subject: Psychometric Test Reality Check - Why Testing Should Be An Integral Part Of Your Hiring Process [print this page] Psychometric Test Reality Check - Why Testing Should Be An Integral Part Of Your Hiring Process
If a psychometric test does not figure prominently into your recruitment and selection process, then you're going to want to read every word of this article very carefully. That's because it's going to make it patently clear to you why psychometric testing should be considered to be as integral to your hiring process - and essential to making accurate hiring decisions - as reviewing resumes/CVs, conducting behavioural descriptive interviews (BDIs), and checking references.
This is especially true when you're talking about the recruitment and selection of people for senior executive and highly skilled positions - where the cost of a "bad hire" can be as much as 24 times the base compensation, according to Bradford A. Smart, Phd, author of the book "Topgrading: How Leading Companies Win by Hiring, Coaching and Keeping the Best People."
The reasons why testing should be a standard part of your recruitment and selection process are pretty simple:
A psychometric test measures, among other things, the intensity of a person's predisposition towards certain types of behavioral tendencies - dominance, influence, steadiness, conscientiousness - under certain conditions in certain environments that are needed, in varying degrees, for success in a given role
A psychometric test can show you how a candidate's personal behavioral profile - natural tendencies and predispositions - compares to an ideal profile for the job for which he or she is being considered
A psychometric test can further show how much a candidate can flex beyond his or her natural tendencies, which gives you actionable insights into whether the candidate is naturally "job ready," would require some coaching (and in what areas), or simply wouldn't fit and should be passed on
It's perhaps this last point where the value of testing really stands out. As important as it is to make sure that you hire the most talented people into all roles in your organization - senior, skilled, and otherwise - it is just as important, if not more so, that you avoid hiring the "false positives," those that appear to have what it takes to do the job but, in reality, do not, will not, or cannot deliver.
When you introduce a psychometric test into your recruitment and selection process, you add an entirely different element into it - objective data about a candidate's natural behavioral drivers - that round out his or her profile and, in so doing, empower you to make dramatically better hiring decisions.
If you want to learn more about how a psychometric test can benefit your organization...
Please click on the link to visit the Optimize My Workforce website, where you'll find articles and other information about psychometric tests and all kinds of other human resources and workforce productivity improvement solutions.
