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What's Psychometric Testing?

By: Maria Gibson

More employers are asking "What's Psychometric Testing, and why should we consider it?" This form of career assessment is an important element in employement strategies.
Bringing in a new employee is a risk, and always has been. Sometimes the risk is necessary - when the expansion of capability needs to happen to meet increased demand. Employers always wonder if they have the right person for the job, or if they have a compatible attitude, or are capable of learning new skills readily and easily. Psychometric Assessment can give those answers.
Test Intentions
The questions that psychometric testing answers are ones that are critical to the success of an employee hire. The wrong employee can cost the business more than twice to seven times their salary in many circumstances. Psychometric tests may not be able to identify genius directly, but they're a good benchmark for steering businesses away from problem employees before they're hired.
Types of Psychometric Tests
The granddaddy of all psychometric tests is the Stanford-Binet standardized IQ test. It's been the subject of rancorous debate ever since its introduction in the 1910s, before World War I. As a business application it's not ideal, because it takes several hours to administer, and only measures one type of intelligence. Getting measurables in less than three hours of testing time is where commercial psychometric tests come in.
The most commonly used psychometric test in the business world is the Wonderlic exam, and it's fairly famous because of the weight the NFL puts on it at the NFL Player Scouting Combine in March. It has a scale from 1 to 50, and measures the ability of a testee to make inferences from sets of data. It's also used in just about every financial organization in the US as a screening test for potential candidates, most of whom require a score of at least 24 (roughly corresponding to an IQ of 114) to get accepted. More and more staffing agencies are requiring the Wonderlic as well.
Where is The Market For Psychometric Testing?
The primary appeal of psychometric testing, beyond the ability to weed out unsuitable candidates before hiring, is to find out which applicants can reason, draw inferences from limited data, and have mental flexibility. People with those abilities, in abstract reasoning, are strongly in demand in the modern economy, where it's necessary to be able to reason carefully and quickly.
Other Types Of Tests
Psychometric tests cover the gamut from the more widely known (IQ and its analogs) to social stress tests, to boredom thresholds. A lot of police departments use a type of psychometric test that's geared to measure stress responses, which can be critical in predicting how someone will react in an emergency.
Another important thing that psychometric tests can measure is the boredom threshold. People who get bored easily should not be put into repetitive tasks; this is one of the brand new areas of psychometric testing, the ability to match an employee with a job that best suits their work habits and temperament.

Article Source: http://www.a1-articledirectory.com

In today's economic environment, it makes good business sense to find the most cost effective way to recruit exceptional employees. Businesses can rely upon the experience and resources of a dedicated recruitment company, to find them suitable employees. Visit Gibson Recruitment online to see how we can make a difference to your recruitment process.

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