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ARTICLE 2: What are psychometric assessments?
The following article is
the second of a series of 3 about psychometric testing. |
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Unfortunately, when most people think of assessments for jobs they
think of these as exams which you either pass and get the job or fail
and do not. The good news is that psychometric assessments should
not really be thought of in this way. Such assessments are concerned
with describing and understanding a person's abilities. They are not
used solely to make selection decisions but are used in conjunction
with other methods such as CVs, application forms and interviews,
to help build up a more detailed picture of a candidate.
There are two main areas of psychometric assessments:
1) Those which assess typical performance such as personality, values
and motivational questionnaires. These are not usually timed, and
there are no right or wrong answers. These kinds of psychometric assessment
are used to find out more about whether your personality will fit
with the team and the company and whether the role will interest you.
2) Those which assess maximum performance. These are tests which look
at your numerical, verbal and general reasoning abilities or specific
job related skills. These are perhaps the kind of assessments which
those applying for a job may be most concerned about as they do have
right and wrong answers and are usually timed.
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Examples
Personality questionnaires: are varied but often present you
with a statement and then ask you whether you agree, disagree or do
not know, alternatively questions may be presented in the following
way:
"I prefer friends that are":
a) Quiet b) ? c) Lively
Answer: there are no correct answers to these sort of question,
just choose which one you feel is most applicable to you. It is important
that you do not try to second guess what the questionnaire is looking
for as it is unlikely that you will be correct and the results will
not represent you honestly. Such discrepancies are unlikely to aid
your application.
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Numerical Reasoning
This kind of assessment is varied also, and can ask you to complete
simple mathematical calculations, presented with tables of data, and
being asked to answer a number of questions from the data, see example
below:
"What is the missing number?"
(a) 4 (b) 16 (c) 11 (d) 18 (e) 68
Answer: Here you must look for patterns within the numbers
3 + 2 = 5 5 + 2 = 7 15 - 3 = 12 12 - 3 = 9 27 - 8 = 19 19 - 8 = 11
Therefore the correct answer is c). Notice that this also works vertically
in this case.
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Spatial Reasoning
These assessments usually use diagrams or pictures and often ask you
to see a pattern:
"When the figure on the left is folded into a cube, which one of the
four figures will it make?
Answer: the only correct response is (b). If you are not sure,
try making the shape and folding it into a cube!
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Verbal Reasoning
Sometimes these assessments have paragraphs of text and then ask you
to answer whether statements related to the paragraph are true or
false, alternatively questions can look like this:
? is to HEARING as BLIND is to ?
(a) Ear - Eye (b) Deaf - Sight (c) Ear - Sight (d) Deaf - Dark (e)
Music - Light
Answer: the correct response is (b), Deaf is to HEARING as
BLIND is to Sight because this is the only combination of words which
makes a sensible and logical sentence (if a person is deaf, they have
problems with their hearing and if a person is blind they have problems
with their sight).
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More examples of this nature can be found in numerous books. Two
examples are:
How
to Pass Numerical Reasoning Tests by Heidi Smith
Passing
Psychometric Tests by Andrea Shavick |
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About the author of this article:
Nicole Fomin is a consultant psychologist at Human Factors International.
She has worked with government and corporate bodies, designing assessment
centres and advising on screening and selection procedures.
Human Factors International provide psychometric assessments, both
paper and online as well as administrator training, assessment centre
design and a full range of business psychology consultancy services
around the world. |
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