What is a psychometric test and how does it help recruiters?

A psychometric test is a standardized assessment tool used to measure various psychological attributes, such as cognitive abilities, personality traits, and specific skills. These tests are designed to provide objective data about an individual's capabilities, preferences, and potential performance in certain roles or situations.

There are different types of psychometric tests, including:

1. Cognitive Ability Tests: These evaluate a candidate's logical reasoning, verbal and numerical abilities, and problem-solving skills. They help recruiters assess an individual's capacity to learn, adapt, and make sound decisions.

2. Personality Tests: These assess personality traits such as extroversion, conscientiousness, openness to experience, agreeableness, and emotional stability. Understanding a candidate's personality can provide insights into how they might fit within a team and whether they align with the organization's culture and values.

3. Skills Tests: These measure specific skills relevant to the job, such as technical proficiency, language proficiency, or situational judgment. They help recruiters identify candidates who possess the required competencies for the role.

So, how do these tests help recruiters?

1. Objective Assessment: Psychometric tests provide objective data that can supplement subjective impressions formed during interviews. This helps recruiters make more informed decisions based on a candidate's actual abilities and characteristics rather than relying solely on gut feelings or biases.

2. Predictive Validity: Research has shown that psychometric tests have predictive validity, meaning they can accurately predict future job performance. By assessing a candidate's cognitive abilities, personality traits, and skills, recruiters can identify individuals who are likely to succeed in a given role.

3. Efficiency: Psychometric tests are often administered online and can be completed remotely by candidates, saving time and resources for recruiters. Additionally, they can quickly filter out unsuitable candidates, allowing recruiters to focus their efforts on candidates who are more likely to be a good fit for the role.

4. Reduced Bias: Psychometric tests help mitigate biases in the hiring process by providing standardized assessments that treat all candidates equally. This can help increase diversity and fairness in recruitment practices.

Overall, psychometric tests serve as valuable tools for recruiters in identifying candidates who not only possess the necessary skills and qualifications but also have the potential to thrive and contribute positively to the organization's success.

Navigating Success: The Vital Role of Psychometric Tests for Seafarers in Maritime Operations

Psychometric tests for seafarers are important for several reasons, contributing to the safety, efficiency, and overall effectiveness of maritime operations. Here are some key reasons for the importance of psychometric tests for seafarers:

1. Safety at Sea:
   Seafarers work in challenging and often hazardous conditions. Ensuring that individuals possess the psychological traits necessary to handle stress, make quick and accurate decisions, and communicate effectively is crucial for the safety of the crew, the vessel, and the cargo.
   
   
2. Crew Compatibility:
   Psychometric tests can assess interpersonal skills and teamwork. Ensuring that crew members can work well together is essential for the smooth functioning of a ship. Compatibility in a team reduces the likelihood of conflicts and enhances overall job satisfaction.
   
   
3. Stress Management:
   Seafarers often face stressful situations, including adverse weather conditions, long working hours, and isolation. Psychometric tests can identify individuals who are better equipped to handle stress, ensuring that the crew remains resilient and able to perform well under pressure.
   
   
4. Decision-Making Abilities:
   Maritime operations require quick and effective decision-making. Psychometric assessments can evaluate cognitive abilities, problem-solving skills, and decision-making processes, helping to ensure that seafarers are capable of making sound judgments in various situations.
   
   
5. Communication Skills:
   Effective communication is crucial for safe navigation and coordination among crew members. Psychometric tests can assess communication skills, ensuring that seafarers can convey information clearly and receive and understand instructions accurately.
   
   
6. Mental Health and Well-Being:
   The isolation and extended periods away from home can impact the mental health of seafarers. Psychometric tests may help identify individuals who might be more susceptible to mental health challenges, enabling proactive support and intervention.
   
   
7. Regulatory Compliance:
   Many maritime authorities and industry standards require the use of psychometric tests as part of the pre-employment screening process. This helps ensure that seafarers meet the necessary psychological criteria for the specific demands of their roles.
   
   
8. Performance Optimization:
   Understanding the psychological profiles of seafarers can help in optimizing performance by placing individuals in roles that align with their strengths and capabilities. This can lead to increased job satisfaction and overall job performance.

