Psychometrics

What is psychometric testing?

A psychometric test is an assessment method (usually completed electronically) that measures an individual’s personality, skills or aptitudes. The assessment(s) help to evaluate an individual’s suitability for a certain job role, their potential and their cultural fit to an organisation. Psychometric assessments can help support and develop a business’ ‘Emotional Intelligence’ (EI) – which is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions and those of others. EI is a key communication and leadership skill.

Why should my business consider psychometric testing?

Many employers benefit from using psychometrics in the following scenarios:

• Recruitment – to better understand candidates’ personality and attitudes, in order to make more effective and informed decisions during the hiring process. Businesses will prefer for job applicants to undertake both a personality test to understand the applicant’s cultural fit to the organisation, and aptitude tests to understand a the candidate’s competencies in areas such as numerical or verbal reasoning.
• Individual coaching – to support an individual in better understanding their strengths and areas for development. This may be part of career coaching, or leadership development, or 121 self-development.
• Team-based coaching and development – to help teams better understand their working preferences and personalities, as well as others and how they work, in order to facilitate greater team cohesion and develop working relationships.

Why outsource my psychometrics?

Within our team, we have a British Psychological Society accredited Occupational, Ability and Personality tester. Our HR Consultants are trained and experienced with psychometric assessment and analysis. We also offer a range of psychometric assessment options (outlined below) to choose from. By outsourcing your psychometrics to an independent provider, you can additionally benefit from:

• Reducing the apprehension that individuals may have in completing the tests
• Reducing the risk of bias affecting the testing, analysis and feedback process
• Reducing management time and administration
• Ensuring you have trained expert support throughout the process

It is important to understand that in psychometric assessments, there are no right or wrong answers, and individuals cannot ‘fail’ a personality assessment.

What psychometric assessments do you use?

• SHL cognitive assessments – assesses an individual’s competencies such as numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, etc.
• SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire – assesses an individuals work based personality helping businesses to understand role fit and cultural fit. Job potential, and development gaps
• Persona Grata Inventory – based on four colours, PGI helps individuals learn more about their preferred behaviour to support a greater self-awareness of behaviours.

You can learn more about each of the above assessment options by clicking on the relevant links or reading our Related Articles on each testing provider.

How are Nockolds HR’s psychometric testing services provided?

All of the above psychometric assessment options are completed online. Candidates are sent links to the tests to complete. Competency tests are timed, personality tests are open ended. We get notified when individuals have completed the tests and then we complete a detailed analysis of their results. We then provide feedback to the candidates and to key business stakeholders.

At Nockolds HR, we work flexibly with your business to provide our psychometric services, depending on your needs and your budget. We can offer:

• Psychometric assessment / testing – administration of personality and competency testing.
• Verbal feedback (in person, online or phone) – to candidates / individuals and to recruitment panels / hiring managers.
• Written feedback reports – to recruitment panels / hiring managers. Reports can be brief or more thorough depending on your requirements and budget.
• Comparison tables – with higher volume recruitment, we can provide summary tables which briefly illustrate each candidates competency scores and key personality outcomes.
• Coaching sessions – with individuals or teams following psychometric assessment completion to support them in understanding their key strengths and areas for development.