How Personality Tests Are Changing The Hiring Landscape
Personality tests have been used for years as a means to objectively measure an individual’s aptitude, personality traits, behavioral attributes, intelligence, and abilities.
It was found in research by the Society for Human Resource Management, that about one-third of HR professionals today utilize personality assessment tests when hiring and conducting interviews for various job roles.
Recruiters use personality tests as an assessment tool to help filter applicants and identify candidates with attributes that match the organizational requirements. Modern psychometric tests provide precise insights into behavior patterns, qualities, and talents.
These tests can help companies:
- Assess which candidates are a good cultural fit
- Ensure a good match for the job role and team in question
- Identify communication styles and preferences of candidates
The significance of using psychometric tests
Apart from hiring processes, personality tests have found application across various organizational aspects, such as gaining insight into employees’ emotional intelligence, communication and collaboration styles, and much more. These tests allow an understanding of the strengths and shortcomings of candidates via simple MCQs that gauge emotional and strategic responses.
The results of psychometric tests can be used to:
- Help employers see how candidates fit into the company culture
- Gauge candidates’ stress response and judgment in critical business situations
- Integrate a fair and objective means of assessing and hiring candidates and employees
- Identify preferences and motivations of candidates to match their interpersonal capabilities with job requirements
- Identify key developmental areas for potential employees and build customized L&D roadmaps
- Gain insights into candidates’ methods of dealing with given situations and their decision- making prowess
- Groom current employees for leadership roles and create a strong pipeline for the future
Mercer | Mettl's scientifically backed suite of psychometric tests has been specially curated to gain insights into candidates' personalities, behaviors, and comprehensive job performance for specific roles. They help identify various aspects of the personality, including:
- Positive personality traits: Identifying and assessing key personality traits that influence job- based performance, trainability, and cultural fit.
- Motivation, value, and preferences: Understanding what drives a person and what motivates them to perform well at work.
- Cognitive ability: Measuring an individual's capacity to think logically as well as their analytical ability in recognizing situations and deriving logical conclusions.
- Dark personality traits: Identifying and measuring negative attributes that may impact employee safety, customers, or the work culture.
Optimizing hiring and employee development with Mercer | Mettl
Mercer | Mettl offers a comprehensive suite of customizable psychometric assessment tools backed by industry validity and reliability standards. These assessments have been formed based on samples of more than 10,000 respondents from across different geographies, with the representative sample spanning various ages, genders, occupations, and job levels. This ensures high accuracy and viability of the assessments in gauging individual personality traits, aptitude, intelligence abilities, and behavioral attributes to make better people decisions.