In summary, psychometric tests for seafarers at Psychometrica play a crucial role in enhancing safety, teamwork, and overall operational efficiency in the maritime industry. They contribute to creating a skilled and well-balanced crew that can effectively navigate the challenges of seafaring.

Manager Blueprint

https://www.psychometrica.in/psychometric-test-for-managers.html

Hiring Using Online Psychometric Tests

Unlike facets such as education, skills, experience, appearance and punctuality, behavioral traits and personality of a candidate can be much more difficult to assess during an interview. Hence, psychometric analyses help us gauge certain nuances of human behavior better and help profile traits and characteristics systematically.

Hiring managers today, rely more and more on psychometric tests which are online during their recruitment process to help give a better overall evaluation of a candidate and hopefully secure the best fit for the role. These tests also help gauge the future performance of a candidate and hopefully improve employee retention by making successful hiring decisions.

Here are a few factors that help understand why recruiters must use psychometric tests online in their recruiting.

1. Standardized Information

When candidates are assessed using standardized procedures, they are assessed using the same criteria and compared against reliable market standards. This makes up for neutrality to the process which is sometimes is falsified when sole internal processes are used. A comparison of candidates using various standardization procedures and valid psychometric assessment tools, helps design a complete profile of these individuals.

2. Valid of all Companies

Testing using psychometric measures not necessarily need to be reserved for larger corporations or organizations looking to recruit fresh graduates. Smaller organizations may use such tolls as well, as part of their overall recruitment strategies. It is important to make sure candidates are being tested for the right traits, small and medium organizations might not necessarily tailor tests quite as much as larger organizations. Rather, they can be used to give a more general idea of candidate’s’ abilities and personality.

3. Provides Overall Feedback

Considering recruitment, interviews are synonymous to getting to know the individual in person so as to decide if he fits the organization’s culture. However, it may not be the only time the candidate shows his best qualities. As personality is a subjective matter, candidates can be manipulative or may not be able to signal their strengths during pressurized interview setups. Psychometric assessments gives a benchmark where one can compare results against other candidates profiled for similar roles. Introducing such tests also provide to give recruiters that extra input, thereby creating a wholesome picture of the candidate in question.

4. Saves Time and Money

Recruiting new staff can take up a lot of valuable time and can also prove to be a costly affair, especially if the best talent isn’t found straight away. Psychometric assessments can save employers both time and money as they provide with effective filtering methods. Psychometric tests used early in the application process can quickly identify those people who will best fit your organization both through their abilities and their personality. In this way, psychometric assessments can contribute in more efficient ways of recruitment

5. Painting a True Picture of Candidates

Psychometric Test can give a very good picture of your candidates – they give an idea of the candidate’s personality, what makes them tick and how they prefer to work in given situations; how they work under pressure, for example, and how they work alone or as part of a team. The very nature of psychometric assessment is that they are difficult to game so the results you get from each test should be true results in that they show you what your candidates are really like in the workplace. This means that you will also know about not only their abilities but how well they are going to get along with other employees within your company.

6. Fair Testing – Nonjudgmental

Standardized approach to recruitment is the sole purpose of recruitment and it is fair for candidates because they go through exactly the same assessments process. Candidates who apply for your job roles might not be getting the same type of interview as the candidates who were interviewed the day before. Psychometric assessments also help candidates to better judge themselves. If you have found their personality really suits your company, however, you might be able to make use of the candidate’s new found strengths elsewhere in the company. In this way, psychometric assessments can be a win-win situation.

7. Flexibility of Usage

Another advantage of psychometric assessments for employers is that they can be slotted in at any time during the application process. Depending upon the size and nature of your organization, they can be used right at the beginning in the form of a fun questionnaire or at various times during the day at assessment centers. Some organizations even run two lots of psychometric assessments, at the beginning and the end of the process, just to compare the results and double check they are employing the right candidate.

8. Measuring Skills and Abilities, Not Just Education

Many organizations still place a lot of emphasis on academic achievement, as well as any previous work experience. This is valuable to a certain extent, however, psychometric assessments can be used to plug a gap in that academic achievements to give you a complete picture of what your candidates are actually capable of in the place of work. Again, on the other side, another advantage of psychometric assessments for employers is that it can reveal to you if a candidate is over qualified for the role they are applying for.

