Jimmy Petruzzi - Personality and Psychometric Testing For Business Resource Manual

To Enhance the Hiring Process

The process of hiring is a detailed and time consuming task. It also requires a good amount of investment. Firms cannot waste their valuable resources over something that does not guarantee a return. All firms operate for profit and therefore, prefer to invest in activities that ensure a return.

Figure 4 Image courtesy of pakorn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

When recruiting applicants, organizations cannot afford to make wrong hiring choices. That is why they invest in personality assessment tools in order to help them make more knowledgeable decisions. Although, this does not mean that all the hiring decisions they make are 100% accurate, it does reduce the probability of mistakes while recruiting.

To Improve Overall Productivity

Organizations prefer hiring employees that are self-motivated and can take up responsibility. Personality assessments can help organizations pick out people who are skilled and willing to work. These tests also reveal whether a potential employee will be suitable for a certain type of job and if the candidate will be stable after joining the company. Having such information can greatly reduce turnover and lost time for the company. It can also enable the company to improve its productivity.

Organizations today place an immense amount of importance on personality assessments while recruiting. Many firms that were previously not willing to perform these assessments have realized their importance and are now able to see how beneficial they can be for them. This is evident from the fact that the personality assessment industry was a $500 million industry in 2009 and has been consistently expanding by around 10% annually.

Characteristics of Personality and Psychometric Tests

Personality and psychometric tests are designed according to some basic rules in order to produce fair and unbiased results. These tests are drafted by experts who have the required knowledge and skills in this field. Some of the basic characteristics of such tests are as follows:

Objective– Objectivity in a personality or psychometric test implies that the overall score of an assessment must not be influenced, in any way, by the examiners’ values or beliefs. An objective test usually consists of a checklist of questions that ask a person to choose an answer from multiple choices or to give a brief textual or numeric response.

Standardized– A standardized personality test means that a certain group of people are asked to take a test that has a uniform set of questions. If they are required to perform an activity, the entire set of people are provided with a standardized environment such as same lighting conditions, seating arrangement, interruptions and noise levels. This is a very important feature as candidates have to be tested uniformly to produce neutral and fair results.

Valid– A personality or psychometric test will only be valid if it succeeds to accurately predict what it claims to predict. If a test claims to measure the performance or ability of a candidate, it should do so accurately. The main aim of a test is to judge a candidate. A test that fails to do so will produce incorrect or flawed results.

Reliable– A test must be consistent to be reliable. It must have questions that produce similar results every time the test is taken by a candidate. Reliability in a psychometric test minimizes any internal errors.

Non-Discriminatory– A personality test must not discriminate or single out any candidate on the basis of their gender, religion, ethnicity, etc. The questions must apply to all kinds of candidates, regardless of their personal background or upbringing.

These are certain characteristics that must be kept in mind while crafting personality and psychometric tests.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.