We often think that testing looks at what you know; that a test is something you pass or fail .  Yet you know that your knowledge is only part of what you bring to life - at school, work or home.  Given how quickly the world changes, it might seem better to find out what and how easily someone can learn in the future rather than what they know now.

 

What are often known as “softer” factors are increasingly seen as important in success, for instance: how well you understand and get on with people; your ability to lead; how far you follow rules or come up with your own unique solutions; your ability to cope with stress. Testing is as much about these as about being a “know-it-all”.

 

People are truly any organisation’s most important resource – whether it’s a multi-million pound corporate or a voluntary club.  They’re also an organisation’s biggest cost and single most complex aspect of organisational success and failure. Next to recruiting and managing a workforce, putting in a new intranet is a doddle.

 

If you’re a parent, your children take them at school in between examinations to check their progress and predict their results. They sometimes highlight particular strengths and areas that need more teaching. If you’ve entered work on a graduate recruitment scheme, you’ve probably taken one during the milk round. And you may well have sat one when you went for your first or a subsequent job.

 

Psychometric tests provide an MOT of what goes on under the human bonnet. They compare one individual’s performance with other people’s or show what are the relatively strong and weak areas within one person. True psychometric tests look at three basic areas:

Mix and match these and you get dedicated tests of areas like emotional intelligence, trainability, leadership, customer service orientation and how people think – areas that are directly related to particular jobs. Assess lots of people in your company and you can get an organisational profile:  how well your teams work; what particular skills you lack; who’s going to fit in.

 

Tests are used to recruit new staff; identify people with the potential to be promoted and developed; counsel staff who are under-performing; put teams together; coach senior managers; identify stress factors in an organisation; decide on the best organisational structure; create incentive programmes that really motivate – any decision about people individually or people in groups.

 

This could get long and complicated! Put simply, psychometrics is a set of techniques used to ensure, among other things, that:

 

Research shows that interviews, references and application forms are very bad at predicting whether people will succeed. Interviews are particularly dangerous because they are influenced by people's prejudices, likes and dislikes.  Using tests can never prevent mistakes like this, but they can make them less likely

 

Far from it: people actually like doing tests because tests tell them about their favourite subjects; themselves. If handled the right way tests used with existing staff can cause a buzz.

 

Tests are used to make complex and costly human decisions. You’ll either need to train, or employ/contract a trained test user if you’re going to use a good instrument. Training ensures you get the most out of them, in the same way that you need to train to get the most out of a new software programme. The training will also introduce you to lots of people issues which will make you a better manager and recruiter.