Psychometric Testing for Recruitment

 Psychometric Testing for Recruitment

Psychometric testing for recruitment is becoming an increasingly valuable tool which allows you to improve both your hiring processes, retention of staff and bottom-line performance. Companies are using personality assessments more frequently for all levels of hiring, not just for senior-level roles. Detail2Recruitment offers a range of personality and ability psychometric assessments to our clients at no additional cost.

What is a Psychometric Assessment?

There are a number of online tests that claim to be psychometric. However, upon investigation, you may find that their assessments fall short of meeting your objectives. These assessments are unlikely to be psychometric, even though they might claim to the contrary. Psychometric tests or assessments have a number of distinctive features which include:

• Standardised administration – meaning that the conditions for administering, scoring, and interpreting are consistent and done in a pre-determined manner.
• Objective and consistent scoring & interpretation – whereby different scorers (whether human or machine) would arrive at the same score for the same response across candidates, with little or no subjectivity in the process.
• Evidence demonstrating their scientific reliability, validity and fairness – meaning they measure what they set out to measure and aim to produce accurate scores without bias.

Without some of these features, a test or assessment cannot claim to be psychometric. Therefore the results will not be reliable when used for their intended purpose, which includes recruitment & selection.

Why I became a qualified Psychometric Testing Assessor

For the last 20+ years, I have worked in and around HR and Recruitment, HR for large PLCs before founding a Recruitment SME in 2002. It’s fair to say that I have been in and around talent, recruitment and onboarding for nearly all of my working life. During that time I’ve seen the impact a bad hire can have on an organisation and the people around them. Conversely, I’ve seen the impact a great hire has on business performance and the people within that organisation.

As I specialise in senior-level recruitment, many of my clients see the logical benefit of incorporating psychometric testing. Mainly to use recruitment assessments during the interview process to validate and confirm the assumptions made about candidates.

My main goal with clients is to find the best talent, which raises the following questions:

• What constitutes the “best talent”?
• Is “best talent” based on capability, attitude, values, personality, and experience, or just some of these?
• How do organisations measure the components of “best talent”?
• Who decides what good looks like?
• Who has the ultimate hiring decision, and is that decision based on any scientific or evidence-based reasoning?

You can already see what a minefield identifying the “best talent” is, which is why we have in-house BPS-qualified assessors who conduct personality and ability assessments for psychometric testing for recruitment.

Junior to Middle Management Roles

Most organisations default to a CV sift followed by a one- or two-stage interview process. That process will be based on the strength of a CV, which usually includes working for a competitor (if the hiring company really wants to play it safe), longevity in their roles, how they answer questions during the interviews, and what the hiring manager feels the chemistry/fit is between them.

This interview process may lead hiring managers to recruit people similar to themselves, which isn’t always beneficial. This interview process lacks scientific prediction and turns the success of the new hire into a risky shot in the dark.

Senior to Executive Roles

A typical C-suite recruitment process can range from the one described above to panel interviews with leadership or board stakeholders. Embedding psychometric testing is more common for senior roles or those with greater influence within the organisation.

We retain senior-level recruitment and embed a relevant psychometric test between the first and second interviews. After concluding the first-stage interview, we determine the number of candidates to assess and the type of assessment to use.

We administer the psychometric tests, then arrange a video meeting with client stakeholders to provide face-to-face feedback. We create a bespoke report on each candidate detailing the test outcomes, along with suggested questions and areas for further exploration at the second interview.

As only 1 candidate can be offered the role, to support my client’s employer brand, I arrange a video meeting with all of the candidates who took the psychometric assessment and provide them with detailed feedback to assist their career choices going forward. With the role being retained it allows us to provide this high level of service to our clients and candidates, whilst absorbing the cost of the psychometric testing for recruitment into the fee. This means our client pays no extra for the overall hire, even with enhanced recruitment and selection through psychometric assessment.

Cost

Typical psychometric tests can range in value from £100 to £2,500. Whilst the perception can be to utilise them for high-salaried roles only, the majority of people in an organisation are employed in junior to middle management roles,  increasing the potential for bad hires to damage the organisation to a greater extent than a senior level hire. A bad hire can cost tens of thousands, making psychometric testing a small but worthwhile investment for lower-level roles.

