Perfman HR: The Applications & Benefits of Psychometrics For Recruitment Puposes

Psychometrics

A small group uses sewing machines, working at stitching two squares of material together to make a pocket shape. A manager sits at a computer terminal, tapping in responses to a series of personality questions. A middle – aged woman completes a series of questions about her preferences for different types of work activity. Sixty students, all due to graduate in a few months’ time, are arrayed in a hotel conference suite, which is set out like an examination hall. Under the watchful eyes of a group of administrators they solve problems in verbal reasoning. A scientist studies a long series of numbers and then tries to reproduce them in reverse order. All of these people are undertaking psychometric tests.

Psychometrics literally means mental measurement, and psychometric tests or instruments are measurement devices. The measurement is used to gain understanding of an individual so as to be able to predict behaviour and provide a basis for future action.
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Recruitment Consultants From India Psychometric Tests

Stitching the square of material neatly and accurately will be seen as evidence of ability to train as a machinist in the garment industry. A consultant will write a report on the manager, advising a client as to whether he or she will fit in with a management team. The middle-aged woman will spend time with a counsellor who will use her responses to help guide her decisions about a change of career. Some of the students will be invited on to another stage of selection and a few will be asked to join the graduate programme of a major multinational.

If the scientist can repeat the numbers accurately and performs well on a variety of other tasks he will be selected for work conducting experiments in a biosphere. Thus the applications of psychometrics are various and the benefits arising from their use can include the following: maximizing an organization’s performance by improving accuracy of selection:

❚ improving employee retention by better matching individuals to jobs;

❚ avoiding the financial and personal costs associated, on both sides, with poor recruitment decisions;

❚ optimizing the use of people’s capacities by helping focus development activity;

❚ achieving better career management by matching individual aspirations to their organization’s opportunities.

In addition to these benefits in the occupational field, clinical use provides scope for assessing, and hence being in a position to deal with, a variety of conditions, including depression. Assessment of educational attainment levels among children and pinpointing the specifics within dyslexia are ways in which the educational field gains from using psychometrics. In fact, many people have found psychometric tests to be of very substantial value, but practices in test use are still patchy, variable and often idiosyncratic.

Sonal Aurora is director and co-founder of Executive Search Firm India. Perfman HR is a premier HR Consulting Company Founded in Mumbai, India. We are an inventive and dynamic Human Resource Company specializing in Executive Search, Recruitments, Training, Learning & HR Solutions.