Psychometric tests are popular. Here are some tips to crack them during the recruitment process

Hiring experts said an individual’s personality characteristics, skills, and behavioural style can be measured objectively using psychometric tests. (Illustration by Suneesh Kalarickal)

In the modern workplace, data is abundant and so are the tools to analyse data. What is becoming critical to job success is decision-making with limited data and under tightening time frames, say recruitment experts.

Psychometric testing is one such medium. In the hiring process, these assessments are used to evaluate and quantify a candidate's skills, including intelligence level, aptitude, mental capacity, logical reasoning, etc.

They are also finding more takers by the day. Major companies, including Tata Power, PwC and TVS Motor Company, opt for such assessments while reviewing prospective employees. In fact, Tata Capital has replaced the ‘Group Discussion’ of old with psychometric assessments to filter campus recruits for personal interviews.

“This has helped us screen large numbers of students and nullify individual biases. We intend to use more such tools for training and need analysis at large,” said Avijit Bhattacharya, CHRO at Tata Capital.

Why do employers prefer psychometric assessments? 

Hiring experts said an individual’s personality characteristics, skills, and behavioural style can be measured objectively using psychometric tests.

“In hiring, certain workplace competencies are identified and specified depending on the job function, and psychometric tests are used to match an individual’s personality to the appropriate role, based on these workplace competencies,” said S Pasupathi, COO at HirePro, a recruitment automation and assessments solution provider.

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The Five-Factor model 

Financial and investment service provider Tata Capital uses psychometric assessments for recruitment screening, mainly during campus hiring, and as a potential diagnostic tool in its talent management process. Both have their importance in the respective processes.

Tata Capital’s Bhattacharya believes there are no smart hacks to crack psychometric assessments. “The best we can advise a candidate/employee is to ‘be himself/herself’ and respond to the test with natural instinct.”

One of the most commonly used tools for psychometric assessments is the Five-Factor Model (The Big 5), said Pasupathi of HirePro. The Big 5 is a widely used psychometric model to analyse the human personality across five dimensions, he said.

In this model, an individual can fall between two extremes of a given personality trait. Extroversion/introversion is one such trait. One need not be a 100 percent introvert or 100 percent extrovert all the time. Depending on the circumstances, the same individual may behave like an extrovert or an introvert.

Therefore, a candidate would fall somewhere between the two extremes, and this typical nature of the individual is what the model aims to assess.

The best approach for the candidate is to “be himself/herself” and trust the test to throw out the correct job match, Pasupathi said. “Otherwise, the candidates run the risk of ending up in a role that does not match their personality, leading to frustration and failure.”

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For instance, a candidate who is an extrovert and is being interviewed for a sales, communication, or business development role, might have a higher chance of success, as s/he would be comfortable approaching strangers — cold calling — and building rapport, which is very important to close a sale.

Hogan assessment

As part of its recruitment assessment, global edtech firm Emeritus conducts ‘Candidate Insights’ to help reduce uncertainty in the recruitment process — specifically for leadership roles and other ‘high stakes’ key roles.

The company uses "The Hogan assessment" as it helps in predicting how individuals are likely to behave in a professional setting, and why. The process has a three-pronged approach to identify individuals’ personalities (identify strengths, weaknesses, underlying values and motivators), their career “derailers”, and the proclaimed “dark side” of their personality.

Psychometric tests are not a pass or fail exam and simply help identify the personality trait that you belong to, experts say. As much as they help organisations identify apt candidates, they can also help individuals identify the roles they fit into (and importantly, those that they don’t fit into).

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Here are a few tips in case you haven’t taken such a test before or are looking to get better at it (especially if you think the last test didn’t identify your personality well).

Ganesh S, Global CHRO at Emeritus, recommends that candidates figure out what attributes the employer is seeking in their perfect candidate. “You might be able to pick up clues in the job description — be prepared.”

Further, he suggested that candidates identify and work on their weakest areas and keep note of the questions they find hardest and then work on those questions. For example, if you are struggling with verbal reasoning questions that have long paragraphs, you could practice reading long news articles quickly and then writing down the salient points.

Logical deduction and problem-solving ability

When it comes to assessment, for employers that means assessing deductive reasoning and critical thinking, said Gaurav Rastogi, CEO of Kuvera, a financial planning platform.

Deductive reasoning is the ability to arrive at a conclusion by processing the given inputs. Employers can use this to test a candidate’s logical deduction and problem-solving ability. Critical thinking, on the other hand, is the ability to think rationally and clearly, exhibiting an understanding of the logical connections between ideas.

“Employees need to be good critical thinkers as this ability to form conclusions based on analysing important and less important data is crucial for problem-solving and decision-making,” said Rastogi.

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For candidates, he said assessment means focusing more on mental models and doing a lot of case studies. The mental model is the way in which one conceives one’s surroundings and understands the world. “It is the way in which employees perceive the world around them.”

“Besides, case studies truly bring the inherent ambiguity in business situations to the fore, with no clear and dominant answer,” Rastogi added.

Situational judgment tests

When it comes to pre-employment testing, custom-built situational judgment tests (SJT) have proved to be the most effective, according to Guruprakash Sivabalan, CEO of Xobin, a recruitment management platform.

SJT consists of questions that would depict certain scenarios inside or outside the workplace and capture the response of the candidate.

Initially, this test was used to assess the behavioural traits of senior leadership talent. In recent times, situational judgment tests are being widely used to assess entry-level talent as well, Sivabalan observed.

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“The trick to crack any psychometric assessment is to remember the objective of the job and be as candid and truthful as possible,” he said. Based on his experience, Sivabalan said many candidates give a false response for fear of being judged by the recruiter.

“Every job has a different expectation from a candidate and there is no way the candidate can figure out on what basis they are being scored and selected,” he said, adding, “Several advanced measuring theories and mathematical modelling are used when it comes to the scoring and shortlisting of candidates taking psychometric tests.”

For Yogita Tulsiani, director and co-founder of talent solutions provider iXceed, numerical and verbal reasoning are the most important. These assessments examine candidates’ ability to communicate and also swiftly and accurately work with numbers while assessing their ability to read charts, graphs, data, or statistics.

“If a candidate wants to crack a psychometric test, the only mantra is that ‘practice makes perfect’. And along with that, they have to understand the concept behind the test and the requirements, take online practice papers, etc,” she said.

You can take a sample open-source psychometric test here.

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