PSYCHOMETRIC ASSESSMENTS: THE COMPLETE GUIDE 

A psychometric test or assessment is a standardised assessment designed to objectively measure a person's cognitive abilities, personality traits, and behavioural styles. These assessments are a vital resource for recruiters to make data-driven hiring decisions because they are trustworthy and free of prejudice. Numerous formats exist, each focusing on a different aspect of a candidate's qualities. These formats include aptitude tests, personality assessments, cognitive ability tests, and emotional intelligence evaluations.

There are three main types of psychometric assessments: achievement, aptitude, and personality assessments. Although each of them has different standards (also known as ‘dimensions’) to evaluate candidates, they all help the recruiter gain insights into each candidate’s abilities in various fields.

Achievement Assessments

This assessment measures a person’s knowledge, skills or accomplishments in a given field of expertise.

The achievement assessments are further divided into different types to be used in a specific scenario, including survey battery (a junior-level assessment), single survey achievement (focuses on a single area of expertise), and diagnostic achievement (focuses on the individual’s achievement from a beginner to an expert level).

Aptitude (cognitive abilities) Assessments

If the achievement assessment focuses on the employee’s knowledge, the aptitude assessment measures the individual’s ability to acquire a specific skill and the way they practice these skills in their life, such as learning a new language or managing a group of people.

Aptitude assessment also has a wide range of variations: general aptitude, verbal non-verbal aptitude, and quantitative aptitude assessments.

Personality Assessments

Personality is how you observe and react to a particular problem in your life. The assessment evaluates a person’s attitude towards a specific problem from which the recruiters gain insights into their personalities and make suitable hiring decisions.

The development of psychometric assessments involves rigorous scientific research and statistical analysis. Assessment items are carefully constructed to measure specific psychological constructs and undergo extensive validation to ensure reliability and validity.

Before administering, a large and diverse sample of individuals is used to establish norms or benchmarks. These norms serve as a reference point to compare individual scores and determine where an individual stands relative to the larger population.

Psychometric assessments can be administered in various formats, such as paper-and-pencil tests, online assessments, or computer-based tests. Candidates are given instructions and a set amount of time to complete the assessment.

After completing the assessment, the individual's responses are scored using established algorithms and then interpreted based on the established norms, providing insights into strengths, weaknesses, and potential areas for development. The results can then be used for personal growth, career guidance, or decision-making processes, such as employee selection or educational program placement.

Witness psychometric assessments in action with TRG's talent management solutions. Download the brochure today and learn what we have to offer.

Psychometric assessments are an effective way to determine an applicant's eligibility for a position and to evaluate their weaknesses and strengths in various circumstances. Using assessments increases the possibility of choosing candidates who are more suitable for the job. This, in turn, can lead to budget savings, from reducing recruitment expenses and time and enhancing work productivity to decreasing the need for talent acquisition.

Employers can then use the results to match the skills of each candidate with the technical specifications and job requirements, increasing the chance of earning profit accordingly. Other benefits of making science-based recruitment decisions can be named are increased employee retaining ability, higher productivity and a more streamlined recruitment process.

Read more: Agile Recruitment: Is it Better than the Traditional Approach?

First of all, choosing the right person for a position has long been a common problem many companies and hiring managers have to face. A poor selection may lead to disastrous consequences for both the employee and the company. Unsuitable candidates can cause a loss in productivity, revenues, and other issues like risks of conflicts and even reduced morale.

Moreover, psychometric assessments are standardised and scientifically proven. Thus, they can be highly predictive of the candidate’s future job performance.

Lastly, the organisation’s performance model can be developed based on the results of the psychometric assessments. A good psychometric assessment will allow you to determine talented individuals.

Many employers choose psychometric assessments as the go-to recruiting tool before requesting candidates to come in for an interview. With the psychometric assessments as the foundation of recruiting, each team in a company can set a candidate benchmark for recruiters to consider. Therefore, all parties can save time as well as choose the perfect person for their job vacancy.

Read more: Pre-Hire Assessments: Definition and Factors to Consider

Advantages

1. Properly assessing candidates' capacity

In most cases, it is difficult for employers to accurately measure the candidates’ abilities because of the similarity in the answers provided by most candidates during a typical job interview.

Some candidates truly shine at the interviews while others struggle. Both instances can confuse the recruiter, making them unable to comprehend the applicant’s abilities completely.

Psychometric Assessments are a wonderful method to build standards in measuring the candidates’ competence. The results from the assessments provide a deeper insight into the behaviours and personalities of candidates, which in turn, helps the recruiting team to assess whether they will fit in with the job and your company culture.

Additionally, the assessments also allow managers to recognise the strengths and weaknesses of a particular job applicant before hiring, empower them to come up with the right management approaches and devise the appropriate development path for candidates in the future.

2. Saving cost and time

Another advantage is that they are cost-effective and easy to deploy. It can take several months just to find one quality candidate.

With Psychometric Assessments, the process is reduced to a matter of hours. As a result, the costs associated with recruitment, like unproductive employees, high turnover rates, or the cost of job change, decline significantly.

3. Flexibility and customisability

The assessments can be used at any stage in the entire recruitment process. Questionnaires used in the assessments can be customised depending on your company’s demands and scope.

For example, Psychometric Assessments can be applied:

• Right at the beginning, when the candidates submit their application forms, to sort the highly suitable from the rest.
• Alongside the first interview.
• In later stages or as a required re-assessment to test the validity of the candidates’ previous answers.

Disadvantages

1. Cause nervousness

Some candidates do not like the idea of taking tests, and therefore, make more mistakes than usual. Too much nervousness can also cause individuals to collapse and disqualify themselves before moving on.

2. Unreliable answers

Inevitably, the candidates can choose to answer untruthfully or ask for support from other people. In some cases, the answers do not match the test takers’ personalities perfectly, so they may pick answers that contradict their usual behaviours.

The human’s behaviours and characters are truly complex, and sometimes, there is no one right or wrong, black or white answer. There appears to be a grey area where your potential candidates are situated.

3. Potential cultural biases

Psychometric Assessments can be difficult to standardise across languages leading to the possibility of them containing cultural bias.

Those who speak different languages, come from a wide variety of cultural backgrounds, or never heard of Psychometric Assessment could be eradicated even though they have the necessary qualifications for the job.

Adopting the Assessments based on your company’s needs

Remember to take into consideration your company’s needs as well as all of the Psychometric Assessments’ pros and cons, and how they can affect your recruiting procedure and interviewing process.

Read More: 13 Rules to Follow When Using Psychometric Assessments

Customising the Assessment scores

After you have decided to use the Assessments, you should spread the news to all employees, especially the Team Leaders and the Heads of Deputies. Their inputs are critical in "profiling candidates" to benchmark those applying for positions in their teams. For example, the Accounting Department requires a 70 score band in calculation skills, and the Marketing Department requires an 85 score band in creativity. These grades help to save both the recruiter's and candidates’ time.

Ensuring the Candidate understands

Candidates can get overwhelmed if they have never done any similar assessments before. You should create an e-mail template following the new recruiting process. To minimise confusion, start with standardising your e-mails sent to applicants to reflect the new recruiting process.

Additionally, make sure your emails include clear instructions on how to undertake the Assessments and an estimated test duration so candidates can arrange their time.

Be upfront about the purpose of the Assessments, which is to gain an understanding of applicants' qualities. This helps to reduce their nervousness.

Do not rely on a single result

Since Psychometric Assessments may contain risks such as cultural bias, you should not quickly dismiss a candidate based on their Assessment result. Remember, this is only a tactic to give the recruiter a general picture of the candidate, not the foundation for your final decision.