Posts Tagged ‘psychometrics’

Psych Tests & What They’re For

Sunday, September 2nd, 2012

The main reason we write this blog is to help bridge the gap between the general world of work, and the more technical subject of psychometric assessment for the workplace. While our psychology practice specialises in providing psychometric testing, our underlying commitment is to helping everyone achieve career and life satisfaction through good job fit.

For individuals, if you do what you like to do and what you are good at, then you can live a happier and more fulfilled life. For organisations and employers, if you find the right staff, you can maximize efficiency, engagement, culture fit and teamwork.

Psychometric assessment used well is a very useful tool to help achieve this.

Everyone understands the general concepts of work and what it’s for: we go to work to earn income, to provide product and services to the general community and we keep the economy turning over. But psychometrics, on the other hand, can seem more mysterious. Despite a growing use of psychometric assessment in the workplace, to the extent that these days most people will have been psych tested for an employment role at some time in their career, how psych testing works is not so generally well understood.

Essentially, there are two kinds of psych tests for the workplace: Ability (or Aptitude) and Personality assessments. In simple terms, Ability assessments tell us if a person can do a given job, and Personality assessments tell us how a person will do the job.

Even though there seem to be hundreds of psych tests for the workplace available (and of various usefulness and validity), which all make different claims for our attention, in the end, the important thing to know is that they assess personality and ability. And that makes things more straightforward to understand.

The other thing to understand is that psychometric assessments are simply a statistical analysis of data that is provided by the person who attempts the assessment. They are not magic, they can’t read minds, and they are not designed to trick you (although they do have measures built in to tell if someone is cheating). By asking a respondent to answer a number of questions, the answers can then be put together statistically to give a result. This result then provides a picture for the candidate and the employer.

Psychometric assessment should never be used in isolation, but always as part of a recruitment or selection process, or for staff development down the track. Psychometric assessment provides an objective measure that fits into and integrates with a wider Human Resources process that includes interviews, resume and reference checks.

Some psych tests are better and more credible than others, just as some psychometric providers are more expert, knowledgeable and helpful than others, but what all psych tests have in common is that they statistically use answers to questions given by a respondent to provide an overview or picture.

In the end, psychometric assessment is used in the workplace because it provides an objective and cost-effective way (since it can save a lot of time and effort) to help employers make decisions about their staff. And for individuals, it can help us understand more about ourselves, and the way we work.

Work is essential to adult life, and the more fulfilling it is, the more balanced and satisfying our lives can be. In Human Resources and the world of work, psychometric assessments can have an important role in achieving good job fit and ultimately that means work-life balance.

 

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

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NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl and his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

Who Are You? “Know Thyself”

Friday, March 2nd, 2012

Since ancient times, when Know Thyself was inscribed in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, people have known that it is important to understand as much as we can about ourselves.  For years, philosophers, psychologists and ordinary people have asked themselves, “Who am I?”

It’s an important question, because the more you know about yourself, the more you understand what makes you happy, what sort of things you are good at, what paths in life you can take, what work you should choose to do and how you fit into the rest of the world.

Psychometrics is a branch of Psychology which aims to help answer the question, “Who Are You?”. Psychometrics does this by asking a person a number of questions and then statistically collating the answers so that a clear and accurate picture is produced. Some people know who they are, what their abilities and values are and what careers they are good at and that make them feel satisfied and fulfilled. But most of us are not so clear.

By completing psychometric tests and assessments, we can find out a lot about ourselves, including what sort of personality we have, how we like to learn, what our strengths and weaknesses, what kind of jobs we are likely to succeed in, and how we like to interact with other people.

Psychometrics can be used in a variety of ways and for many reasons: clinical practitioners use psychometrics to diagnose various conditions and disorders, employers often use psychometrics to help select candidates for job roles or to develop their staff, psychometrics can be used to diagnose creativity and increase innovation, or for career guidance, and psychometrics is even used by dating agencies to match potential “soul mates”!

If we know who we are and how we like to work, we can make better decisions, better life and work choices and live happier, more productive and satisfied lives.

