psychometrics - why there's nothing to fear

Psychometric tests:

Preparation and why

there’s nothing to fear by Heidi Nicholson, Richmond Solutions and Stephenie Curnock, Amber Occupational Psychology Solutions

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Be yourself. ..

There’s a lot less to remember.

In our time we have been asked by friends, “so how do I makemyself look really good in these tests?” The spur for thequestion is invariably that someone has been confronted byhaving to do psychometric tests for the first time. They are anunknown, and as a result the people posing the question arefearful that the tests will reveal a side to their character theywould rather not discuss or, worse still, that they will not beoffered the job on the strength of performance in the testsalone.

Psychometrics assessments fall in to two main categories –aptitude tests, which assess cognitive capacity such as numericaland verbal reasoning ability, and personality questionnaireswhich assess behavioural and motivation characteristics.

The first bit of good news is that it is highly unlikely that youwill lose a job opportunity on the strength of the psychometrictests alone.

A recent CIPD survey showed that 35% ofbusinesses now use a combination of interviews andpsychometrics when recruiting for a role and researchsuggests that this combined approach increases thelikelihood of employing the best candidate.Psychometrics are typically used to corroborate otherparts of the selection procedure, not supersede it.

The second bit of good news isthat effective preparationcan help.



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Improving your performance

on aptitude tests Aptitude Tests comprise of multiple choicequestions, each question having one correct answer.They are designed to measure an individual’scapacity to think logically and solve problemsindependent of prior knowledge (such as abstractreasoning tests) and the capacity to learn from pastexperiences and apply this to new situations (suchas numerical reasoning and verbal reasoning tests).When assessments are conducted scores arederived for actual ability (as opposed to abilityrelative to other candidates) and are established bycomparing scores to a “norm group”. A norm groupconsists of scores collected from a comparisongroup of individuals of a similar level of attainment.

In the case of aptitude assessments, researchindicates that several factors influence performanceon these tests - such as level of attainment and therecency of completing formal education, thefrequency of using critical reasoning skills on a dayto day basis, previous experience of takingpsychometric tests and familiarity with the types ofquestions and information these tests include.

Therefore with several factors different affectingperformance on aptitude tests, the strategies youemploy to help you perform at your best will largelydepend on the time you have before the test. It maynot be practical or possible to change youreducational background in the short term, howeverthere is always benefit in the medium term to ditchthe calculator and complete lots of Sudoku puzzlesor crosswords in order to exercise those criticalreasoning skills or brush up on the mentalarithmetic. However if the test is looming and you’reshort on preparation time, in the short term,practicing actual psychometric test under similartest conditions presents the best gains in helpingyou to perform at your best.

Research has also indicated that practice with highquality test materials in a similar form these testsare delivered (e.g. timed and online) also helps toreduce test anxiety. Test anxiety is made up ofseveral factors – such as emotional worry,unfamiliarity and lack of confidence. Reducing testanxiety through practice and feedback has been

shown to reduce errors made when completingsubsequent tests. Reducing test anxiety means thereis more ‘mental energy’ available during the test forreasoning activities rather than being wasted onemotional worry. Feedback on relative strengths andareas of weakness from practicing tests can also helpto target your energies beforehand so that youfocus your preparation on the areas where you needto.

By practising thesetests, not only will youincrease yourconfidence when itcomes to the realthing, but you will beable to develop yourtest-taking strategiesand, having gained aninsight into yourperformance, work onimproving your results.



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Improving your performance

in personality profiling Alongside the ability based test, the other majorpart of psychometric assessment is personalityprofiling. This is conducted through completion of aquestionnaire (usually online these days) followed upby an interview or feedback session.

Personality assessment helps to establish a profile ofindividual behavioural preferences, needs and talents.This can include motivation and perceivedeffectiveness and, since these are self-reportquestionnaires, it is important that the data gatheredis validated through discussion with an individualwho is trained to accurately interpret the profile(such as a Psychologist). Personality questionnairesare considered to be fair and objective tools with anestablished reputation for predicting performance.

Situational factors may impact on a personalityprofile and the feedback session can help establishwhy an individual has responded in a particular way.The root cause can then be identified and discussed.Profiling provides an interviewing panel with adeeper understanding of what drives a person and

how their motives and talents may interact withother factors such as the organisation’s culture, keyaspects of the job and the working environment.This all helps to determine the potentialperformance and competency in the role.

Where ability tests have clear ‘right’ and ‘wrong’answers, this is not so with personality assessments,so you can’t necessarily ‘improve’ your performance.However in the case of personality assessments it israther a situation of gaining a greater insight intoyour own strengths and limitations through priorself-reflection in order to help you prepare for yourfeedback session or interview.

It is important to point out that when responding topersonality questionnaires don’t try to second guesswhat you should say: much research has beencarried out into response styles. The more robustand reputable assessments have now incorporatedmultiple checks to measure response stylesthroughout the questionnaire. These response stylescales measure how consistent you have been in

your answers and to what extent you have tried topresent a favourable impression. With so manyintegral checks, trying to present a certain image canresult in a confused or distorted profile and will actas ‘red flags’ to the trained eye. So when answeringpersonality questionnaires, it is always best toanswer honestly based on accurate self-reflection ofyour typical behaviours.



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The benefits for preparing

for these tests ▪ Gaining an understanding of how different

behaviours, needs, motives and preferences mightinteract with aspects of an organisation’s culture,the job and the work environment.

