Employing new staff is difficult. New staff always need to work with existing staff as a cohesive team; but integrating someone new into an established team can sometimes be like trying to solved sand in water.

Personality testing is also known as psychometric testing. It makes use of standardised and objective assessments to find out people’s preferred style of working and how they are likely to act in certain circumstances.  

Some tests are offered online to anyone who applies for a particular job. They are devised to remove any potential applicants who don’t have the required personality traits or skills for a job.

A simple test that many companies use will be a yes/no question on a particular topic. Eg.

• Do you have a Marketing degree?
  
  
• Do you have work experience in retail?

If the person answers no, then they are automatically told they will not be considered for the job.

Those are simple tests, but sometimes more complex, detailed psychological tests can be used.  The tests can range from multiple choice to scenarios where they must explain what they would do in certain situations.

There are hundreds of tests, some more popular than others. There are some tests that are tailored for certain professions, such as accountants, pilots, managers, technical jobs and so on.

The tests can also look at how extrovert a person is, how sociable, their thought processes, their feelings, emotions, whether they are sensitive or thick skinned, their level of competitiveness etc. They can also look at their relationships with other people.

Some of the most popular are the 16PF (Personality Factors), SHL and Myers Briggs. These have been developed over many years. They have been thoroughly tested and revised.  

The tests vary in length from 30 minutes to an hour. They are carried out in a controlled environment by a trained practitioner.  The practitioner may then tell the person after the test to explain how they did.  

The results will be passed on to the people doing the recruitment.

As we have said many times in the course, the tests should be used in conjunction with the interview and other aspects of the recruitment process.

For example, say an interviewee performs really well in the interview, but then does badly in a psychometric test the following week. It could be that the person performs well in interviews. Or it could be that the person had actually been ill when they performed the test. We have to be careful how we judge and use the tests and use them in conjunction with interviews and so on.

So tests can be used in a variety of ways –

• As a way to “weed out” unsuitable candidates eg. Those who haven’t worked in retail before, those who don’t have a marketing degree etc.
• As part of the recruitment process, in conjunction with interviews etc.