Psychometric Testing Shows How Candidate is Suitable for Jobs

In this developing world of advancing technologies, companies are in search of a perfect candidate. To this end, they have introduced the use of Psychometric assessment as a part of their recruitment process. This comprises a set of questionnaires which are supposed to discover the kind of person the candidate is as they would not necessarily reveal this in a personal face-to-face interview. Most countries like UK, UAE, Saudi Arabia and South Africa have already started using this recruitment process to hire the right candidates for their companies. The questions are designed in such a way that would expose the behaviour of a candidate and what would motivate them. Some Psychometric tests have an inbuilt "Lie Scale" which makes it difficult for a candidate to put on an act, as the test will pick up on their inconsistencies if any. It may also test how quickly you can get to the correct answer. Working Process However, even with the help of psychometric tests, the selection procedure is not that short and simple. When candidates apply for the job, they are asked to take up an online psychometric test + SJTs. Many candidates are filtered out on the basis of the test results. If the company feels the need to conduct more tests for the selected candidates or for some in particular, they are asked to take the test again which has a different structure. Once they have successfully cleared this first testing round, the company calls them for a telephonic interview or could be a video conference interview, usually conducted by most of the big companies. The selected candidates are then given an assignment to work on and/or group activities, verification tests and case presentations intended to test the abilities of the individual to work in a required manner. A lot of candidates are filtered out in this round. The remaining few are called for a personal interview, i.e. face-to-face. If the recruiter for the company is satisfied and finds all the qualities and qualifications needed for the position along with the experience, the individual is selected and offered the job. Cross Verification Somewhere in between the online psychometric assessment round and personal interview, the company compares the results of the psychometric test and the answers of the candidate in other rounds of the selection process. If there are major similarities found, then the candidate is mostly advanced to the next round, but if the answers mismatch on a small scale, then the candidate is either asked to take a re-test. If it is a high profile company with a great performance profile, then they would most likely reject the applicant. If the position involves weaponry, security, and similar factors like that, the company even performs multiple psychometric assessments with inbuilt abilities to detect lies along with a personal in-room lie detector and they may also run a background check. Candidate's Vulnerability One cannot really "ace" a psychometric test. It is used to see a candidate's strengths and weaknesses, and how well they match up with the position requirement. For some positions, scoring extremely high for sociability can be good and in favor of the candidate, but if the position deals with auditing sensitive accounts or involves international confidential information, it might count against the candidate. If a psychometric assessment results of a candidate points to weaknesses in some sectors, recruiters must not overlook the fact that a candidate has scored well in other sectors. The strengths of the candidates should be the first to be looked for in the results. If they match the requirement of the position at a company, this gives a positive result. If not, then they can either work on improving the candidate's abilities or assign him/her for a different position which he/she is suitable for, matching their interests. Test for their dark side Some online psychometric tests are specially structured with a set of questions intended to examine the candidates for the "dark side" of their personality, if they have any. These questions help recruiters to judge candidates on aspects of the decisions they take if things go wrong and/or they find themselves under pressure. It is mostly found that high profile banks use this form of test as a part of their candidate recruitment process. For these reasons, international companies with high-level reputations to maintain must make efficient use of these tests as they are highly accurate and specially structured to test weaknesses, strengths and work ability of a candidate along with personality.