Looking forward to Quality Recruitment? Say “Yes” to Psychometrics

You must have come across the term of psychometrics or possibly had given a test while going through the recruitment process of a company. Let’s explore it in detail what basically psychometrics are. Psychometrics is typical tests which use scientific methods to compute the mental skills and behavioral competencies of an individual. They are specifically designed to calculate an individual’s likeability for a particular role that is based on some desired personality traits and cognitive skills or aptitude. Psychometric tests recognize the extent to which an individual’s personality and aptitude can cope up with the abilities which are required to perform that specific role.

The Way Psychometric Tests Assists Recruiters:
The information gathered by a psychometric assessment helps the recruiter or employer to pinpoint the veiled features of an individual that aren’t usually identified during a one-on-one interview. Once, all other job requirements are fulfilled, the recruitment manager will be reviewing the resumes and then an official letter will be sent to the candidates to appear in a psychometric assessment. The key purpose of taking a psychometric test is to pinpoint the candidates at an early stage of recruitment which are unlikely for the vacant position or the particular job role. Hence, it helps in narrowing down the tacky recruitment process and identifying the best candidates out of others.

A few candidates believe that psychometric isn’t a real good tool to measure the actual insights of their personality traits and cognitive capabilities as well as the skills required to perform that particular job. Though, psychometric assessment results are computed using scientific methods and the statistics calculated using psychometrics are simply unbiased and objective. Every candidate is presented with the same questionnaire and instructions so that the assessment can be free of any brassiness and the derived results can be objective. The reliability percentage of psychometric tests is 100% and they are quite successful in predicting the job performance of the applying candidate.

What’s inside psychometrics?
During a recruitment and selection process, a candidate is asked to complete a test or a questionnaire which is named as psychometric assessment, he might wonder where these exercises come from, why he’s been asked to fill it out or what’s the purpose behind it and whether the test is used properly.

Test and questionnaires are required to dig out the individual’s skills, behavioral style and values. Employers are in need of such information as they have to finely understand the need and attitude of their employees. This also helps in realizing the potential of the new candidates and determining the needs of development in the existing employees.

Multiple researches have shown that objective measures like questionnaires and tests give precise analysis of individuals as compared to subjective measures like evaluating CVs and interviews. However, these subjective measures are fruitful to provide crucial information about a person but still they can’t match the reliability and accuracy of the objective ones.

In today’s computerized world, it’s easy to tackle and manage the uncountable applications received for a single vacant position. Recruiters utilize computer administration to take tests and make candidates fill out the questionnaires using online documents. Similarly, a large number of candidates are evaluated based on their tests and questionnaire using advance software and tools.

Theories behind Psychometrics Construction
Psychometric tests are mainly based on psychological theories about human behavior. The measurement of psychometric tests uses the construction of these theories. While emerging a new psychometric measure, psychologists put greater emphasis on what they actually want to measure then the questionnaire of the test has been formed. Usually this requires a thorough research to gather the evidence on work performance to pinpoint what personal aspects are relevant to the quality of performance in that specific area.

Why do Recruiters use Psychometric Assessments?

Following are the main reasons due to which recruiters are aggressively using psychometric assessment tool:

• Job Performance:
  The psychometrics’ cognitive skills tests are said to be the most vibrant and accurate predictors of job performance. In 1984 Hunter & Hunter stated that cognitive ability tests are over 14 times more predictive of job performance than the average selection interview. The psychometric tests that are based on extensive researches are the most demanded recruitment and selection tool nowadays and it is outperforming other recruitment tools massively. Psychometric assessments also provide statistics to measure substantial relationships with other organizational variables like job knowledge, organizational behavior, task performance and training success.

• Organizational Performance:
  Utilization of psychometric assessments in the organizations have proved to be best with the following consequences: Augmented organizational performance, inclined employee retention, cost-effectiveness in recruitment and selection process, declined employee turnover, lesser absenteeism and boosted levels of employee motivations. Picking up top of the heap candidates surely ends up in greater and positive performance outcomes. Ensuring high quality workforce is significant for all workplaces and psychometrics assists in it.
• Accessibility:
  Being an invention of 20^th century, psychometrics serves all purposes to fill the need of modern era. Psychometric tests are available online and they are sent to candidates using emails. The greater accessibility helps both the recruiter and the candidate in running the process. Where a candidate can fill up the test questionnaire in hardly 10-15 minutes time, similarly the recruiter can evaluate the result within minutes to generate the reports. This signposts that psychometrics are ideal for pre-employment background screening and highly useful in large volume recruitment.
• Objectivity:
  Usually all psychometric assessment tests are well-researched and when recruiters use these tests to measure the cognitive skills and aptitude of a candidate, they provide fair and objective results to the recruiter. Objectivity makes the recruitment and selection process unbiased and fair as standardized tests are being used to evaluate all candidates equally. While, relying only on subjective approaches for hiring like interview and CV analysis can be good to some extent but can’t be as much reliant as objective approaches like psychometric tests are. In this way, recruiter can also avoid legal suits and lawful objections on their recruitment process.