Member Article

How to Use Psychometric Testing to Find the Best Candidate

Companies always want the best candidates to work for them. Educational qualifications and experience are important factors in selecting a candidate, but that’s not all. Earlier the recruiting process used to be very simple. The HR would sort the candidates on the basis of their qualification and past experience in the relevant field. Later the eligible candidates were directly selected in the interview-round in companies. But now, countries like UK, UAE, South Africa and Saudi Arabia have already implemented the use of a specially structured on-line assessment, called psychometric assessment to ensure that they are recruiting the best candidate for their company.

Psychometric tests are intended to measure the personality, strengths, weaknesses, situation handling capabilities and other important abilities of the candidates, which they would not reveal in the personal interview that happens face-to-face. The main function of these tests is to perform a check on candidate’s cognitive abilities which are measured along with the suitability for a position they have applied for.

Finding the perfect candidate for the company

After the candidate has applied for a particular position at a company, he is allowed to advance to the next round on the basis of his qualifications and experience, but that’s just the first round. In the next round, the candidate is asked to take a mental ability, aptitude or psychometric test, which exposes the individual candidate’s sectors of personality like his behavior in a particular scenario. Along with personality, such tests also measure in-depth strengths and weaknesses of the candidate. The results of these tests are very useful to judge the candidate’s general nature and performance and whether they are suitable for a particular type of job or not.

When the candidates clear these psychometric test rounds, it may happen in some cases that the company asks the candidate to appear for a re-test. This is structured in a completely different manner and mostly examines the candidate’s ability to give honest answers.

The results are analyzed, after which candidates are chosen on the basis of the company’s requirement for the position. The chosen candidates are then called either for telephonic interview or a video conference, usually conducted by big companies. Some candidates are filtered out in this round and the selected ones are advanced to the next round where they are either given an assignment to work on with a deadline or called in to work with fellow candidates. These can be group activities, verification tests and case presentations which are very helpful in testing a candidate’s abilities to work in a team as well as assessing his communication and leadership qualities.

If the candidate satisfies the requirements of behavior, communication skill-set and other abilities required by the company for a post, then he/she is selected for the next round which is the personal interview. In this round a face-to-face interview with the candidates is conducted and the conclusions are tallied with the results of their on-line psychometric tests. Many candidates are filtered out in this round as well. If some of them clear this round successfully and the recruiter finds all the qualities needed for the job along with the required experience, then the candidate is selected and offered a job.

The structure of these tests matter

There are some specially structured psychometric assessments that also test for the dark side of an individual. In case the things go wrong and candidates find themselves under pressure - how would they react to the scenario or what crucial decisions would they make, whether the reason behind their decisions is logical or not, whether they are being selfish or not - such qualities can be identified by these tests. Candidates may not admit these aspects in personal interviews. It may expose the dark side of the candidates if they have one. Companies which have to maintain a level of reputation and cannot allow any margin of error usually make use of these psychometric tests to test the abilities of their candidates and analyze their personality on the basis of their psychometric test results.

Maintenance of Psychometric tests

On-line psychometric assessments must be constantly updated with the latest and important sets of questions/problems and structured well in order to get a good insight into the candidate’s mind.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Luke .