Right for the Job - Psychometric Testing

22 Employment Today July 2008 - Angela McCarthy

Whether used as a recruitment tool or to develop staff, psychometric testing can help ensure you have the right person for the job. But, as Angela McCarthy discovers, it’s important that results are interpreted correctly.

While psychometric assessments can be haphazardly used and misunderstood, they are also very powerful tools in both recruitment and development, says Katherine Hall, Frog Recruitment development manager UK and New Zealand. “But they don’t work if organisations place too much emphasis on them and believe they will capture an individual in a way that provides all the answers on how they will perform in the workplace,” she says. In terms of recruitment selection, it is important to recognise that psychometric assessment is not an exact science, explains Mike Hughes, senior consultant and registered psychologist for Winsborough Ltd,a specialist organisational development business.

“What they offer is more structure, a more systematic approach and an increasing possibility you will employ the best person. But you need to also include a structured interview and other tools in your recruitment approach.”

What is essential to grasp, he adds, is that psychometric assessments are a raw score and don’t tell you much unless compared to someone else.

Drake HR solutions national manager Sally Cannan says any employer’s challenge is to answer three questions: is this the right person for the job (technically speaking), will they do the job, and will they fit the organisational culture?
“Psychometric assessments come into their own with the second two questions; Drake research has shown up to 85 percent of people leave their jobs because of a personality misfit with an individual or an organisation’s culture.”
Drake research shows replacing someone costs a business between 15 and 200 percent of the position’s annual salary, adds Cannan. “Therefore the aim is to recruit to retain by using as many objective tools as possible.”

Drake have their own psychometric assessments, the most popular being P3 (predictive performance profiling), a 10-15 minute personality questionnaire.

Look under the bonnet
Psychometric assessment involves a lot more than saying, ‘let’s test’, says Dr Ray Glennon, of established global psychometric assessment service, SHL. “You have to look under the bonnet of the job and define it, because then you understand what you’re looking for, and therefore what to test.”

He finds most people want to bypass defining the role and just measure. “But measure what? What behaviours are important—persuasive interpersonal skills or more analytical skills? If you want numerical attributes, which do you want?”

At Frog Recruitment, psychometric assessments are often recommended after the first interview, or when there are a couple of ideal candidates and more probing is required, says Hall. Typically the resulting report generates information the client wishes to know, such as how the candidate behaves in the work environment. This information is then used during further interviews and reference checking to clarify statements the candidate has made during the process or where contradictions have arisen.

The two most popular types of psychometric assessments used in New Zealand are personality questionnaires and aptitude/ability tests such as numerical and verbal and spatial reasoning. Personality tests explore your preferred way of behaving, how you relate to others, handle and solve problems and deal with yours and other’s emotions. Aptitude and ability tests measure factors such as your natural ability to perform tasks, or your potential to grasp new skills.

Hughes feels there is also an increased interest in measuring values. “I think organisations are starting to acknowledge values as having a significant effect on performance. Having a senior manager’s values that are contradictory to the company can be damaging to morale.” He adds people often disengage, under-perform or leave if theirvalues are mismatched with the organisation or role.

Professional development
Psychometric assessments are also very useful for professional development of staff, says Hall. They can be used to do a gap analysis, develop someone into a new role, help teams communicate better or improve individual or team performance in their current roles. SHL have definitely seen a trend toward use of psychometric assessments in development, says Glennon. “At least half our business involves development now.”

A big bonus with using psychometric assessments for professional development is that it takes away the emotion around discussion about individual behaviour, says Cannan. “You have the discrepancies in black and white. With P3, people can say yes, that is me, and start looking at ways to control their approach or behaviour.”

Tower senior HR business partner Sonya McIsaac only uses psychometric assessments for selection of specific high level roles at Tower but has used assessments for developmental purposes in other organisations. At NZ Post, McIsaac was involved in a large project looking at job capability in retail leadership.

Psychometric assessments helped pinpoint development opportunities and the competencies required for successful leadership. “We chose Opra personality and ability assessments and were trained in how to interpret those results. Opra worked closely with us to build specific development plans for each individual.”

Misinterpretating results
Appropriate use and interpretation of results are often of concern with psychometric testing. Misinterpretation by inexperienced managers is potentially a big issue, says McIsaac. “Information can be misread and cause problems because there is no pass or fail marker. A manager may say they want people with higher than average verbal skill capability when the role in question doesn’t require strong verbal skills. They’re misinterpreting ‘average’ as mediocre when it means normal.”

