By Zakeera Vidler, Director of HR Consulting at Hong Kong-based executive recruitment firm ConnectedGroup
The global job market has been tight for several years now and despite emerging from the current economic downturn, employers in many sectors are still operating in a candidate-short market.
In these circumstances it is vital for employers not only to recruit the right candidates, but also to retain them by providing effective career development over the long term. It’s no surprise, then, that psychometric assessment has become widely recognised as a valuable tool for recruiters and HR managers. Around the world, it is used by 80% of Fortune 500 companies and is now growing fast in Asia and the Middle East.
Here we look at the use and misuse of psychometric assessment and identify how both candidates and employers can use it better.
What’s in a name?
Even as psychometric assessment grows in popularity as an HR tool, there are still misconceptions about what it is and what it can achieve. Even the name can cause confusion. Many people refer to ‘psychometric testing’ as though it’s another hurdle for a candidate to clear on the path to a new job.
The broader term ‘psychometric assessment’ is much more applicable since we are not simply testing a candidate’s skills in specific areas, but enabling that candidate to provide a self-profile that illuminates a wide range of aptitudes, thought processes and, most importantly, preferences.
Psychometric assessments are designed to measure a person’s psychological abilities—and this means gauging personality traits rather than the narrow knowledge base required for a particular job.
Looking at psychometrics this way helps to clear up some very common misconceptions, including the belief that it’s a tool used only during the recruitment process and that it provides results to be used exclusively by employers.
Recruitment tool or HR tool?
Psychometric assessment is an invaluable recruitment tool—though it is not a means to an end in itself. Decisions about whether or not to select a candidate should never be made solely on this basis. Assessments are particularly helpful for confirming impressions gained in interviews and for clarifying areas of doubt. Many organisations include behavioural interviewing in the selection process once a candidate has reached the final interview stage.
But assessment is equally useful for ongoing career management and staff retention—from the viewpoint of both employer and employee. Excessive staff turnover is a major issue for many organisations: when a company loses employees it is also losing a significant investment and substantial intellectual property.
This is where psychometric assessment often proves its worth. It is a good way of highlighting an individual’s strengths in a neutral context, regardless of the job that individual is currently doing.
A genuine understanding of an employee’s aptitudes and preferences can enable HR professionals to recognise previously unexplored potential and create an appropriate long-term development plan.
Brain trust
So what should a company look for when contemplating the use of psychometric assessment? Both methodology and professional support is key. Possible tools range from the complete SHL offerings, a series of verbal and numeric reasoning tests; inductive reasoning tests, personality questionnaires, motivation questionnaires, speed and accuracy tests, as well as HBDI and DISC assessment tools.
HBDI is based on whole brain technology; an attempt to understand how individuals think. It provides a basis for measuring different thinking preferences by determining the degree of dominance that has developed among four thinking styles. At the core of whole brain technology is the Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument or HBDI, the worldwide standard for measuring thinking preferences and brain dominance. Whole brain technology is scientifically designed to help people think better, and therefore vastly improve communication across multicultural teams.
The HBDI identifies and measures the strength of preference for each of the four distinct thinking styles. These correspond to the cerebral hemispheres and the limbic system of the brain. The two left side structures combine to represent what is popularly called left-brain thinking. The two right side structures combine to represent right brain thinking. Left-brain functions include: logic, facts, rules, words and language, maths and science, reality-based forms, strategies, practical and safety. Right brain functions include: feeling, big-picture orientation, imagination rules, philosophy and religion, appreciation, impetuous reactions and risk-taking behaviour. The two cerebral structures combine to represent cerebral thinking and the two limbic structures combine to represent limbic thinking.
The HBDI, through its series of 120 questions, is capable of measuring the degree of preference between each of the four individual thinking structures (quadrants) and each of the four-paired structures (modes). This results in a four-quadrant profile, which displays the degree of preference for each of the four quadrants—your HBDI Profile.
Scoring results are free of value judgment and cultural bias. Because it is a self-analysis, most people immediately recognise their results as accurate. The profiles produced by the HBDI model provide a graphic representation of thinking preferences, which helps individuals—and their managers—to understand their approach to their work environment, the people in it and their way of undertaking specific tasks.
A secondary assessment technique known as DISC profiling can also provide a practical assessment of an individual’s behaviour according to four factors–dominance, influence, steadiness and compliance. This information is used to create a picture of the individual’s motivations, dislikes, strengths and weaknesses and likely reactions to others. It also helps to predict how someone is likely to behave in situations.
Whatever the methodology used, it is important that a provider of psychometric assessments has the experience and expertise to tailor the service to each client’s specific needs.
When to use psychometric assessments
Psychometric assessments add value for employers in all business sectors, but not every company has the same requirements and a bespoke service is essential. It is often the case that an organisation develops a preference for a certain type of testing/assessment that is particularly relevant to its own employment requirements.
For example, assessment is especially useful when an employer is undertaking large scale hiring, perhaps for graduate recruitment or for large numbers of similar positions in, say, the hospitality industry. It’s also very effective for team building exercises, as the preferences revealed in assessments are a good way of identifying complementary strengths between team members and learning how people will work together.
The approach to assessment is as important as the methodology employed. Feedback to the individuals who are being assessed is as important as it is to their employers. Psychometric assessment is designed to explore peoples’ preferences rather than their suitability only for one specific role; this means that assessment can provide far more than a test of a candidate’s fitness for a particular job.
Effective assessment provides an in-depth understanding of a candidate’s preferences, making for the best possible use of all available talent over the longer term.
Use don’t abuse
Assessment tools have a valid and effective role to play within an organisation, but each company should look carefully at how they are employing the tools before rolling them out.
Far more than just a recruitment tool, when used properly psychometric testing is a valuable human resources tool that can be implemented across the organisation, not just outside of it.
Paul Arkwright
Publisher
