What types of psychometric tests are there?

Psychometric tests for selection and assessment can be grouped into two categories: cognitive ability tests (also known as aptitude tests) and personality tests. Cognitive ability tests are measures of cognitive ability/intelligence, and personality questionnaires measure specific personality traits such as extraversion and agreeableness.

These two psychological constructs are important to employee selection as they both show meaningful correlations with job performance. Therefore using scientifically valid psychometric tests when hiring, such as ours at Test Partnership, can accurately measure these constructs, providing a predictor of good job performance to client companies.

Other psychometric tests, such as situational judgement tests draw aspects from both cognitive ability tests and personality questionnaires. As a result, many psychologists consider these exercises to be an intermediate between cognitive ability tests and personality questionnaires.

Due to the range of tests on the market, it is always advisable to discuss psychometric testing with an expert before deciding on the use of psychometrics in the workplace.

We've already mentioned a couple reasons why employers would use psychometric tests, here we will take a deeper look into some of the main benefits of psychometric testing for hiring companies:

1. Job performance:Psychometric tests are the most powerful and valid predictors of job performance available today and are over 14 times better at predicting job performance than the average selection interview (Hunter & Hunter, 1984). As a standardised testing method, psychometric tests offer a highly effective way of predicting how effectively a candidate will perform in their new job.
2. Organisational performance: The use of psychometric tests in the workplace has been found to lead to the following workplace outcomes: increased organisational performance, increased employee retention, reduced cost per hire, decreased employee turnover, decreased absenteeism and higher levels of employee engagement/motivation. Selecting top performing candidates and ensuring a high quality workforce is imperative for any organisation and psychometric testing is the ideal mechanism for ensuring this.
3. Convenience:Online psychometric tests can be sent to candidates at the click of a button, individually or by the thousand. As a result, psychometric testing is significantly less time intensive than other selection processes, such as interviews and assessment centres. Once a candidate completes their assessment, reports are automatically generated and available for viewing within seconds, requiring little input from staff. This makes psychometric testing ideal for pre-employment screening, high volume recruitment, or in busy human resources departments.
4. Return on investment:sychometric tests can be purchased online and Test Partnership allow you to setup tests easily. The cost of hiring a poor performing candidate has been found to be 3.2 times the salary of the individual (Gallop International). Whereas, high-performing candidates were found to produce on average 43% more revenue than an average performing employee (Hay group). The cost of using a psychometric testing platform, like Test Partnership, will likely save you money and result in a better performing workforce.
5. Objectivity:Selecting employees using well-researched psychometric tests increases the fairness and objectivity of a selection process. This means that employees can be selected on merit using fair and standardised tests, rather than subjective (or biased) selection methods. Unstructured interviews are classic examples of subjective and inefficient selection tools, which may screen out high performing candidates unnecessarily. Fair, standardised, and valid selection tests are a great way to increase the fairness and objectivity of a selection process, helping organisations avoid legal disputes over unfair selection decisions.