The word ‘psychometric’ is derived from the Greek words for ‘mental measurement.’ Tests called as psychometric tests try to measure aspects of your personality and mental ability objectively.
Psychometric tests are typically career personality test and aptitude test that are usually used in the recruitment process. They are designed to provide employers with an effective method of selecting the best candidates among job applicants.
Psychometric tests are rarely used in isolation. They represent just one method used by employers in the selection process. Some of the usual modes of hiring persist. For e.g., a job is advertised, resumes are solicited and are checked whether your qualifications and experience are suitable for the job.
Only after this, the initial screening is a candidate subject to psychometric tests like Mettl psychometric assessment. Such tests focus on measuring attributes such as personality, aptitude, and intelligence. These provide insights into how well a candidate will perform at the job, handle stress and cope with the intellectual and emotional demands of the job.
Personality or Behaviour Tests
Since various kinds of jobs need various kinds of personalities, behavioural tests focus on highlighting specific personality traits required by particular positions. Every employer uses different types of personality tests: leadership tests, personality questionnaires, situation tests and motivation tests.
Personality tests are used to design a personality profile of the candidate and to assess weaknesses and strengths. Typically, the tests evaluate a candidate’s quality of social skills, assertiveness, tendency to dominate, etc. Situation tests consider the reaction of a candidate to varying situations in the workplace.
Aptitude Tests
Such tests can be used for measuring a person’s ability or knowledge in a particular field but are most commonly used for getting a gut feel for the ability and general level of intelligence of the candidate. The formats of such tests vary as per the type of test.
Most common types are:
- Verbal comprehension/ reasoning
It measures the ability of the subject to comprehend verbal arguments or descriptions for understanding their meaning and drawing conclusions. The format of a verbal reasoning test may involve the reading of the passage and answer question series with cannot say/ False or True. Verbal comprehension concentrates on syntax, grammar, and spelling.
- Numerical reasoning
Measure the capacity of candidates to deal with numerical data and perform calculations, where suitable. Topics covered are percentages, ratios, currency conversion and trends. The test format is usually of multiple-choice.
- Abstract reasoning
Measures the ability of the subject to analyse and deal with unfamiliar information, to find solutions to problems, etc. This mainly attempts to discover how well the subject can think conceptually and analytically. For instance, one problem is to complete a gap in a sequence of symbols.
- Spatial reasoning
Such tests measure ability for manipulating shapes into two dimensions or to visualize three –dimensional objects presented in the form of two-dimensional pictures.
- Mechanical reasoning
They test candidate’s familiarity with mechanical and physical principles.
Aptitude tests produce raw scores that are compared to a benchmark. The score of a candidate may indicate whether a certain ability of his is better than say 70% of candidates, or he has enough competencies to carry out tasks related to a job.
These are all some facts about the general types of psychometric assessments.
