The most important asset when creating a business is the people involved, but how can you ensure that they are best suited for the positions? This is where psychometric assessments become relevant. The ability to understand the individuals’ underlying potential, as well as discern the ideal candidate for a specific position is of high importance. However, using psychometric assessments can still present challenges for HR, including:
📚 A Variety of Psychometric Assessment Providers
There are many psychometric assessments available out there in the market. However, not one size fits all. Each caters to different organisational needs, such as gamified assessments being more suitable for hiring fresh graduates or management trainees. Thus, discussing with your assessment tool providers is crucial in ascertaining the most appropriate assessment for your organisation’s needs.
🕑 Time and Cost Concerns
Every psychometric assessment possesses a unique quality that sets it apart from other assessments. Acquiring a new assessment tool can be time-consuming and expensive, as it requires commitment in understanding the user interface, training to practice the assessment, and interpreting reports. However, investing in your employees to develop new skills will always be advantageous for your organisation as opposed to having to seek external consultation every time.
😍 Creating a Favourable Impression for Job Applicants
Candidates’ experiences are also to be considered to promote your organisation’s reputation. Although assessments can be helpful, they also present difficulties that can negatively impact the client’s experience such as lengthy procedures and confusing instructions, ultimately affecting the results negatively. One way to prevent this is to encourage candidates to gain familiarity with the assessment through trial practices.
🤔 Scepticism in Psychometrics
It can be challenging to convince management or stakeholders to utilise assessment tools as they may view it as unnecessary and prefer to rely solely on their own past experiences to understand the candidates. Schmidt & Hunter (1998) concluded that CV’s and personal letters have low validity in predicting performance. Thus, assessments will be a good value-added tool to increase the effectiveness of hiring decisions.
✅ Validity and Reliability of Assessment Tools
In order for a psychometric test to be deemed effective, it must possess both reliability and validity. Reliability refers to how consistently the test measures a criterion while validity is how a test can accurately measure what it claims to measure. It is worth finding out from the test publishers about these psychometric properties before adopting them.
In conclusion, the processes for assessing talents can be complicated as the hiring procedure varies for different positions. However, when these tools are utilised properly and efficiently, the benefits include a more objective recruitment process and higher quality hires.
