Psychometric assessmentsare used to evaluate the candidates’ skills, personalities, attitudes, and knowledge. They typically contain multiple choices to save time for both the recruiters and the candidates. This type of assessment is sometimes performance-based and evaluates likability where the candidates need to solve different kinds of numerical, graphical, and verbal problems.
What are the different types of psychometric assessments?
There are three main types of psychometric assessments: achievement, aptitude, and personality assessments. Although each of them has different traits to judge candidates, theyall helpfind out the candidate’s ability.
Achievement assessments
This assessment measuresa person’s knowledge, cognitive skills or accomplishment in a particular file.
The achievement assessments are further divided into different types to be used in a specific scenario, including survey battery (a junior level assessment), single survey achievement (single area of expertise), and diagnostic achievement (focus on the individual’s achievement from a low level to an expert).
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Aptitude (cognitive abilities) assessments
If the achievement assessment focuses on the employee’s knowledge, the aptitude assessment measures the individual’s ability to acquire a specific skill and the way they practice these skills in their life, such as learning a new language or managing a group of people.
Aptitude assessment also has a wide range of variations: general aptitude, verbal non-verbal aptitude, and quantitative aptitude assessments.
Personality assessments
Personality is how you observe and react to a particular problem in your life. The assessment evaluates a person’s attitude towards a specific problem from which the recruiters can decide whether not to make hiring call.
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Why should employers use psychometric assessments?
First of all, choosing the right person for the job has long been a pressing problem thatmany companies and hiring managers have to face. A poor selectionmay lead to disastrous consequences for both the employee and the company. Unsuitable candidates can causea loss in productivity, revenues, and other issueslike rising absenteeism andeven reduced morale.
Moreover, this assessment technique is a more valid method than a traditional interview because it can be highly predictive of the candidate’s future job performance.
Lastly, the organisation’s performance model can be developed based on the results of the psychometric assessments. A good psychometricassessment will allow you to determine talented individuals.
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Many employers choose psychometric assessments as the go-to recruiting tool prior to requesting the candidates to come in for an interview.
Three main benefits of the psychometric assessments
An understanding of skills and competencies
The psychometric assessments provide theemployers with adeep understanding of their candidates’ personalities and cognitive skills. Additionally, the employers can identify the high performersbut do not have the interview skills, so they cannot show their skills and competencies in an interview situation.
Save time and cost
Instead of organising many rounds of interview in the traditional way, using psychometric assessments can helpsaveboth the recruiters and the candidate’stime prior to the selection process. The recruitersjust need to call the most suitable people to participate in the face-to-face interview round.
Reduce attrition and improve engagement
According to Jodette Cleary, Chief People Officer of HiPages Group: “We have declined attrition in our teams, increased employee satisfaction and have seen better performance.” Cleaery stated since the introduction ofthecustomised role-fit psychometric test as part of the recruitment processfor the sales and services team, the results have been significantly improved. Another benefit according to Cleary is that the assessments help HiPages managers to understand their new team members’ demands and be better at managing and developing them.
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