Top Five Psychometric Tests Used in Recruitment by Quest Partnership’s Clients and Why.
Psychometric testing is now used by over 75 per cent of the top 100 companies in the UK for both recruitment and selection purposes. Information technology companies, management consultancies, local authorities, financial institutions, care services, the civil service, police forces, fire services and the armed forces all make extensive use of psychometric assessments and psychometric testing tools.
Top 5 Psychometric Assessments used for Recruitment
- Personality Profiling Questionnaire Identity®
- SHL Scenarios Situational Judgement Test
- OPQ Leadership Report Management Level
- Verbal Reasoning Test
- Numerical Reasoning Test
1. Personality Profiling Questionnaire Identity®
Personality Assessments are often used as one the first steps in the recruitment process.
Identity®, unlike some other brands, has been designed to assess an individuals work place behaviours and preferences rather than just a personality type. It provides a comprehensive report providing information on the following areas:
- People and Communication
- Intellectual Focus and Judgement
- Task Orientation and Drive
Once the Identity® Personality Test is completed you can Generate Reports per Respondent:
- Interview Report
- Candidate Feedback Report
- Talent Report
- Onboarding Report
- Career Report
Designed to distil the respondents personality profile into core indicators or competencies, fully interpreted with example questions for further probing during interview.
Provides key information on performance areas: People and Communication, Intellectual Judgement, Task Orientation & Drive.
2. SHL Scenarios Situational Judgement Test
Advised for use when recruiting for managers or directors are Scenarios tests. First developed by our very own Max Choi and Alan Howard they were the first commercial Situational Judgement Tests (SJT’s) launched globally by SHL. Furthermore, they are still recognised as the leading SJT’s available on the market.
The Scenarios test assesses Managerial Judgement – an individual’s ability to evaluate ‘real-life’ managerial situations, decide on appropriate and effective ways of handling them. It assesses an individual’s current level of judgement, but in addition, it can also be used to provide feedback on how to improve performance in this area.
Scenarios:
- Managerial Judgement Test, see sample report here
- Executive Judgement Test, see sample report here
- Graduate Judgement Test, see sample report here
3. OPQ Leadership Report Management Level
The OPQ Leadership Report assesses the candidate’s overall suitability for a managerial role. It highlights their preferred work behaviours and identifies potential strengths and weaknesses.
The OPQ32 personality questionnaire uses the SHL Leadership Model to provide an insight into management and leadership capabilities. These can be described as transactional (focused on keeping the system running effectively) and transformational styles (focused on creating, developing or changing the system).
This leadership report can quickly assess the candidate’s overall suitability for a managerial role. Therefore, it is an ideal tool to support interview discussions for Managerial and Professional staff.
Explores Four Leadership Functions:
- Developing the Vision
- Sharing the Goals
- Gaining Support
- Delivering Success.
Each leadership function looks at two competencies (one at transactional level and one at transformational level).
4. Verbal Reasoning Test
Verbal Reasoning tests assess the candidate’s ability to understand and evaluate written statements. Using the latest online technology, they measure a candidates’ critical reasoning skills. In particular, they look at their ability to quickly comprehend and evaluate written business information. They provided a quick and effective online screening tool, with easy to interpret results including; accuracy and speed of response.
Available in a wide range of languages, job levels and industry sectors including: Finance & Banking, Hotel & Leisure, Science & Technology or Public Sector.
Typically lasting only 15-20 minutes, these are short, flexible online tests, raised from a large question bank. Therefore, no two candidates will experience the same set of questions. This ensures that the security and reliability of the test results are maintained.
5. Numerical Reasoning Test
Numerical Reasoning tests will assess the candidate’s ability to understand and evaluate numerical business data. Again, using the latest online technology, they measure a candidates’ critical reasoning skills. Above all, they measure their ability to quickly understand and manipulate business-related numerical data. They provide a quick and effective online screening tool, with easy to interpret results including accuracy and speed of response.
Like the Verbal Reasoning tests these too are available in a wide range of languages, job levels and industry sectors including: Finance & Banking, Hotel & Leisure, Science & Technology or Public Sector.
Furthermore, when combined with other tests from the range e.g: verbal or inductive reasoning, these tests give a good insight into the candidate’s ability in a key work competency.
Why our Clients use Psychometric Assessments.
Our clients use these psychometric tests to gather a greater understanding of an individual’s personality and abilities prior to interview. Thus enabling them to improve their shortlisting procedures and reduce the need for gut instinct decisions. As a consequence, they find that their use greatly increases their success rate when securing the best fit for the role. In addition, the information collected also helps with successful onboarding and career progression, reducing the recruitment risk even further.
Our clients are increasingly finding that the use of psychometric assessments and tests are crucial to the success of their recruitment process. We do not advocate them being used in isolation but especially now, with social distancing and video interviewing, they are an extremely useful and accurate tool for your recruitment success.
This is by no means an exhaustive list of the tests and assessments available, but we thought the information maybe of interest to our clients.
If you would like any guidance as to which psychometric test or assessment to use for a particular task then please contact us and one of our psychometric solutions team will be happy to help. 01285 861734 or admin@no.questpartnership.co.uk or visit our shop [Tests & Assessments]