9. Psychometric Assessments and Work Culture

Recruitment is not just about hiring any candidate who has demonstrated they can do the job. Rather, this is obviously a key requirement, you also need to know how well the candidate will fit in with the rest of the team already working for you and how they will operate within your company’s culture. Someone who actually prefers to work alone in a quiet atmosphere, for example, is not going to feel fulfilled or work to their full potential if your company thrives in a fast moving environment which relies heavily on teamwork. Psychometric assessments can help do this both with the personality test and the other tests because you will get an idea of how that person works and what motivates them.

10. Consistency in Recruitment

The biggest advantage that psychometric assessments encourage is – consistency and standardization to hire new candidates. Every candidate is given exactly the same tests and recruiters can use this as a benchmark. Other sides of recruitment and your company’s application process are certainly valid, references are from outside your company and a candidate’s previous workplace might not have had the same values as your own workplace. The previous company might also have been looking for different requirements from their employee.

What’s Your Integrity?

Increasingly, organizations are looking to hire not just employees having the right skills sets, right leadership potential and right capabilities, but also those who show high levels of integrity and commitment to the organization. Employee integrity has become a key phrase, as every organization today realizes that no matter what potential an individual brings to the organization, ultimately it is his conduct, his values and his approach that determines how much of that potential will benefit the organization!

So, that brings us to the crucial question: what is integrity? Everyone knows what integrity is; yet, no one can really define it precisely. Does it represent the value system of a person? Or his or her conduct? What about strength of character, is that also part of integrity? Surely, loyalty to the organization should also be part of the definition of integrity? So many questions! So few answers, really. Let us try to understand what integrity is all about.

Where professional life is concerned, Integrity essentially looks at how committed you are to your work and your organization. Of course, your ethical code of conduct, or the values you believe in, forms the foundation of your integrity. This ethical code helps form our work ethic, and decides with how much sincerity and honesty we approach our work.

Other aspects that are important in determining an employee’s integrity include:

• Self-Control

Having a theoretical code of ethics that one believes in is one thing; however, how much does one abide by it? Self-control looks at precisely this – it is about much responsibility and seriousness you show toward your work, how much ownership you take not just for your work but for your conduct at your workplace. Thus, behaving in ways that are consistent with your values is an important aspect of your integrity.

• Conscientiousness

It is common knowledge that employees can and do engage in counterproductive work behaviors. These include misusing official resources (be it stationery, electronics, vehicle, and most importantly, time!), spreading gossip about co-workers, superiors and the organization, spoiling the organization’s image and so forth. A conscientious employee is one who refrains from engaging in such behaviors, and thus shows high integrity.

• Loyalty

Finally, a loyal and committed employee is an organization’s best brand ambassador. Thus, those who have a high sense of belongingness and connect with the organization are the one who will remain loyal, who will stand by the organization in good and bad times. Your sense of loyalty, how dependable you are forms an important aspect of your overall integrity.

So … While integrity is not easy to define or to measure, the above form the cornerstones of an individual’s integrity profile. Skills and competencies can be mastered with practice; integrity however, is very much a part of an individual’s internal sense of who he is and how he sees the world around him. Getting some sense of an individual’s integrity may well be worth the effort for every organization who believes that human resource is invaluable to its functioning.

Samindara Hardikar-Sawant

Clinical Psychologist,

Psychometrica | Disha Counseling Center

Is Your Mind Present While Making a Sales Deal?

Much has been said about the various skills and personality traits that a sales person needs to have – he needs to have excellent communication skills, should be persuasive, should have the ability to negotiate a deal…. The list is endless! Yet, a salesman (or woman) may have all these qualities, yet fail to make a mark with his potential customers if he doesn’t have that one vital quality – Presence of Mind!

To better understand the importance of having Presence of Mind, let us look at an example. You make a very convincing pitch to your customer, and have all but closed the deal. Suddenly, the customer asks you about the truth of a recent news that has been circulating about your organisation which isn’t very positive. The customer is waiting for your response. What do you do? Evade the question? Lie through your teeth? Stumble on your response? In such a scenario, it is your Presence of Mind that is going to come to your rescue!

