Personality Profiling/Psychometric Assessment

Hi Nicola, welcome to the communities. While you wait for some answers from the community you may wish to do a quick search for historic threads as this subject does crop up quite regularly. Also, I just wanted to check that the individual(s) with responsibility for running these tests are at least Level A qualified in psychometric testing? :-)

Hi Nicola and Welcome!

Think your employers need to be clear about exactly what they're wanting to ascertain with all this - e.g. Is it personality profiling or reasoning ability or problem solving ability or whatever or in what combination?

Major providers such as Savile and Holdsworth or Thomas International tend to charge major fees, but will advise on which profiling material might fit the bill for the kind(s) of job role you have in mind. Seem to remember too, that at least one of these providers will use the BPS accreditation on your behalf and mark and interpret and feed back the results to applicants directly, thus freeing yourselves of this responsibility.

But, for entry-level junior / trainee roles, personally I'd be questioning the overall cost - effectiveness of paying for psychometric assessment compared with using other usually readily-available - and 'free' - soures of evidence for selection decisions.

Hi Nicola... you've posted this to the 'Ireland' group, so just checking you are based in the Republic?

Hi David,

Thank you for your helpful reply. The purpose of introducing this step would be to generate a personality profile of the candidate. I believe Thomas International offer BPS accreditation but as you addressed, there are other elements to be considered such as overall cost-effectiveness.

Would you have any recommendation of free sources of assessments you think might be suited to offer a sample or allow us to pilot the introduction of assessments to our recruitment process?

Hi Steve,
That's correct, we are based in Cork, Ireland.

Hi Nicola, I am based in Kerry now and was in the UK originally. I trained with SHL (Savil and Holdsworth) Level A & B as John stated below, SHL who are now CEB have a full range of testing available. Please check this out www.cebglobal.com/.../practice-tests If you need any further help let me know. I would suggest you need to understand what you want to achieve and then think about the design on the test. Values, Skills, Behaviors or a mixture. Sean.

You should start by profiling existing employees to determine which profiles correspond to high performance in these positions otherwise your test results on candidates will be invalid for selection purposes and may, in some cases, infringe regulations on askling questions unrelated to the ability of a candidate to perform the work required (especially psychometric profiling where many questions are about social situations).

Hi David

Afraid I cannot agree with the requirements you outline. Re being invalid for selection purposes, the material from the major test suppliers will invariably have been validated by the supplier, in trials elsewhere. It can of course be possible that these trial populations etc aren’t in fact the same as yours in significant ways, therefore the profiling results won’t be valid predictors of being a success in your particular workplace. BUT validating such material in your particular workplace is at best potentially very difficult and hugely expensive if you’re going to try to make it a credible ‘scientific ‘ trial and is at worst case impossible if for example the numbers involved in your workplace trial aren’t statistically significant anyhow. It’s an enormous potential can of worms and most employers don’t bother and rely on the expert guidance of the psychometrics suppliers.

Nothing wrong with doing that IMHO, so long as the above potential validity problems are borne in mind. After all, it’s just a selection tool to be used as a guide alongside other indicators. And, so long as it isn’t amounting to unlawful discrimination, the employer can use whatever selection criteria they like - for example some have been known to use graphology or astrology or firmness of handshake or tidiness of appearance.

Secondly, by ‘infringe regulations’ assume you mean be unlawfully discriminatory. Again, the suppliers are usually at great pains to remove the possibilities of cultural etc bias from their material. It can still happen in some circumstances eg that the end user makes selection decisions on the basis of these materials to unlawfully discriminatory effect, such as applying material needing good reading and writing skills successfully to complete to people who might be dyslexic.

All this is of course why supply of proper psychometric selection material is restricted to users who have been suitably trained to BPS standards which ought to lead to their understanding of the limitations and potential pitfalls involved in their use.

Hi David,
Probably the most important comment that you make is that 'the employer can use whatever selection criteria they like' and, unfortunately, many do. I see one of the roles of the CIPD as bringing a more professional approach to recruiting.

I agree that the results of the tests have been validated in terms of personality but was making the point that they are not predictive of performance unless you have data from top performers in your company or business sector to use as comparisons. As you point out, this is expensive for small companies and sample sizes may lead to unreliable data but specifying personality criteria for recruits without it may be an even bigger waste of time and money.

My comments on regulations relate to legislation in some countries and best practice in many that prohibits personal questions during recruitment that are unrelated to a candidate's ability to perform the work required of them. The nature of the questions and test conclusions can also lead to issues related to privacy. Furthermore, some tests can identify physical and mental disabilities and are, as you pointed out, consequently discriminatory and illegal in some countries.

In the case in point, I suspect that the intention is to use a zero cost on-line test which may not have the safeguards and reliability that the professional providers you recommend ensure. I have difficulty in seeing this use as contributing to a more professional or predictive recruitment process for this company.

Thanks for explaining, David!