The Advantages and Disadvantages of Psychometric Tests

The utility of psychometric assessments has been debated in the recruitment industry for a long time. Recruiters differ on psychometric strengths and weaknesses. While some acknowledge the benefits of psychometric testing, finding it an extremely valuable assessment method, the others point toward issues with psychometric testing.

When psychometric assessments were developed in the early 20th century, they were used in educational psychology. However, over the years, psychometric tests have also been employed in the workplace and are believed to be contributing positively.

Employers choose psychometric tests to evaluate the cultural and personality fitment of potential employees. Psychometric testing enables employers to select employees who would fit a particular job role and continue in the company for extended periods. It is one of the most pertinent challenges for recruiters to assess their domain skills and personality traits and tendencies. The benefits of psychometric testing are unquestionable, not just in recruitment but also in training and development, high-potential identification, leadership development, succession planning and other dimensions of workforce management. 

Traditional interview processes don’t reveal a candidate’s inherent traits. When finding a candidate with the right fitment, various personality metrics must be measured and quantified as per the company’s defined competency framework. It is imprudent to use intuition or gut feeling during recruitment. Recruiters must have reliable insights and objective metrics to select a candidate.  

It is one of the most significant reasons psychometric tests have gradually gained greater importance in the recruitment process. Any company’s recruitment process is a means to identify its future employees. It is also indispensable to gauge their strengths and weaknesses to deploy them in the most suitable roles. It is widely believed that an employee will stay with a company for a longer duration if their values are aligned with that of the organization. The analysis of the alignment of values is also one of the advantages of the psychometric test.

Psychometric tests offer insights into a potential employee’s mental abilities, skills, intelligence, personality traits, motivations and interests. Recruiters can ensure that only the fitting aspirants join the company by administering psychometric assessments on them. Psychometric tests are useful tools at every level of candidate assessment, also for judging their growth and development once they are part of an organization.

A reliable psychometric assessment can evaluate a candidate and objectively measure human characteristics. These tests have proven to offer an adequate estimate of candidate performance on the job during recruitment and selection.

Based on these two fundamental aspects of candidates, the HR department analyzes them in the early stage of the recruitment process – the idea is to make objective decisions about them based on reliable statistics. 

Psychometric tests can predict the candidates, and these insights help the recruiters to deploy those selected in suitable job roles. Companies use psychometric tests in the initial stages of the selection process to gain a holistic view of the candidate’s likelihood of success at the job.

Mercer | Mettl’s psychometric tests measure 4 key aspects of human personality:

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The effectiveness of psychometric testing has often been questioned because of a test-taker’s ability to answer in a socially desirable manner or not being entirely true to their knowledge. Such a practice can mask a candidate’s real personality. Some candidates may provide misleading answers because of anxiety or an incongruent test environment. These anxious responses may diminish their suitability. However, advancements in Machine learning (ML) and other technologies have lent greater accuracy and result-orientedness to these psychometric tests, making them more useful.

Did You Know?

Testing Standards

In 2014, the American Educational Research Association (AERA), American Psychological Association (APA) and National Council on Measurement in Education (NCME) provided various standards for psychological testing, which describes the right criteria for the development of tests, evaluation and usage. It suggests various standards related to designing the tests and development. It also talks about the scores, scales, score linking, reporting, administration of tests, and also the rights and responsibilities for the test users.

Evaluation Standards

The Joint Committee on Standards for Educational Evaluation has provided various standards for evaluation. It provides various guidelines for implementation, assessment and other insights for perfect evaluation. These standards make the results more feasible, useful and accurate, ensuring that the tests’ results are reliable and don’t provide misleading information.

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The advantages and disadvantages of psychometric tests can be termed as all possible pros and cons of psychometric evaluations, which hiring managers should consider carefully while creating these assessments for making a sensible hiring decision. The vast majority of multinational companies use psychometric tests nowadays, but these tests come with factors that are also worth considering.

The Advantages of Psychometric Assessment

The advantages of psychometric assessments include an in-depth understanding of the candidate, an objective recruitment process, reduced time-to-hire, improved ROI, and a greater chance of landing the best-fit candidate.

Psychometric assessment’s standardization and objectivity help provide nearly accurate results when evaluating a candidate’s fitment for the role. Different positions require different combinations of skills and personality traits. For example, if a company wants to fill a sales or a business development vacancy, some of the desired qualities will be social astuteness, self-motivation and strategic thinking.

Disadvantages of Psychometric Assessment

The world of psychometric assessments is crowded with tests and questionnaires, most of which are not valid. An organization must ensure that it has trained professionals who can distinguish authentic tests from the incompetent ones. The disadvantages of a psychometric test are:

Considering the pros and cons of psychometric testing and its varied applications, the best way to implement is to combine it with other recruitment assessments and processes for a holistic picture. Once other methods such as skill tests, interviews, or group discussions are combined with the results of a psychometric assessment, the recruiter can get a fair idea of a candidate’s role and organizational fitment. Purposefully engaging with the candidates gives companies a solid foundation to know them better.

The role and benefits of psychometric testing don’t just end at a candidate’s selection. It continues well into the succeeding steps of employee development and promotions. For example, companies can implement personal development programs according to different job levels of the employees. These learning and development programs can be designed as per the interest and motivations of individual employees. So, psychometric tests also help optimize strategies for making a sound talent base.  

Many companies have improved their recruitment decisions by incorporating psychometric and competency-based tests.

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Mercer | Mettl’s suite of psychometric tests are designed to measure the important immeasurables. They have been designed to evaluate behavioral and cognitive skills accurately and in a result-oriented manner. 

Our subject matter experts can also provide companies with customizable solutions to address their specific needs in the recruitment and development process. We make your assessment process scientific and reliable. 

Mercer | Mettl’s psychometric tests can provide predictive insights for assessing various traits of the individuals. These traits include:

• Positive Personality Traits – The Merce | Mettl Personality Profiler (MPP) is the perfect tool to help create a competency framework related to a particular job role. The personality test is based on the Five Factor Model of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, Emotional Stability.The personality traits gauge a candidate’s strengths and development opportunities based on inherent personality traits and workstyle preferences, and help in predicting what behaviors a candidate is likely to engage in as a result of their preferences and predispositions.
• Mett Personality Map – Mercer | Mettl’s Personality Map (MPM) measures 28 work-relevant personality traits beyond what is covered in the well-established “Big Five” model. It measures personality via a unique and innovative 28 facet and a four-factor structure of personality that are especially useful for the advanced role levels, such as leadership development.
• Dark Personality Traits – Mercer | Mettl’s Dark Personality Inventory (MDPI) contains 6 dark traits: Opportunism, Self-Obsession, Insensitivity, Temperamental, Impulsiveness and Thrill-Seeking. It measures negative personality constructs in potential hires and employees to keep the workplace safe, conducive, and healthy.
• Motivation, Value, Preference – Mercer | Mettl’s Motivation Inventory finds out how motivated employees are towards their work and what drives them toward excellence. A short test that measures 8 key motivators under 3 major needs- sustainability needs (money, security), relatedness needs (recognition, affiliation, competition), and growth needs (power, advancement, achievement).
  
• Cognitive Ability – Mercer | Mettl has a library of tests to evaluates a candidate’s core brain functions – Attention, Speed, Memory, Visualization. It measures a candidate’s capacity to think logically and process data to make informed decisions.