Psychometric Testing

Why use profiling?

Around 70% of UK companies with over 50 employees use psychometric tests, often in recruitment, sometimes in developing skills. Use is increasing.

Yet “psychometrics” still sounds like a black art and “testing” gives people flashbacks to sweating over exam papers.

BBC TV’s programme “Test the Nation” seems to suggest that testing looks at what you know; that a test is something you pass or fail. Yet your existing knowledge is only part of what you bring to life – at school, at work or at home. Given how quickly the world changes, it might seem better to find out what and how easily you can learn different subjects.

What are often known as “softer” factors are increasingly seen as important in success, for instance:

• how well you understand and get on with people
• your ability to lead
• how far you follow rules or come up with your own unique solutions
• your ability to cope with stress.

Testing is as much about these as about being a “know-it-all”.

As service orientation grows, the old saying “people are our most important resource” becomes more relevant. They are also an organisation’s biggest cost and single most complex aspect of organisational success and failure. Next to recruiting and managing a workforce, putting in a new intranet is a doddle.

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