​When a HR Manager wants to support the hiring practices across their organisation, there are a number of strategies and approaches they can take to improve results.

​One of the best ways to improve hiring decisions is to implement psychometric assessment into your recruitment process. I know what you are thinking ... “That’s exactly what a psychologist would say”. But let me explain why.

Psychometric assessments are one of the best predictors of job performance available to Hiring Managers and HR. Psychometric is a combination of psych (which means mind) and metric (which means measurement). Psychometric assessment literally means mind measurement.

​ An eye opening comment from a HR professional

As someone who hosts full day courses for Hiring Managers and HR professionals to teach them how to best utilise, apply and interpret psychometric assessment in their organisation, it was a real eye opener for me when an attendee at a recent workshop commented that he was “shocked” at how little job experience predicts future job performance. We were running through the predictability power of various assessment techniques and this was the first time he had stopped to think about whether the selection methods they were utilising actually led to achieving the right outcome.

Organisations and Hiring Managers often place a lot of emphasis on the experience someone is bringing into the organisation but they often don’t realise that this selection method only predicts 2% of future job performance.

Just because someone has previous experience listed on their resume, it does not mean that they will be able to perform effectively in the role you are recruiting.

Here’s the graph we utilise in our assessment workshop to show the predictability power of various selection methods.

As you can see in the graph above, psychometric assessment (cognitive ability and personality questionnaires) account for a lot of variance when it comes to predicting future job performance of candidates. Cognitive ability assessments account for 26% in predicating your candidate’s future job performance. Structured interviews also have the same predictability power and personality questionnaires come in third, with a predictability power of 16%.

Looking at the graph, you will see that unstructured interviews (4%), job experience (2%) and years of education (1%), are three selection methods that have significantly lower predictability of a candidates job performance.

Two common selection methods that Recruiters and Hiring Managers use are reference checks and phone interviews. Little do some know, that reference checks have a predictability power of only 7% and phone interviews come in at  15 %. A lot of time is being spent on selection techniques that may not pay off.

So whilst a combination of selection methods can boost your predictability of performance in a role, you are able to get the most value in your recruitment process by simply putting your candidates through psychometric assessment (cognitive and personality assessment) and supporting this data by conducting a structured interview.

If you aren’t utilising psychometric assessment, you are missing a big opportunity to improve the hiring results within your organisation.

This simple solution of implementing psychometric assessment reduces the time you spend on assessing candidates, it can vastly increase the quality of the candidates joining your organisation and can ensure that you are placing the right people into the right jobs.

Why doesn’t HR implement psychometric assessment for all recruitment processes?

HR Managers and teams can often delay utilising psychometric assessment due to the a number of fears:

The good news is Davidson offers a variety of of psychometric assessments and licencing options for organisations who want and need to integrate assessments into their overall recruitment strategy and process. Our team partners with you to integrate the online assessment into your current recruitment approach, train you and your team on how to interpret the reports to inform hiring decisions and provide a cost effective self-service portal to ensure you maintain control of your hiring activities. Another great element of our psychometric assessments is that they can be used from a development perspective with your current employees and help you take them from good to great, further enhancing team dynamics and effectiveness.

To learn more about the psychometric assessment options available through Davidson, reach out to the team at assessment@davidsonwp.com and we will be more than happy to discuss how we can meet your organisational needs in the recruitment and development plan.

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