Many of our clients work in or closely with their company’s human resources functions. Some of the more challenging aspects of their roles include attracting candidates, making accurate hiring decisions, determining needs and processes for talent growth, and identifying future leaders for the organisation. Precise measurement of employee skills, attributes, and know-how is important within each component.
Standard, reliable, and valid psychometric tests offer HR teams great advantages, especially over less formal assessment processes like personal judgements. Widely ranging test result formats allow information to be used for anything from candidate progression to succession planning, career development and coaching discussions.
What can psychometric tests and related assessment services offer your organization’s HR service?
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Recruitment – Who are we attracting?
Having a hard time attracting the right applicants for your job openings? Are you or getting fewer applicants than you’d like for your advertised positions?
Examining recruitment-stage assessment results can help determine the types of individuals you’re attracting. An understanding of the audience you are reaching and the qualities they hold can be used to strategize future recruitment efforts. For example, do your candidates have the types of skills or abilities that can ensure they’ll succeed in a particular role? Are they experienced in successfully handling the processes and demands of this work? Early stage, high volume tests covering abilities, specific skills, and job scenarios yield valuable details about your applicants. This information can guide decisions about which advertising methods work best, how long to run recruitment campaigns, and the geographic area for targeting your marketing.
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Selection – Who should be hired?
Evaluating applicants’ skills, knowledge and attributes is an essential component of bringing successful employees into your company. Psychometric testing should be part of this process. Tests add a means of efficient, accurate, and reliable evaluation to the overall selection process. By measuring the aptitudes, capacities, and characteristics needed for a specific role, it’s possible to identify those persons who can and will succeed once hired.
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Talent management – How can I make the most of my workforce?
Which employees would make the best managers? Who is best suited to mentoring new recruits? Who is most likely to succeed in a more independent work role?
Psychometric assessments are fantastic tools for taking stock of your present workforce. A strong and accurate understanding of your employees’ abilities, knowledge, strengths, and challenges should be the starting point for building on their potential. When you optimally position and develop employees, you save a lot of money and time!
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Training and development opportunities – Meeting employee needs
Some services or industries require rapid employee development and growth of new knowledge and abilities. Psychometric assessments can be integrated within a training needs analysis to measure gaps in key areas of employee skill.
Testing can help employees identify their own preferred areas for development and progression. Assessment results may be a starting point for focusing on aspects of interpersonal relations, emotional regulation, or personality-driven behaviours.
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Building work teams – Investing in workplace relationships
Emotional intelligence and personality assessments can be used in developing relations among work team members. Results from these types of in-depth assessments may identify individual-specific or overall team-based challenges or opportunities for development.
Assessments of leadership potential or climate can be used to unearth different perspectives among persons who work closely together. For example, 360 degree feedback evaluations measure and compare supervisor and subordinate views on aspects of a manager’s style, interactions, and communications. This can provide powerful revelations about the dynamics and context of a working environment.
Understanding your employees’ assets, talents, and potential is the solution to your company’s HR needs for hiring, training and development. Success begins with identifying where individual capacities lie. Psychometric assessments are a solid starting point for building, growing and managing your workforce.
Selection by Design’s consultation services in psychometrics can help you use reliable, valid measurement in HR decisions. Our Occupational Test User training will teach you how to purchase, use and interpret psychometric tests at work.
