Employee Orientation
08 November, 2022
Eloquent CVs and structured interviews may not be the hiring team’s best pals when it comes to successful recruitment. Given that such procedures do not unveil hidden attributes, personality traits, or competencies of an individual which can be conducive to the company’s growth. For gaining useful insights into the skills, abilities, disposition, interests, and behavioral tendencies of potential employees, organizations use pre-employment tests as a productive tool for avoiding bad hires.
The focus of companies has shifted from traditional hiring methods to being vigilant in hiring qualified candidates who’ll eventually become the face of the company. The catch here is not just to employ the right people but also to dodge costly mis-hires.
This prompted the concept of psychometric assessment tests in recruitment. In this article, we’ll explore different psychological and aptitude tests employed by recruiting professional and what benefits it brings to the recruitment process.
What are Pre- Employment Assessment Tests in recruitment?
Pre- employment tests, also known as Psychometric testing is used to evaluate an individual's cognitive operations, thinking patterns, intelligence level, attitude, and personality traits. It predicts how a person might behave in specific situations, his competence, motivations, problem- solving capacity, and emotional intelligence. It differs from traditional testing methods which only revolved around measuring specific parameters such as knowledge, skills, or education.
This 100-year-old concept entails several areas which become the subject matters of the tests. Once individual cognitive and personality is established through such tests, it makes them eligible for certain job roles. It helps align candidates' persona and attitude with the role’s requirements. It is highly useful for selecting candidates suitable for the client-facing role. Beyond this, such tests serve to streamline the hiring process for it saves organizations from costly ineffective hiring mistakes.
Known types of psychometric tests
A recruitment professional and even test-takers must be well-informed about the variety of pre- employment testing used in the recruitment process. Such assessment tools, guide headhunters to evaluate:
A candidate's mental abilities and capacities
A candidate's aptitude for the given job role
A candidate's personality and the traits they possess
A detailed breakdown of different types of psychometric tests is explained below:
1. Psychometric Aptitude tests
As the name quite suggests, these tests help measure a candidate's general and specific skills and abilities. To assess the playing field of candidates, there's usually a minimum score to determine an individual's overall intelligence.
Also called by the name Cognitive Ability Tests, these are similar to IQ tests as they involve a range of questionnaires relating to logic and reasoning. The subcategories of aptitude tests are listed below:
Numerical reasoning- it covers the candidate's understanding of statistical data and numerical information presented in diagrams, reports, charts, or graphs. It showcases how one interprets /construes numeric data.
Verbal reasoning- this is targeted toward determining an individual’s comprehension skills, reasoning, and logic to conclusions from available information. For example, candidates may be presented with a passage and asked to spot grammar and spelling errors.
Logical reasoning- this test type measures candidates' problem-solving abilities, and ability to reach logical, lucid conclusions.
2. Personality tests
These tests also go by the name Occupational Tests. It is a technique that evaluates candidates' behavioral patterns, values, and interests to get an overall combination of traits he/she might possess to fit the role. It analyses one's strengths, weaknesses, skills, leadership potential, teamwork skills, motivations, and emotional well-being.
Types of personality tests
There are numerous personality tests available for organizations, such as:
1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)- it groups individual personality into 16 prominent types from four dichotomies:
Extraversion (E) Or Intraversion (I)
Sensing (S) Or Intuition (I)
Thinking (T) Or Feeling (F)
Judging (J) Or Perceiving (P)
This supportive test helps employers to understand the potential employees:
The focus of attention,
How they perceive the world
Decision making
Lifestyle choices
2. Big 5 (OCEAN)- this is a widely used trait-focused assessment test to judge candidates' personalities, based on five factors:
Openness
Conscientiousness
Extroversion
Neuroticism/ emotional stability
3. The Disc Test- this behavioral assessment test covers 4 core personality traits to gain insight into the candidate’s reactions, influence, and readiness under intriguing situations. These traits are Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness (S), And Compliance (C). Organizations use this test type to comprehend candidates' ability to work as part of a team.
Other great personality tests conducted by companies are:
Culture add
Enneagram
The Calliper Profile
The Gallup Profile
3. Skill tests
While qualifications, behavioral analysis, and aptitude of the candidate are vital factors taken into account by recruiters, the candidate's skill can be just as essential, to filling in vacant positions. Candidates are given a chance to portray the enlisted skills in their resumes. For example- coding challenges or job simulations can be put up for testing to see how the candidate will perform in a real-life scenario.
Why do companies need Psychometric Assessments for recruitment?
As more and more organizations have taken recourse to pre-employment testing to make thoughtful hiring decisions and avoid chances of unnecessary turnover, we have hereby discussed how psychometric testing aids the recruitment process.
These tests are used in various industries such as legal, civil service, armed forces, finance, tech companies, etc. The proven fact is that companies that use psychometric assessment show high levels of success while retaining their employee assets. It aids recruitment and selection whilst saving time, money, and resources for the company. Interviewers have an edge in knowing and observing potential hires’ behavioral profiles, abilities and skills much in advance without going through elongated procedures. All of this travail is to eliminate those candidates which may not complement the particular job role.
Employers, therefore, use such tests to gather an understanding of how people work in organizational settings, and their innate cognitive, behavioral, and personality-based competencies to predict their future job performance and the success of the organization.
Psychometric tests are also used in organizational planning and forecasting to prepare an employee for present and future competencies.
The Upside of Pre- Employment Assessments
There are innumerable benefits that psychometric testing can bring to the workplace, few of them have been discussed herein:
1. Improved employee attrition
By giving people reasons to connect and stay with your company, you can eventually reduce the ‘churn rate’ of people leaving your company. You can make better decisions by comparing the pool of candidates based on their skills, personality, and aptitudes. This way you can filter out less-optimal applicants and are the most potential ones.
2. Streamlined assessment tool
Psychometric tests take little time to create and acknowledge the job suitability of a candidate. Hiring managers can sort out unqualified candidates and shortlist applicants that will be a good fit for the job role. Such tests are vital because if no calculations are made on prospective employees, the companies may be subjected to a whopping financial loss in billions, which may not be easily covered.
3. Boosts organizational performance
Psychometric tests can be also used to assess other business impacts, including job performance, staff turnover, employee engagement, employee retention, absenteeism, and motivation levels of employees. Selecting rights hires will benefit the organization in more ways than one.
4. Neutrality and unbiased
All applicants are assessed on the same grounds, and the playing field is leveled for everyone. Such tests prevent all kinds of prejudice and remove the reliance on interviews. Therefore, uniformity in psychometric tests is highly important to favor and ensure merit-based hires.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
