26th March 2013

Stephen Buchanan, Managing Director

Research Europe Ltd

Psychometric assessment

for strategic talent acquisition & management

About psychometric assessments

Psychologist-designed tests

Measure individuals’ cognitive, behavioural or personality traits

Recruitment methods that rely on personal relationships and gut

instinct can result in wrong (expensive) hiring decisions

Psychometric assessments can remove bias from the process – instead decisions made on the basis of psychological evidence

Should not be used as a stand-alone measure of a candidate’s suitability - should be combined with other selection tools, such as interviews and referencing

Assessment types

There are two types of psychometric assessment:

personality and ability.

Personality assessments identify personality traits relevant to job performance and the workplace (such as stress tolerance and motivation)

Ability assessments measure skills and abilities (such as numeracy

and critical thinking).

Advantages

Effective: successful predictors of job performance1

Incisive: highlight significant similarities between an individual’s character and measures of job performance2

Reduce risk of hiring the wrong person

Time saving: reduce timelines associated with wrong hires

Predict performance systematically

Avoid costly mistakes from poor recruitment decisions

Identify and manage talent amongst potential and existing employees

1. Andrew Jenkins, Companies’ Use of Psychometric Testing and the Changing Demand for Skills: A Review of the Literature (Centre for the Economics of Education, London School of Economics, 2001)

2. R P Tett, D N Jackson and M Rothstein, Personality Measures as Predictors of Job Performance: A Meta-Analytic Review (Personnel Psychology, 1991)

Personality assessments

Reveal aspects of a person’s character

Can disclose how an individual relates to others, their values and their motivators

Can help identify the sort of work, or working environment, that they are best suited to

Format:

Come in ‘questionnaire’ form

Candidates are asked to respond to a series of statements or questions, either by stating

the degree to which they agree with the statement or by selecting the response which

they feel is the truest

Unlike ability assessments, there are no right or wrong answers

Personality traitsSome examples of what’s assessed:

Ability assessments

Measure skills that relate to job performance

These include: – Numeracy – Writing comprehension (verbal reasoning) – Cognitive ability

They can also measure skills that are specific to a particular field of work, for example, sales ability.

AbilitiesSome examples of what’s assessed:

Research Europe’s offeringA range of both personality and ability assessments

Advice on choosing the most suitable product

Trained and licensed practitioners (BPS A&B, SHL qualified), administer the

assessments on behalf of clients

All assessments offered by Research Europe: • Conform to British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines • Are supported by research-based evidence • Avoid clinical or technical terminology • Are applicable across a range of age-groups, education-levels and cultures • Identify irregularities in response patterns • Provide security in terms of data collection • Are accompanied by written and verbal reports, which include (where appropriate) interpretation by our assessors,

available to clients once candidates have completed the assessments

Contact us for a full brochure:

1 Heddon Street, London W1B 4BD

+44 (0)20 7470 7297

assessment@researcheurope.co.uk

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