5 Reasons why every organisation needs to make psychometric testing part of their recruitment and selection

Psychometric tests are
used in the many fields of psychology to measure psychological constructs like
intelligence, personality and interests. In business settings psychometric
tests are used when hiring employees and for identifying their development
needs. Based on my many years of experience in the field of human resources and
occupational psychology here the reasons why I think every organisation can
benefit immensely from psychometric testing.

1. No
   other methods can test for Cognitive ability, personality and integrity of a
   potential candidate. These three are the biggest predictor of job performance.
   I have shared before ample scientific evidence to show that this is
   consistently the case. Cognitive ability is the biggest predictor among these
   psychological constructs. In an article called 
   Finding
   The Most Exceptional Talent—The 1% Of The 1%  Kumar Mehta says  “But through
   years of research, we now have enough data to know what goes into becoming
   exceptional. Whether you are recruiting an athlete, or you are hiring a CEO or
   evaluating a startup founder, the qualities that lead to extreme success are
   the same. Natural aptitude - The genes you are born with are responsible for
   50% of your outcomes. You have to determine whether the individual you are
   considering has a natural aptitude for the role. Some traits you cannot
   develop; you are either born with them or not. Examples include power, speed,
   IQ, logical-mathematical ability, linguistic ability, and others. You can
   refine and improve these qualities, but you cannot create something out of
   nothing.”
2. The
   factors that drive individual performance can not be trained. As indicated
   above cognitive ability is the major driver of individual performance across
   all professions. It is largely hereditary and partly childhood experience.  If you hire an individual without the right
   cognitive ability you will just be wasting your time. No amount of training
   will change the fact that they do not have the capacity for the role. The same
   applies to personality. You can not hire an individual with the wrong
   personality and hope to change them especially if they are an adult.  The best way, as a first step is to ensure
   that after shortlisting the candidates they all go for psychometric testing so
   that you remain with individuals who have the capacity for the role. It is a
   waste of resources to interview people who have no capacity for a role no
   matter how much you like them.
3. The
   popular and most preferred method for selecting employees is not reliable and
   has low predictive validity. Adam Grant, one of the topmost global Psychologist
   says “Interviews are terrible predictors of job performance. Consider a rigorous, comprehensive analysis of hundreds of studies of more than 1,000 job
   applicants over 85 years by Frank Schmidt and Jack Hunter.
   They covered more than 500 different jobs—including salespeople, managers,
   engineers, teachers, lawyers, accountants, mechanics, reporters, farmers,
   pharmacists, electricians and musicians—and compared information gathered about
   applicants to the objective performance that they achieved in the job. After
   obtaining basic information about candidates’ abilities, standard interviews
   only accounted for 8% of the differences in performance and productivity. Think
   about it this way: imagine that you interviewed 100 candidates, ranked them in
   order from best to worst, and then measured their actual performance in the
   job. You’d be lucky if you put more than eight in the right spot.”
4. Psychometric tests bring meritocracy into the recruitment
   process. When used properly and at the right place in the recruitment and
   selection process psychometric tests ensures that the organisation only gets
   the best candidates available. A notable trend in this country is that those
   organisations that are hesitant to use psychometric testing have a  corrupt recruitment and selection process.
   Leaders in those organisations are averse to psychometric tests because they
   may not even pass them. As a result, they prefer a selection process which they
   can manipulate.
5. It is not possible to cheat on psychometric tests if
   administered by Registered Psychologists in terms of the current Zimbabwean
   laws. This is the practice across the globe. Psychometric tests plug in the
   holes they would allow incompetent people to join your organisation.

Memory Nguwi is an
Occupational Psychologist, Data Scientist, Speaker, & Managing Consultant-
Industrial Psychology Consultants (Pvt) Ltd a management and human resources
consulting firm. https://www.linkedin.com/in/memorynguwi/ Phone +263 4
481946-48/481950/2900276/2900966 or cell number +263 77 2356 361 or email: mnguwi@ipcconsultants.com  or visit our
website at www.ipcconsultants.com