad range of aptitudes.

Aptitude test

Aptitude tests measure a candidate’s potential to perform tasks and react to situations they may not have encountered before. They are commonly used in job assessments as they can predict the likelihood of a candidate’s success in a job role while eliminating any bias through standardised administration.

Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs)

SJTs present hypothetical, job-related situations and ask you to choose the most appropriate response. Examples include:

• Customer Service Scenario: “You receive a call from an angry customer who hasn’t received their order. What do you do?” Options might include apologising and offering a discount, escalating the issue to a supervisor, or checking the order status and providing an update.
• Team Conflict Scenario: “A team member is not contributing to a project, causing delays. How do you handle it?” Options might include discussing the issue privately with the team member, reporting the problem to a manager, or redistributing the workload.

Emotional Intelligence Tests

Emotional Intelligence (EI) tests evaluate your ability to understand and manage emotions. Examples include:

• Mayer-Salovey-Caruso Emotional Intelligence Test (MSCEIT): This test measures your ability to perceive, use, understand, and manage emotions. It includes tasks like identifying emotions in faces and pictures and understanding emotional scenarios.
• Emotional Intelligence Appraisal: This test, often used in workplaces, assesses your self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management skills. It might include questions like “How do you handle stress in a high-pressure situation?”.

Behavioural Tests

Behavioural tests assess typical behaviour in various situations. Examples include:

• DISC Assessment: This test evaluates your behaviour across four dimensions: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. It helps understand how you might behave in different work scenarios.
• Big Five Personality Test: This test measures five major dimensions of personality: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. It might include statements like “I am always prepared” or “I get stressed out easily,” which you rate on a scale.

When to use Psychometric Test

Although there are no specific rules as to when to use psychometric tests, they tend to be used as part of the final hiring process. However this largely depends on the seniority of the position or the size of the company.

As mentioned above, psychometric tests oftentimes provide hidden insights about candidates that aren’t easy to determine during preliminary steps. Consequently, such tests are often used to validate a particular choice rather than during the selection process.

Nonetheless, it’s still worth mentioning that some companies prefer using psychometric tests early in the hiring process as a means to avoid wasting time going through further steps for the wrong candidate. In fact, companies receiving a large amount of applications often use psychometric assessments as a way of screening.

That being said, hiring managers shouldn’t base their final decision on psychometric tests only. In recruitment, psychometric assessments are best used in addition to other elements such as screening and face to face or online interviews.

Why use Psychometric Tests? 

Making a hiring decision solely based on screening resumes and cover letters as well as doing reference checks is outdated. Why? Because most candidates have a lot more to offer than what’s written on paper and reference checks can easily be biased.

In today’s society, employers are looking beyond hard skills. They are turning towards a more holistic approach where they want to know more about the person, their soft skills, their interests, their personal story and most importantly, their ability to work well with others.

In this sense, psychometric assessments come as a bonus to complement traditional techniques and help hiring managers make a more informed decision when it comes to selecting the right candidate.

In conclusion, psychometric tests are a valuable tool in modern recruitment and selection processes. They provide a more holistic view of candidates, going beyond what’s written on their resumes to uncover their potential, fit, and unique contributions to the team.

Pros

They take away unconscious bias

As humans, we all have our own set of experiences, expectations, habits and beliefs. This is why in most cases, we make biased decisions without even realising it. Unlike us, psychometric tests are science based which means that they offer businesses an unbiased report which helps hiring managers objectively assess a candidate’s fit.

In doing so, psychometric tests make the recruitment process fair and can help businesses maintain standards when it comes to objectively measuring personality traits and aptitude. 

All in all, the test score looks at various parameters and provides transparent results to weigh different people on the same scale so as to ease the recruitment process.

They provide key additional data

Psychometric assessments provide employers with more insights into potential hires that may not be able to easily be captured from other methods such as through an interview or their resume. 

More specifically, psychometric tests are an efficient means to measure the strengths and weaknesses of a potential employee. For instance, if a candidate is shy or introverted but possesses the qualities required for a job opening, these tests can give a platform for them to be recognised.

Having additional data gives the recruiter the ability to ask more informed questions as well as explore other points of concern when conducting further interviews.

All in all, this additional data can act as a strong filter, especially for businesses that have high focus on cultural fit and vision alignment as a screening criteria.

They enhance employee engagement

It’s safe to say that the advantages of psychometric tests are not limited to recruitment, but span the entire career cycle of an employee. 

More specifically, psychometric assessments are indicative of a candidate’s future potential, leadership orientation, and learning agility. Hence, test results can be a great tool to prepare for the candidate’s onboarding and career development, empowering HR professionals to make important decisions regarding workforce management.

They provide better return on investment

Investing in someone whom you may not hire may seem like a waste of money. Yet, since psychometric assessments help reduce or diminish your chances of bad hires, they actually reveal themselves to be quite cost-effective in the long run.