Preferences are also easy to misread, points out Opra Consulting training and business development executive Paul Englert. “I have a preference for being on my own; of more introverted behaviour. However, if I’m in a social setting I have no problem conversing; so the situation drives my behaviour. But if a manager read my results to mean I always act in an introverted way, then they’d be misunderstanding the information.”

Context and values are important, says Hughes. “An artist who shows persistence, goals and ambition when creating pieces of art, may not demonstrate that in their day job. Life has a lot of grey areas and intuitively people know that.”

As a rule of thumb, business should make sure the people delivering the psychometric assessments are trained, and are interpreting the information properly for the staff involved.

McIsaac says she always discusses reports fully with hiring managers before handing them over to ensure they don’t misread the terminology and/or results. “If you don’t have trained people on site, get trained people in to interpret results.”

It is also essential, according to Shadow Consulting managing director Dion Andrews, that the report is discussed first with the candidate—not the client. “We always call the candidate before the client and present them a theory. We don’t tell them what they ‘are’ because we feel that is arrogant. We have a discussion about the results and, when there is disagreement, we will either change it—acknowledging we did so in the report—or note things were questioned.”

PSA national secretary Belinda Pilott says an internal paper prepared for the PSA on psychometric testing last year recommended the union take a position of guarded neutrality, emphasising that the assessments should be just one part of the recruitment process, be administered by people with ability and knowledge, be using New Zealand norms and that candidates should have access to their results.

“Access to results is particularly important to us. I personally have had the experience of doing a psychometric assessment and not getting any feedback, although the employer did. We say you have a right to see the information supplied to the employer.” She worries about the confidentiality around assessment results. “Information about performance on the job is understandable but the contents of your head, the kind of person you are, how you socialise—what business is that of an employer?” she asks While Pilott agrees it is important that people get on together in the workplace, she believes this can be counter-tested by asking previous workmates or management.

It is useful for organisations to develop policy around using psychometric assessments, suggests Hughes. Policy should include which roles to assess, and whether use is for recruitment, professional development or both. But it should also look at who gains access to the results and who delivers and interprets the test—staff who are trained to do this, or outside consultancies.

Choice of tool
Organisational psychologist John Eatwell—author of a New Zealand Psychological Society article, The Effective Use of Psychometric Assessments in Decision Making—believes the major issue in New Zealand regarding psychometric assessment is the use of tests or questionnaires that don’t meet the criteria of predicting job performance, being reliable, and being assessed for whether they discriminate unfairly between people.

“There are a number of these around, and they can be used in a way that doesn’t help the business concerned, can hurt individuals that have been assessed and damage the reputation of testing in general,” he says.

It is important to not get stuck on one assessment tool either, says Andrews, who has multiple certifications for a whole range of tools because he doesn’t believe in having a favourite. “If you start having a favourite psychometric assessment, you start living in your own comfort zone rather than being clear about the insights the client needs.”

Kiwi candidates
Pilott wants assurance about the fairness of these measurements for Kiwi candidates, particularly when most assessments are created overseas?

“These assessments are purported to be robust researched instruments, developed by psychologists, but it is not clear to me how they guard against bias. Before using such assessments, organisations should ask whether they are appropriate for use in New Zealand and for use with the various ethnic groups that make up New Zealand. Take a question about choosing between attending opera and reading a book. What do you learn from that?” Norm groups are important to check if concerned with the appropriateness of an assessment for New Zealanders, say test providers. Most assessments will have New Zealand norm groups, which means New Zealanders are being compared to other New Zealanders in similar roles. Some may be Australasian.

They should be updated regularly. “You look for a norm group as close as possible to the situation and role you want to assess,” explains Hughes. However, recent research suggests there may be more similarities between industries than there are differences between cultures, points out Eatwell. “Is a New Zealand marketing executive more similar to an Australian marketing executive, than to other New Zealanders? The key to norming is we are trying to turn the score into something meaningful—if we say the person is above average on the test, will the line manager see performance on the job that is above average compared with their reference group?”

Language is another factor to be considered when talking of fairness with psychometric assessments, particularly in Auckland where the population is increasingly multicultural.
To overcome language issues, Barry Fitzgerald, a principal of executive recruiters Fleet & Partners says they can opt for SHL psychometric assessments where candidates sit assessments in their native language with the results coming through in English.

“This particularly helps immigrants when looking at things like spatial reasoning,” he says. “For example, recently I had a candidate who scored low in an assessment when following English instructions, yet did well when he did it in Chinese. Of course, if a good grasp of English language is required for the job, then they need to be able to do the assessment in English.”