Psychometric tests and assessment
What is Psychometric Assessment?
Psychometric Assessment is a structured and objective way of evaluating how people perform on various tasks or respond in different situations. It is used by many organisations as part of their selection process as well as to inform training and development programmes for individuals and teams. It can also support activities such as coaching, counselling and career guidance.
What does it measure?
There are many different types of psychometric instruments although they generally fall into 2 categories - ability tests and personality questionnaires. Ability tests measure your ability to be able to do something e.g. ability to understand the written word; to reason with numbers; to solve mechanical problems; to follow instructions accurately; or to be able to understand data which is presented in a variety of ways. Personality questionnaires assess different aspects of behaviour (known as ‘traits’) or deeper psychological preferences (known as ‘types’).
Benefits of Psychometric Assessment
It is clearly crucial for the ‘right’ assessment to be used for the ‘right’ purpose to get the ‘right’ result. It is also essential for the
assessment chosen to have been rigorously researched to ensure validity and reliability. Most of the frequently used assessments have
been developed by occupational psychologists and users can be confident that they will provide a fair and accurate assessment.
To recruitment and selection . . .
- Provides valuable additional information, that cannot be accessed in any other way, to aid and support other candidate selection techniques
- Offers potentially very significant savings by ensuring that the selection process is rigorous and holistic and identifies the ‘right’ candidate
- Increases the efficiency of interviews by highlighting areas to probe gives insight into how someone might fit into an existing team
To individual and team development . . .
- Provides insights into behaviours, ways of thinking and personal preferences to inform individual and team development
- Supports the identification of the right role and right context for individuals in a change process
- Guides career review and decision making informs coaching and mentoring conversations
. . . xué’s advice on the use of the right psychometric tests proved invaluable to our selection process