Candidate Guarantee

Managing costs and risk are high on the agenda of all organisations for all recruitment and selection processes. We’ve already identified the substantial cost associated with making the wrong hire, we are also able to support our clients to make the right hiring decisions by being able to provide our assessment services at no additional cost. For each client that incorporates personality-based psychometric testing into their recruitment and selection process, we are able to ensure the cost of any resulting hire for a period of up to 12 months.

This guarantee covers the full recruitment fee if the hire doesn’t work out for any reason. We are able to offer this due to the accuracy and robustness of our psychometric testing, meaning that our clients have nothing to lose, and everything to gain from incorporating psychometric testing into their recruitment and selection processes at all levels of management.

What Personality Assessments do I provide?

We provide 6 personality assessments which can be used for a range of outcomes, from recruitment & selection to team development & coaching to work-based attitudes, values and motivation.

Assessment Name	Brief Description	Use
15-Factor Questionnaire + (15FQ+)	The 15FQ+ measures the fundamental building blocks of personality. These provide insight into how people typically think, feel and interact in ways that may be productive or counter-productive for your organisation. It sets new standards for reliability and validity	Selection, individual and team development, coaching and guidance.
Personality & Values Questionnaire (PVQ)	Building on the extensively researched model behind the 15FQ+, the PVQ not only provides an in-depth assessment of the full sphere of human personality but also examines an individual’s core values and motives.	Selection, individual and team development, coaching and guidance
Occupational  Personality Profile (OPPro)	Developed from extensive research with major international organisations, the OPPro provides a focused assessment of nine personality traits of central importance in customer-facing roles. The questionnaire is written in a straightforward and direct style that is accessible to people of a wide range of abilities	Selection for and development in customer-facing, sales and general office roles
Jung Type Indicator (JTI)	An alternative to the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator®, the JTI assesses personality within Jung’s framework of Psychological Type. In addition to identifying a person’s preferred Type the JTI uses a scaled approach to each dimension, giving a more detailed description of preference than most Type indicators.	Personal development, team building, coaching and career guidance
Values & Motives Inventory (VMI)	Understanding a person’s energies and drives helps identify where they are likely to gain the most satisfaction and make the biggest contribution at work. VMI is a normative self-report questionnaire which profiles a person’s motivations to determine the amount of energy and effort they are likely to expend in different activities	Obtaining a profile of individual values & motives
Work Attitude Inventory (WAI)	The WAI is a measure of an individual’s personal integrity and ethics in a work context. It uses an innovative format to minimise response bias. It is designed to help reduce counterproductive work behaviours	Screening, selection, audit and benchmarking

When should you use Psychometric Assessments?

• If you currently use testing in your recruitment and selection and want a better, more cost-effective solution.
• You want to start using assessments for the first time.
• You want to know the costs associated with using assessments as part of your recruitment and selection process.
• If you do your own recruitment and want to incorporate assessment into the process.
• You want to streamline the process by having one company handle both recruitment and assessments.
• If you want to increase the performance of your workforce and their contribution to your business bottom line.

How Psychometric Assessments will positively impact your recruitment & selection

• Achieve more efficient and effective hiring, clarify what good looks like, and remove “gut feel” from the selection process.
• Improve time to hire by getting it right the first time and avoiding going back to the market.
• Standardise hiring to focus on organisational fit and personality, rather than the preferences of the hiring manager.
• Improve retention rates by hiring the right people who stay longer, reducing staff turnover caused by poor management.
• Improve your employer brand.
• Add value to your business bottom line by hiring better, more motivated, more committed people.
• Your customers are not interacting with a bad hire, negatively impacting your bottom line.
• You do not waste recruitment, training and onboarding costs by accidentally hiring the wrong person.

You can find out more about this…

Mike is qualified by the BPS (British Psychological Society) to administer and interpret a range of personality and ability assessments. Mike can be contacted at 03330230045 or at mike.wood@detail2recruitment.com and is happy to chat and help you navigate the minefield of Psychometric Assessments.