Simply put, while a good fit candidate is an asset for your business, a bad hire can prove to be extremely costly and impact the productivity and morale of other employees.

Since psychometric assessments provide broad insights into your future hire, this technique ensures that you match the right talent to the right position. This will lead to less turnover and more motivated and successful employees.

On another note, reliable psychometric tests can supply key information about potential hires in the matter of hours, in comparison to the several months it generally takes for a business to get to know their new hire. As such, psychometric assessments not only save you money, but they also save your business and managers a whole lot of time.

Cons

They cost money

Reliable psychometric assessments aren’t free and as such, their cost must be included in your hiring budget. Although this may come as bad news, it’s worth noting that, as highlighted above, their many benefits usually make up for the cost.

They’re imperfect

As with most things, psychometric tests are imperfect and cannot tick all boxes. They are science based and cannot, for instance, take into consideration cultural background or language barriers. As such, it’s worth remembering to take results with a grain of salt and look at ways to tailor the test for your audience so as not to deprive your business of great talent. 

Furthermore, in a world where one can access information at the click of a button, candidates have the ability to better prepare for interviews and psychometric tests. Should this happen, you do run the risk that candidates “customise” their responses to match your expectations. Although this can occur, this is such a small occurrence that we wouldn’t take this into consideration. A great way to avoid this is by taking the time to explain to candidates that it’s in their interest to be as honest and transparent as possible.

They require expertise to read results

The absence of the right training can be a hindrance to making the most of psychometric tests, and in our experience, local HR teams are often not trained well to interpret and use them.

Since personality tests and instruments require adequate experience to be able to take full advantage of all of their benefits, the prospect of misjudgment of the test results is quite high. 

This means that businesses need to take additional costs into consideration when first implementing psychometric testing. 

As a business leader, you can either choose to train your in-house team or hire third-party professionals. Whilst keeping the knowledge in-house sounds like a great idea, you do run the risk of losing it should your HR advisors choose to depart. On the other hand, outsourcing your HR to a partner ascertains that you always have access to the knowledge, as it is their responsibility to keep their experts trained.

There are so many to choose from

Although this may sound more like a pro than a con, the fact that there are a myriad of tests available on the market can cause confusion more than anything else.

It also goes to show that there are many aspects to take into consideration when choosing the right psychometrics test for your business. This can make the selection process harder than it should be. 

This is not an issue when you outsource your HR to a 3rd party, as they would have the experience to make tailored recommendations for your business.

Choosing a Psychometric Test

Once you have clarified your objectives (which will define whether you go with a personality or aptitude test) and are ready to choose a test, there are 4 elements to consider:

1. Reliability & validity

Because psychometric tests are science-based, they should be backed-up by freely available statistical and empirical evidence.

This evidence should ascertain the test’s reliability by ensuring consistency in results, as well as it’s validity by guaranteeing the test actually measures what it is set to measure.

Keep in mind that asking for proof of their scientific validity and if they are up to date with their study is not only OK but also highly recommended.

2. Money & time invested

We mentioned price earlier, and this should definitely be a determining factor when choosing which provider to go for. Depending on the size of your business, there is no need to go for all the bells and whistles, so choosing the price brackets and functions that suit you is key.

Whilst you might be tempted by free online assessments, they’re mostly gimmicky and tend not to go into much detail, which only adds more work for the hiring manager. When hiring for your business, it’s definitely better to go with a professional as this should render you more efficient.

3. User friendliness of the platform

Although it may seem like common sense for many, it’s still worth noting that it is extremely important to consider the platform’s interface when making your choice.

More specifically, you’ll want to use a platform that is intuitive and easy to use, both for the hiring manager and for the candidate. If the interface or test layout isn’t easy to navigate, you run the risk of causing confusion for candidates, which may lead to inaccurate results.

On the other hand, if the interface is hard to use, you run the risk that hiring managers skip this step when hiring and miss out on crucial data. With that in mind, the tool you end up choosing should make it easy to administer the test and read results.

4. Result interpretation

Ah, the big one! Since the results are the most sought after aspect of a psychometric test, choosing the right approach for interpreting such results is crucial. 

This is where you need to decide whether you or your team have the know-how and / or time to properly read and make use of the results, or if it’s worth getting a 3rd party HR partner to do it for you so you can concentrate on your core competencies. When you outsource your HR function, this is generally part of the package. 

Conclusion

All in all, psychometric assessments are a great tool to add to your hiring arsenal. Full of insights for employers and hiring managers, these tests offer unique data to help you assess a candidate better and more easily.

That being said, psychometric testing alone is not sufficient and is best combined with traditional hiring methods. If you have any questions or uncertainties, don’t hesitate to contact us. Our HR experts can provide the clarity you need and guide you through the process.