Before going on HOW part of it Lets discuss WHY (Need) it is required. Now a days competition is becoming more and more tough, it’s like dog eating dog (its bitter truth). Every organisation wants to hire best employee for it’s various functions to get an edge over its competition. Apart from your product or services it’s the HUMAN factor which decide the success or failure.
So every organization wants to hire best out of best. It’s one of the best tool to judge the candidate’s Skills, Knowledge, Personality, Ability to take decision, team orientation, thought process, motivational factors etc. Most of these tests are time bound to judge how that person will perform under pressure, but sometimes it can be completed in multiple sittings.
Types of Psychometric test:
Majorly there are 2 types of such test used to be conducted by the organizations:
1. Personality tests: Through this test companies try to explore your values and motivation, character fitment with role and organization, emotions, reactions in different situations, behavior etc.
2. Aptitude tests: Through this test companies judge the cognitive or reasoning ability. More often 1 minute is given for each question (multiple choice). Through this test company judge the intelligence level of candidate by comparing it with standard set by the company.
Commonly this test includes:
Diagrammatic Reasoning
Error Checking
Numerical Reasoning
Verbal Reasoning
Spatial Reasoning
In 2013 Roughly 18% of companies were using 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 organisational psychologists, as well as the Association for Test Publishers.
When used correctly, cognitive and personality tests can increase the chances that new employees will succeed. Since the cost of a bad hire is widely estimated to be at least one year’s pay, there are huge incentives for organizations to get hiring right. Unfortunately, too many organizations use the wrong psychometric assessments in the wrong way. Here’s what organizations need to know in order to minimize potential risks and maximize the predictive accuracy of these tests.
Before creating Psychometric Test we must understand following aspects:
What is the need of business:
Since such tests are made for better output with a motive of betterment. So first we need to understand what is required by the organisation. Psychometric tests will not help you if you don’t have well-established measures of job performance. Too often, organisations focus more on the predictors, or “independent variables,” than on what is being predicted, or “dependent variables.” If an organisation doesn’t have quantitative measures of employee performance on the job, then there is no basis for statistical correlations of how well psychometric tests predict performance.
Once you know the business needs, make sure you find a test that will actually evaluate those characteristics.
For instance, while the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is quite popular with many organizations, it should not be used for employee selection. The MBTI was not developed for that purpose and is not intended for personnel evaluatio even the test’s publisher warns against using it in that way.
Reduce the risk of cheating:
Keep in mind that some candidates may be tempted to “game” the results. Compare the candidate’s references and interview ratings with their results to determine if the two are consistent. If a candidate for a sales job seems shy and understated in interviews and is described as quiet and introspective by her references, but tests as a people 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” in order 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 organizations get a more consistent picture.
Test the tests:
If an assessment doesn’t predict performance over time, stop using it. High performing organisations constantly evaluate and improve their candidate evaluation systems by paying attention to predictor variables, outcome variables, and the correlations between the two. Psychometric tests should be subject to the same rigorous testing and validation as the candidates they are being utilised to assess. When hiring managers and HR utilise 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.
Kindly feel free to share your reviews.
From India, Delhi
13So every organization wants to hire best out of best. It’s one of the best tool to judge the candidate’s Skills, Knowledge, Personality, Ability to take decision, team orientation, thought process, motivational factors etc. Most of these tests are time bound to judge how that person will perform under pressure, but sometimes it can be completed in multiple sittings.
Types of Psychometric test:
Majorly there are 2 types of such test used to be conducted by the organizations:
1. Personality tests: Through this test companies try to explore your values and motivation, character fitment with role and organization, emotions, reactions in different situations, behavior etc.
2. Aptitude tests: Through this test companies judge the cognitive or reasoning ability. More often 1 minute is given for each question (multiple choice). Through this test company judge the intelligence level of candidate by comparing it with standard set by the company.
Commonly this test includes:
Diagrammatic Reasoning
Error Checking
Numerical Reasoning
Verbal Reasoning
Spatial Reasoning
In 2013 Roughly 18% of companies were using 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 organisational psychologists, as well as the Association for Test Publishers.
When used correctly, cognitive and personality tests can increase the chances that new employees will succeed. Since the cost of a bad hire is widely estimated to be at least one year’s pay, there are huge incentives for organizations to get hiring right. Unfortunately, too many organizations use the wrong psychometric assessments in the wrong way. Here’s what organizations need to know in order to minimize potential risks and maximize the predictive accuracy of these tests.
Before creating Psychometric Test we must understand following aspects:
What is the need of business:
Since such tests are made for better output with a motive of betterment. So first we need to understand what is required by the organisation. Psychometric tests will not help you if you don’t have well-established measures of job performance. Too often, organisations focus more on the predictors, or “independent variables,” than on what is being predicted, or “dependent variables.” If an organisation doesn’t have quantitative measures of employee performance on the job, then there is no basis for statistical correlations of how well psychometric tests predict performance.
Once you know the business needs, make sure you find a test that will actually evaluate those characteristics.
For instance, while the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is quite popular with many organizations, it should not be used for employee selection. The MBTI was not developed for that purpose and is not intended for personnel evaluatio even the test’s publisher warns against using it in that way.
Reduce the risk of cheating:
Keep in mind that some candidates may be tempted to “game” the results. Compare the candidate’s references and interview ratings with their results to determine if the two are consistent. If a candidate for a sales job seems shy and understated in interviews and is described as quiet and introspective by her references, but tests as a people 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” in order 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 organizations get a more consistent picture.
Test the tests:
If an assessment doesn’t predict performance over time, stop using it. High performing organisations constantly evaluate and improve their candidate evaluation systems by paying attention to predictor variables, outcome variables, and the correlations between the two. Psychometric tests should be subject to the same rigorous testing and validation as the candidates they are being utilised to assess. When hiring managers and HR utilise 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.
Kindly feel free to share your reviews.
From India, Delhi
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Career - How to Prepare Your Curriculum Vitae (Revised Ed McGraw Hill).pdf
Psychometric Tools.xls