So what is this elusive quality all about? Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? Common sense tells us that Presence of Mind simply means you have to be able to think on your feet, that you have to be able to come up with a relevant response when your customer throws you a googly. It is having enough mental agility to change course mid-journey, to address the unexpected when it comes up and do course correction without batting an eyelid. Indeed, for some of us who naturally possess this quality, this is simple enough. It is these people who can quip that when Life gives you lemons, make Lemonade! But for many of us, who tend to work within a given structure, the moment something out of the box is thrown to us, we tend to get flustered. So how do we learn to deal with such situations?

In order to become more adept at dealing with unexpected situations when making a sales call, it might be worthwhile to explore what this truly means. Presence of Mind, at its very basic level, essentially means being fully present to the moment. It means being completely tuned into your customer’s thought process, so that you anticipate the unexpected before it is uttered, or you are quickly able to relate to it from the customer’s point of view. If your Mind is fully Present in the situation, it will be easy for you to effortlessly go with the flow, address the unexpected that the situation throws up in an unfazed manner, and move on to successfully close the deal. You would have addressed your customer’s query without damaging your sales prospect and maintaining your integrity. This is what Presence of Mind is all about! It is not about lying to the customer, making excuses to wheedle out of the awkward situation or question, or ignoring it. It is about remaining in your integrity, addressing the issue tactfully and honestly and still being able to carry on with your deal.

To know more about where you stand on Presence of Mind and other Sales Skills, take our Sales Skills and Personality Profiler (SSaPP)!

Ms. Samindara Sawant

Clinical Psychologist
Disha Counseling Center | Psychometrica

Is Your Mind Present While Making a Sales Deal?

3 Guidelines to Master the Art of Maintaining Relationships

The term, ‘Relationships’ refers not just to romantic relationships, but to all the relationships that we share, be it our parents, siblings, friends and children, relationships between bosses and employees, teachers and students, and anyone we interact with.

Relationships, simply mean any situation in our life that involves others.

Human beings live in a society and man is a social animal. Thus our happiness, self-esteem, and ability to work, is greatly influenced by the quality of our relationships, thus affecting our mental health itself. And it is these relationships which lead to problems and also maladjustment in our lives. It is important to realize that in order to change relationships in a positive manner, we can only change the way we relate to others. Only this will change the way others relate to us.

Your relationships will work best if you are able to be yourself within them. Relationships in which you can be yourself are likely to feel more comfortable and to make you happier. Some very good relationships can be provocative and challenging too. However this in no way means that one can throw tantrums or be rude to people as one wishes. Also, relationships tend to be unsatisfying when one is fulfilling a role rather than being oneself. It is important then to improve such relationships.

Three guidelines to help you improve your relationships:

1. Work on changing yourself, not on changing others.


2. Changes take time.


3. Work with people as they are.

1: Work on changing yourself, not changing others.

The temptation, particularly if a relationship is stormy, is to insist to oneself and to others that it is not you that needs to change but the other person. Now it may be true that the other person could change but since you cannot change other people, it is not worth trying. The only way you can change another person is to change the way you relate to them. Working to change one’s self is always difficult. However, the changes you make will eventually bring in the necessary changes in others. Leave these changes up to them, and the relationship will feel better to you both.

2: Changes take time.

When you change the way in which you relate to others, they may resist that change and do things to make you change back. Making changes in relationships can take longer than making changes in yourself alone, and it requires persistence and sustained efforts over a period of time. Give change, time.

3: Work with people as they are.

Be realistic. If you find yourself thinking “If only he would tell me what he’s thinking” or “If only he didn’t criticise me so much”, remember that if you want to bring about some changes in those relationships you should put away these “if only” and accept people as they are. Once you start making changes in yourself, the other person is likely to begin to change.

To learn how to manage change in Life click here.

The importance of solitude

Although good relationships are valuable, don’t underestimate the importance of solitude; the ability to enjoy, and to find creative strength in our own company. To be at ease with oneself alone can be a source of refreshment and energy. Solitude is a necessary component of many creative activities that require us to draw from our own inner depths. Solitude is not the opposite of good relationships. In fact, if we are continually seeking company because we are uncomfortable with ourselves, this is likely to tarnish our relationships with others. If we are at ease with ourselves we will be at ease with others.

Ms. Shital Ravi.
Senior Consulting Psychologist.
Psychometrica and Career Pathways


3 Guidelines to Master the Art of Maintaining Relationships