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What are Psychometrics?


 

Psychometric tests are sophisticated tools designed to measure individual difference in a number of areas such as intelligence, ability, personality and motivation. When used in combination with other information sources they provide a powerful insight into why people make the decisions they make and why they behave in the way they do. Psychometrics also help to predict a person’s future behaviour and performance and therefore are an instrumental tool in business planning.

When to use psychometrics:

  • Recruitment and selection
  • Personal, team and leadership development
  • Career coaching and management

The use of psychometrics has been steadily increasing over the last 50 years but they have really taken off in the last 5-10 years. This means there is now a dazzling array of psychometrics to choose from. The majority of psychometric tests have been designed by occupational psychologists to ensure the tools have scientific reliability and normative information from which to compare the results against.

In times of cost efficiencies, greater cost control and reduced budgets, the use of psychometrics has never been higher. Psychometric profiling allows you to reduce your cost of hire, reduce time to hire and increases the accuracy of your hire decision.

Getfeedback’s online testing has the following benefits:

  • Efficiency and confidentiality: secure collection of feedback on individuals
  • Proven methodology: use of psychometrics to evaluate individuals against industry norms
  • Low administrative burden: Getfeedback’s system produces all reporting data
  • Low noise internally: your organisation’s time management is kept to minimum

There are 3 different types of psychometrics:

  • Ability/intellectual capability
  • Personality
  • Motivation

 

Ability or intellectual capability

This type of test measures an individual’s intellectual horsepower and are most commonly used in recruitment and selection. There are two types of ability tests – those which measure verbal reasoning and those which measure numerical reasoning.

Research has shown very strong links between the ability to make strategic decisions in business and the ability to deal with abstract concepts, logic and to reason verbally. In addition extensive research has also shown strong correlations between capability and management effectiveness.

Getfeedback offers a range of ability tests:

 

Personality

Personality psychometrics measure an individual’s character traits. These traits are the things that enable us to emphasise with others or predict how they might behave in certain circumstances. Understanding someone’s personality helps to understand how he/she works, what type of work they will excel in, how they will associate with their peers and manage their team.

Depending on the job role it would be desirable to understand the candidate’s attention to detail, their ability to work in a team or their ability to make tough decisions in a highly pressured environment. These aspects of personality are not easily obtained by even the best trained interviewer.

Getfeedback offers a range of Personality questionnaires:

 

Motivation

Motivation tools provide information about the type of environment, tasks and activities that an individual will be motivated to do. Thus motivation makes matching individuals to roles that will not clash with their work attitudes and that will meet their work style preferences possible.

Motivation quickly addresses simple but very important issues such as:

  • How he/she likes to work?
  • What motivates him/her to work?
  • What types of goals does he/she like?

Getfeedback offers a range of motivation tools:

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