Nowadays as people prepare for job interviews it is not uncommon for them to go online and type any of a number of blunt queries into google. An example: “Questions that are asked during job interviews and how to answer them”. I cannot help but wonder how good the odds are that their soon to be interviewers are also somewhere online looking for questions to ask. The reality is that we now live in a world that allows people to easily bluff their way through job interviews which are in turn conducted by people who ask the same old and tired questions. There is a possibility that job interviews are devolving into meaningless rituals.
It is then obvious that the traditional job interview, as a major decider for who you get to hire, has become an increasingly flawed process. Better tools are therefore needed to help determine the suitability of a candidate for a position. This is where psychometric tests come in; most of these were designed to improve the quality and relevance of the information that is used for hiring decisions beyond that which is normally provided by the likes of professional certificates, CVs and face to face interviews. In some cases, they help eliminate the innate biases that plague interview sessions.
These psychometric tests are however not created equal. Some have had their effectiveness questioned in both professional and scientific circles, while others are so flawed that they offer no significant improvements over the selection tools that they seek to replace. Today I present a few that I believe represent the best of what psychometric tests can offer.
16PF Questionnaire
The sixteen personalities factor (or 16PF for short) questionnaire was developed to measure and attempt to accurately describe personalities. With the help of a dictionary, a group of psychologists took words that people use to describe each other and winnowed these down to just sixteen. These sixteen personalities “factors”, they hypothesised, were what people used to describe others and themselves. A questionnaire was then developed out of decades of research to measure all the basic traits of personality as described by these factors.
These questionnaires are widely used internationally and not just for job placement but in education, clinical and career counselling settings. It has been used in the past to predict a wide range of behaviours such as creativity, academic achievement, empathy, interpersonal skills. Just like the DISC assessment below, this tool has a strong scientific background having been born out of the work of industrial psychologists.
DISC assessment
This behavioural assessment tool centres on the four personality factors which make up its acronym. These are Dominance (D), Influence (I), Steadiness(S) and Conscientiousness(C). It immediately becomes obvious the purpose which this test is most useful for once you realise that these factors mostly describe someone’s personality in a social context. It is mainly used by businesses which want to achieve more effective teamwork and want to predict how the job hopeful will work with others. As an employer, you can use this test to better control the personalities in your team.
The test can help foretell what motivates individuals, what causes them stress and how well they respond to conflict and solve problems. This test is limited to measuring personalities and cannot measure the skills and aptitude necessary for specific positions; therefore if you want to measure these other equally crucial qualities in prospective employees you should use other psychometric tests or conventional tools.
Situational Judgement Test
This is also known as the Situational Stress Test (SST) or Inventory (SSI). In this test, the job candidate is presented with hypothetical but realistic scenarios which can occur in the work environment and they must either provide the appropriate response or rank possible responses from a list for appropriateness.
Out of the three psychometric tests that I will present here today, this is the only one which can directly measure the candidate’s skills and knowledge. This is also the only one of these three tests which must be personalised by each company that uses it. Both the DISC and 16PF tests are available “off-the-shelf” for anyone to use while the Situational Judgement Test has to be developed specifically for the company which wants to use it. The usefulness and effectiveness of this test is ultimately dependant on the appropriateness of the questions (challenges) set and the ability of the person assessing the responses.
While these tests may seem like too much work for filling in positions, they may help eliminate some unintentional biases in your own hiring processes which may be letting some of the best possible employees slip through your fingers. Of course, you may also be one of those people who pride themselves in being able to judge someone from just a brief interaction. Unfortunately while first impressions matter, research indicates that they are seldom accurate.
