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How Psychometric Assessments can Improve Your Hiring Process

  • Publish Date: Posted over 4 years ago
  • Author:by James Burdis

An increasing number of organisations are using psychometric assessments to improve their hiring processes, and address inefficiencies in their teams. This is for good reason, as the results of using these types of assessments in recruitment and selection have been statistically correlated with high performance on the job.

There is often misconception and sometimes fear around these tools – their purpose, what they measure, and the benefits they provide. Before implementing this type of assessment or taking one yourself, it’s important to understand what it is and how it works. A psychometric test or assessment measures characteristics such as cognitive abilities, behavioural styles, and personality traits.

There are many variations of these tools, so it is important to select one that is fit for purpose. Psychometric tests will measure aptitude, cognitive ability, reasoning and logic, whereas psychometric assessments measure emotional intelligence, personality and behavioural preferences. For example, although the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is popular for understanding personalities it’s not intended for employee selection or evaluation.

These types of assessments are not meant to categorise employees, but rather to help managers understand learning styles, behaviours and motivations at work.

Understanding preferred working styles and key motivators of the employees on your team will empower you to become a better manager, and achieve the following benefits:

  • Increase successful placements

  • Improve compatibility within and across teams

  • Improve development and retention

  • Reduce unconscious bias

  • Reduce probation time and staff turnover

The assessments we offer our clients are administered by a certified practitioner, and feedback is reported to both the client and the candidate. The assessments are administered online in a user friendly format, and generate insightful reports. The range of assessments we offer measure:

  • Work behaviours – strengths and limitations, motivators, communication style, etc.

  • Cognitive ability – speed of on-boarding, problem solving style, etc.

  • Emotional intelligence – how one understands and measures their own and others’ emotions, and relationship management

We use these assessments internally at Hanover, which offer significant benefit to key areas of our business. The feedback from these validated and job-relevant psychometric assessments are well received by candidates and have added great value to our talent selection, on-boarding and development processes.

We can provide our clients with up to 20 different reports depending on desired insight. Beyond this, we can assist you in creating a profile based on a specific vacancy to use as a benchmarking tool in the recruitment process and facilitate team profiling to identify and address inefficiencies at the team or organisational level.

Find out more over on our homepage