 

 Watch Video: Who Are You? The Who

Lynette Jensen

Lynette Jensen is a director and co-founder of Genesys Australia and is committed to helping people achieve work-life balance through good job fit. In addition to contributing to this blog, she also writes regularly for HR Daily Community and Dynamic Business Magazine. Her articles have been re-published in India & the United Kingdom.

Please click on heading to leave a comment. More posts below.

Related Posts:

Keep Psychometric Assessment Scientific

More “Style” than Substance

Psychometric Juggernaut: SHL & Previsor Merge

Cheating on Psych Tests

NB: We are an independent workplace psychology practice. All views expressed here are our own and are the opinions of Stephen Kohl & his associates, which do not necessarily reflect those of the publisher and developer of GeneSys assessments, Psytech International.

Keep Psychometric Assessment Scientific

Tuesday, November 23rd, 2010

 

As a high-end workplace psychometric assessment provider, and a professional psychology practice, we like to keep a firm general eye on the way psychometrics are perceived, and on the quality of both the products being offered in the marketplace and the providers who supply them.

Accordingly, my attention was drawn recently to a discussion about psychometric tests that had taken place a couple of years ago on the highly regarded Stubborn Mule (“stubbornly objective”) blog by financial analyst, mathematician and generally broad thinker, Sean Carmody. This discussion is still extremely relevant, and perhaps more so now, as psychometric assessment becomes more and more customary in the workplace.

The discussion began with Sean’s post I Hate Personality Tests which was followed by psychologist Maria Skarveli’s, I have a love/hate relationship with psychometric testing and was completed by Last Word on Personality Tests.

The discussion is excellent and I highly recommend it: it’s intelligent, thought-provoking, hilarious, concerning and cathartic (for the record, may I say that I Hate Stupid, Overly-simplistic, Kindergarten-style Charts and Graphics, Especially Circles and Sea References?!), and it raises many questions, and answers, about the way psychometrics are seen and used in the workplace.

The discussion identifies the problem of balancing our desire as human beings for simple (and time-saving) answers, with the necessity for credible, qualified people to supply, support and operate valid psychometric assessment.

Proper, quality psychometric testing is a science, as Maria points out in I have a love/hate relationship with psychometric testing, based on sophisticated statistical analysis and application. There is no place in science (or in the workplace I would have thought) for tests which read like magazine quizzes or present like kindergarten pictures, or which draw on an almost magical thinking part of ourselves like astrology does. (I Hate Personality Tests).

Quality psychometric assessment is not mind reading, nor is it somehow magical. It’s a statistical analysis of data provided by the person being assessed.

There are two main sorts of psychometric assessments used in the workplace: tests for Ability, and tests for Personality. The former should indicate if a person can do a job, and the latter how a person is likely to do it.

We believe that personality tests, like the Myers-Briggs TM for instance, which is based on the elements of personality originally identified by psychologist Carl Jung, should never normally be used as part of a recruitment process (and in fact the Myers-Briggs website says this), and that their usefulness in a work context is that they might begin a discussion about personality styles and how they combine in a team environment.

It seems to me that there are two main dangers with the sort of mass and undiscerning use of personality tests in the workplace which the Stubborn Mule posts address, especially the over-simplified & brightly coloured kind, or the more credible ones in the hands of less skilful or trained practitioners. Firstly, their simplistic use or design could stereotype or define people in a way that can be meaningless, unhelpful or down right stupid and dangerous as discussed in Last Word on Personality Tests. Secondly, they can be erroneously used as part of a recruitment process.

No matter what psychometric tests are used, even at the highest and most reliable end, psych tests should always be seen as part of the process and not a “stand alone” or simplistic answer. (See our website page Psychometric Assessment) As part of a proper, thoughtful and thorough recruitment or developmental process they can provide another, objective, measure to predict job performance, which helps in your decision making.

While psych tests should be smooth and easy to use when you know what you are doing, they are based on science, not magic.

I’d steer clear of over-simplification and kindergarten graphs and pictures, if I were you!

Lynette Jensen

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* This is a personal view and does not necessarily represent the opinion, belief or policy of the company. More posts below.