Psychometric Testing for Recruitment

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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. Personality assessments are being used more frequently for all levels of hiring, and not just for senior-level roles. Detail2Recruitment now provides a range of personality and ability psychometric assessments which are offered at no additional cost to our clients.

What is a Psychometric Assessment?

There are a number of online tests that claim to be psychometric, but when you investigate what it is they assess and how they do it, they come up short on what you are looking to get out of it. 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 and 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 for recruitment into the interview process as a way of validating and confirming the assumptions they had built up during the interview process.

When working with my clients, my primary remit is to find the best talent in the market, which then raises the questions;

• What constitutes the “best talent”?
• Is the quantum of “best talent” based on capability, attitude, values, personality, and experience – is it some, or all of this?
• How are the components of “best talent” measured?
• 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 will default to a selection process that involves a CV sift followed by a 1 to 2-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 type of interview process means that the hiring manager is likely to recruit people similar to themselves, which isn’t always a good thing! There is a lack of science or predictive performance built into this type of interview process and the success of the new hire becomes a risky shot in the dark.

Senior to Executive Roles

A typical C Suite recruitment process can range from similar to that illustrated above, to panel interviews with a group of leadership or board stakeholders. Embedding psychometric testing is more common the more senior the role, or the greater the influence the role has within the organisation.

The senior-level recruitment we undertake is retained and we embed a relevant psychometric test in-between the first and second interviews. After the first stage interview has been concluded, we know the number of candidates required to assess and what type of assessment should be used.

We administer the psychometric tests to the candidates and once completed, arrange a video meeting with the 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. All of this means our client doesn’t pay any more for the overall hire, despite enhancing their recruitment and selection process with psychometric assessment.

Cost

Typical psychometric tests can range in value from £100 to £2,500, and 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. The cost of a bad hire can run into the tens of thousands, so it’s a small and very worthwhile investment to use some sort of psychometric testing for recruitment at 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 is a complete guarantee that covers the cost of the full recruitment fee, should the hire not 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 what the costs are associated with using assessment as part of your recruitment & selection.
• If you do your own recruitment and want to incorporate assessment into the process.
• If you use one company for assessments and another for recruitment and instead want to streamline the process so that one company does both the assessment and the recruitment.
• 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

• More efficient and effective hiring, be clearer about what good looks like and take the “gut feel” out of the selection process.
• Improved time to hire by getting it right the first time, and not having to go back out to the market.
• Standardise your hiring so that people are not recruited based on who the hiring manager is but based on organisational fit and their personality.
• Improve retention rates; you are hiring the right people who stay longer, and staff do not leave as a result of being managed by a bad hire.
• 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 0333 023 0045 or at mike.wood@detail2recruitment.com and is happy to chat and help you navigate the minefield of Psychometric Assessments.