How to hire Candidates using Psychometric Testing?

At the outset Psychometric testing seems like an enormous word, but it basically refers to the measurement of the mind. Unlike facets like education, skills, experience, appearance and punctuality, the behavioral traits and personality of a candidate can be often much more difficult to assess during an interview. With psychometric testing, employers can gauge how the candidates will perform and hopefully improve employee retention by making successful hiring decisions.

Research has shown that behavior requirements are significantly related to how well someone performs in a job, Naro said. “Assessments can determine if you can do a job, will you do the job, will you do it for a long time and will you do it well.”

How psychometric testing aids recruitment decisions?

What does a psychometric test find??? A psychometric test aims to provide measurable, objective data that can provide a far better all-around view of a candidate’s suitability for the job. It can be articulated that psychometric testing offers some ‘scientific’ credibility and objectivity to the method of recruiting. It perhaps provides a more fair and accurate way of assessing a candidate, as all applicants will be provided with a standardized test.

Around the globe if a rough estimate is done then almost 18% of companies currently use personality tests in the hiring process, according to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management. This number is growing at a rate of 10-15% a year according to many industrial and organizational psychologists, as well as the Association for Test Publishers.

If the psychometric test are used correctly, cognitive ability tests and personality tests can increase the probability that new employees will succeed in the organization. This is a hard fact known that the cost of a bad hire is widely estimated to be a minimum of one year’s pay, therefore there are huge incentives for organizations to get the hiring right in the first place. Unfortunately, too many organizations use the wrong psychometric assessments for a particular skill.

Here’s what organizations need to know to attenuate the potential risks and maximize the predictive accuracy of these tests.

1.Know the business needs

Psychometric tests will only help if an organization features well-established measures of job performance. Too often, organizations focus more on the predictors, or “independent variables,” than on what is being predicted, or “dependent variables.” If an organization doesn’t have quantitative measures of employee performance on the job, then there is no basis for statistical correlations of how well psychometric tests (or any other kind of candidate evaluation for that matter) predict performance.

For instance, while the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is quite fashionable in many organizations, but it should not be used for employee selection. The MBTI was not developed for that purpose and is not intended for personnel evaluation — even the test’s publisher warns against using it in that way. The MBIT instrument sorts for preferences and does not measure trait, ability, or character. The MBIT tool is different from other personality tests.

2.Reduce the risk of cheating.

To safeguard against the likelihood that candidates will ask others to take tests, especially cognitive ability tests, on their behalf, organizations should “proctor” the assessment test, either by having the candidate take the assessments in their offices or by monitoring candidates via video conference if they are remotely present.

It should be kept in mind that some candidates could also be tempted to “game” the results, according to the best fit. The candidate’s references and interview ratings should be compared with their results to determine if the two are consistent. If a candidate for a sales job seems to be shy and understated in interviews and is described as quiet and introspective by his or her references, but tests as a peoples’ person who constantly needs to be in the limelight, this discrepancy may raise the question of whether the applicant is attempting to engage in “impression management” to come across as a more ideal candidate.

Some psychometric tests have built-in measures that indicate whether a candidate’s pattern of responses may reflect an attempt to come across a certain way or whether the candidate’s answers are incongruent with one another. Using multiple psychometric tests can help HR managers to get a more consistent picture.

Test takers perspective of psychometric assessments

Even a well-developed, legally defensible, and predictive assessment battery will not add value if candidates feel it is too time-consuming or intrusive. So one has to take this also into account that the tests are not very lengthy.

High-performing organizations constantly evaluate and improve their candidate evaluation systems by paying attention to predictor variables, outcome variables, and therefore correlations between the two. Psychometric tests should be subject to the same rigorous testing and validation as the candidates they are being utilized to assess. When hiring managers and HR utilize the right methodology to select and retain the right psychometric tests, they can significantly raise the probability of selecting and retaining the right talent, too.

A recruiter needs to understand the employees’ strengths and weaknesses to deploy them in job roles corresponding to their skills. Using psychometric tests for recruitment is a way to measure these skills objectively.

Using psychometrics, employers can gain a greater understanding of how candidates’ personalities might present the best fit for their workforce. Whether the candidate fits into the culture of the company. At the same time, candidates can use personality assessments to uncover their strengths and discover what jobs they are best suited to perform.

It can be concluded that it is a win-win situation for the employers and employees. To find the best person to work and the best place to work in. This would benefit both the organization in terms of retention and candidates in terms of remaining engaged at work. A holistic approach to psychometrics might turn out to be a cost-effective way for companies to create a high performing and engaged workforce.