The Candidate Page

This page has been designed specifically for candidates who are about to experience some form of psychometric assessment. The purpose is to put you at ease and to convey that the use of such tools increases the objectivity of the selection or development process, resulting in a mutual benefit to both yourself and your current or future employer.

What is a psychometric test?
Psychometric tests are objectively and scientifically designed questionnaires that test your ability in general or specific areas, or assess your personality and typical behavioural style. You will be asked to complete either an ability test, a personality assessment, or both.

Ability Tests
The ability test(s) that you complete will measure the skills relevant to the job, position or responsibilities for which you are being considered. While different jobs make different demands on individuals, extensive analyses of many jobs have shown that competence in verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning is a common requirement for success.

Personality assessments
Personality assessments measure your typical or preferred ways of behaving, such as the way you relate to other people, or how you solve problems. These questionnaires typically explore a wide range of personality characteristics that are relevant to the world of work. The same carefully designed and fully researched questions are captured and interpreted in a fair, consistent and objective manner.

Why use psychometric assessments?
Many organisations now use psychometric tests of varying types to provide objective information to assist with selection decisions, career counselling or training and development.

Psychometric tests:

Can assist you in finding work or pursuing a career for which you are suited.
Will allow you to demonstrate your strengths.
Assist us in identifying your training and development needs.
Are carefully chosen so that skills involved are relevant to the job.
Are professionally designed (usually by psychologists) and fully researched.
Will supplement other information to establish where you may be best placed within an organisation.
Have shown that those who do well on them are usually successful in the job itself.

Informed Consent
You will enter the testing session of your own freewill. It is not compulsory in any way to undergo a psychometric assessment. However, the more information that your organisation has about you, the more likely they will be able to make a favourable decision concerning your employment or development needs.

The testing session
You will be asked to attend a testing session run by a qualified test administrator. The test administrator will be available to answer any questions that you may have and also explain the procedure during the session. People are normally assessed in small groups. Usually, ability tests are timed whilst personality assessments are not. Do not worry about any time limits set. The important point is to do your best in ability tests and be as honest as possible in personality assessments.

Confidentiality
Your test results will be treated with sensitivity and remain confidential. They will be stored either in a locked storeroom or on a password-protected computer and only accessible by a fully-qualified and competent test-user. You have the right to request that your data is destroyed at any point.

Results
In order to add meaning to your results, they will be compared with a large group of people who have already taken the test(s). Some organisations which use our tests develop their own in-company norm groups for comparison.

Feedback
You will usually be given an opportunity to have your test results presented back to you by a qualified professional at a later date.

Questions
If you have any questions, please contact the organisation which is administering your assessment, or ask your test administrator on the day.

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