▪ Being aware of key factors that are likely to inhibitor enhance your success in a particular role.

▪ Being aware of the pitfalls of attempting tosecond-guess desired traits in a personalityquestionnaire.

▪ Understanding your strengths and how to usethem to the full.

▪ Being aware of the pitfalls of ‘overplaying’ certainkey strengths and how to reduce their potentialnegative impacts.

▪ Developing strategies to address likely areas oflimitation - demonstrating strength of characterand self-awareness to an employer.

▪ Being prepared for what aspects of yourpersonality a psychologist may be particularlyinterested in.

▪ Understanding the structure for challenging andquestioning the findings of personality profilingduring feedback.

▪ Getting an insight into how personality profilingcan influence questions asked at the interviewstage, so that you are as prepared as possible toface any panel.



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Conclusion

There is really no mystery to psychometricassessment. You may hear that preparation is noteffective but research has shown that severalfactors contribute to effective performance andpractice can help. Being prepared can not onlyimprove your familiarity and reduce errors but willincrease your confidence. Since they are anincreasingly popular part of selection processes,being prepared for them is an important part ofthe job hunting process.



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Some of the most commonly used tests:

Personality Profiling• Wave® Professional Styles and Wave®

Focus Styles (Saville Consulting) is a powerful measurement of personality. Itmeasures an individual’s motives, talents,preferred culture and competency potential in asingle questionnaire. It enables employers tolook at an individual’s job fit and organisation fitand provides information on factors thatenhance and limit performance. The profile issplit into 4 clusters, and provides detail in up to108 different facets. The Wave® Focus Styles is ashorter version of the Wave® Professional Stylesquestionnaire.

• NEO PI-R™ (Hogrefe)is a highly-regarded, well-researched assessmentof personality. It concisely measures the fivemajor domains of personality (the five factormodel) along with traits or facets that defineeach domain.

• OPQ32r® (SHL) provides detailed information on 32 specificpersonality characteristics which supportperformance on key job competencies and isdesigned solely for use in a businessenvironment. It measures aspects of behaviourcrucial to performance potential which cannotbe identified through other means, such as a CVor an interview. It offers a clear, simpleframework for understanding the impact ofpersonality on job performance.

• 16PF® (OPP) measures 16 traits that describeand predict a person's behaviour in a variety ofcontexts. It looks as an individual’s wholepersonality, revealing potential, capacity to sustainperformance, and helping identify developmentneeds.



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Ability/Aptitude tests• Saville Consulting Aptitude

Assessments includes a range of tests forDirectors, Managers, Graduates andProfessionals designed to measure differentaspects of an individual’s aptitude. These testscome in a variety of formats (online and hardcopy) and assess an individual’s ability to evaluatecomplex written information, evaluate numericaldata and evaluate processes represented throughdiagrams. Some tests also include information ontest taking style including accuracy, speed andcaution.

• Watson-Glaser Critical ThinkingAppraisal assesses an individual’s criticalthinking skills relevant to problem solving anddecision making. This includes the ability todefine and select relevant information to solveproblems, recognise assumptions, evaluatearguments, formulate and select relevanthypotheses, judge inferences and draw validconclusions.

• SHL Verify™ is a range of online(unsupervised) ability tests which are followedup by a short (supervised) verification test at aninterview or assessment centre. The testsmeasure an individual’s ability to evaluate thelogic of various kinds of argument presented inwritten form, the ability to draw inferences andunderstand the relationships between variousconcepts independent of acquired and theability to make correct decisions or inferencesfrom numerical or statistical data set in a realisticworkplace context. The Verify™ item bankcreates unique online tests for every test taker,improving security and reducing the risk ofcheating.



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Ability Tests (continued)• Leadership Judgment Indicator

(Hogrefe) provides valuable insight into therelative leadership strengths and provides anassessment of the degree to which the leadercan flex away from his or her preferred style tothe most appropriate one for the particularsituation. It is a scenario-based assessment whichmeasures an individual’s preferred style inaddition to how well the individual understandsthe importance of sometimes behaving againsttheir preferred style.

• Scenarios Assessing ManagerialJudgement (SHL) comes in three editions,Graduate, Managerial and Executive. The testmeasures an individual’s ability to weigh up real-life situations and decide on appropriate andeffective ways of handling them. The testprovides an overall rating of managerialjudgement which is also broken down into keycomponents including Managing Objectives,People Management and ReputationManagement.

• ABLE® Series tests (OPP) are based onreal-life scenarios and work simulations. Theymeasure an individual's potential to learn a giventask, adapt to changing work environments andtheir ability to handle future work challenges.These tests are used to supplement informationabout and individual’s past experience based onevidence collected from the interview and orCV.

Richmond Solutions offer psychometric familiarisation as oneof their services. For further details, please contact HeidiNicholson, Partner at [email protected]

If you would like a free review of your CV or LinkedIn profile,please contact us via our website.

For updates from Richmond Solutions follow us on Twitter@richmondsol and join our LinkedIn group.

With regular updates and information always appearing onour blog, why not come and take a look

Richmond Solutions offer psychometric familiarisation as oneof their services. For further details, please contact HeidiNicholson, Partner at [email protected]

If you would like a free review of your CV or LinkedIn profile,please contact us via our website.

For updates from Richmond Solutions follow us on Twitter@richmondsol and join our LinkedIn group.

With regular updates and information always appearing onour blog, why not come and take a look

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psychometrics - why there's nothing to fear

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