Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions:
Why do employers use personality tests for employment?
Employers use personality tests for employment because of the many advantages of personality tests, ranging from helping recruiters make effective hiring decisions to developing the right kind of people for future roles. The benefits of personality tests can be leveraged by recruiters at all stages of the employee cycle. Personality tests offer recruiters the confidence that the right person is being chosen to do the desired job.
What is the purpose of a personality assessment?
The purpose of a personality assessment is listed below:
- Personality test helps the hiring managers to assess the suitable fit for the company based on personality assessment results.
- It helps recruiters decide which questions to ask when interviewing potential candidates.
- It helps detect interpersonal characteristics required for specific job roles.
What are the advantages of personality inventory?
The advantages of personality inventory are:
- It helps people learn about their personality types and attributes.
- It reveals the candidate’s personality traits, such as work preferences, motivation, strengths and weaknesses and attitudes.
What does the personality test reveal?
A personality test reveals core aspects of a human personality – the bright side, values, work preferences and style, and the dark side. It also reveals a candidate’s fitment in the company culture. The candidate possessing the required personality traits is suitable for the job role.
Why would someone use a personality assessment?
A recruiter uses a personality assessment to gauge useful insights into how candidates behave in a work environment and help predict job performance. The data gathered from the personality test helps them hire the right candidate and improves the teams’ coordination, work relationships, overall effectiveness and productivity.
What are the drawbacks of personality inventory?
Some of the problems
with personality tests are unreliable personality tools on the market, inaccurate test results, nervous candidates due to language and cultural barriers, expensive personality tools and time-consuming assessments.
Why are personality tests bad?
While personality tests are effective pre-employment tools, they can also be bad. Some personality tests are not scientifically validated and reliable and claim to provide accurate descriptions of human
personalities. However, they don’t. Therefore, it is best to opt for professionally experienced organizations to conduct personality tests.
What are the advantages and disadvantages of personality tests in psychology?
Some of the advantages and disadvantages of the personality test in psychology are listed below:
Advantages
- Personality test enables recruiters to understand candidates and their fitment in the company culture better.
- It negates the possibility of unconscious bias in selecting the candidates for the job role. The recruiters make fair decisions by considering applicants based on the required competencies. A candidate possessing the requisite skill sets is considered the best fit for the job role.
Disadvantages
- An imperfect personality test may deliver misleading results, such as the wrong personality profiling of the candidate, hampering the employer’s hiring decision in recruiting the best fit for the job role.
- The results obtained from the personality test do not validate a good or bad personality. The assessment evaluates the personality traits required for the job role.
When looking to hire the best technical talent, most organizations will integrate an aptitude test into their recruitment process. Even though it gives you an idea of a candidate’s expertise, it also has its limitations which shouldn’t be overlooked.
So in this article, we’ll cover the following:
- The advantages and disadvantages of an aptitude test
- Whether or not it’s a reliable screening tool
- How to overcome its flaws
The Purpose of Using an Aptitude Test
Aptitude tests are used to assess an individual’s skills by seeing how well they can complete the task you give them.
Before hiring a candidate, you’ll want to know how they approach a problem and if they’re capable of succeeding in the role. So by using an aptitude test, it gives you an accurate picture of their ability since you’re evaluating them based on their job performance.
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More importantly, you’re testing for specific skill sets including how well they apply what they know to solve different problems.
Aside from identifying whether or not they have the expertise, it also reveals what some of their strengths and weaknesses are.
The Advantages of Using an Aptitude Test
We’ve listed 7 advantages that are gained from using an aptitude test. Each of these contributes to successful talent acquisition and building a list of qualified candidates.
Evaluate Core Competencies
With an aptitude test, you can see if the individual is competent and updated with the industry trends.
One of the most important factors is that they have the job skills to complete the work at a good standard. Another quality to look out for is that they’re someone you can rely on – someone that’s capable of getting results.
Hire Based on Data
Instead of hiring someone based on the information presented on their resume, you’re making a decision based on how they perform.
Meaning, you’re taking an objective approach by observing their skills in a working environment.
While a resume might tell you what they’ve done or achieved in the past, it’s not the best indicator of their true capabilities. But since you’re gathering data about them in regards to their expertise, it means taking a more unbiased approach to hiring.
Standardized Tests
Since each test is standardized, you can be assured that each result shown is valid.
That means the assessments you give depict a fair and accurate insight into their level of skill. A natural consequence of taking an objective hiring approach like this is that it can lead to workplace diversity and inclusion.
Recruit Better Quality Candidates
Focus on making recruiting decisions using quality as the core principle.
What this means is focusing on quality over quantity by seeing who’s the best match for the job position based on competence. Plus, since you’re testing a variety of applicants, it’s more straightforward to see who’s the best fit for the role.
Increased Efficiency
Over the long-term period, you’re saving a vast amount of time and money as aptitude tests can improve the recruitment process.
Instead of several back and forths, it’s more efficient when you’re able to get the information you need in less time. As opposed to doing several interviews or questioning, you get to see how they approach their work.
Get Insight In the Candidate’s Potential
Aside from seeing where each candidate is currently at, you also get an insight into their potential by identifying their strengths and weaknesses. The advantage of this is that you can prepare for strategies to bridge those gaps or further reinforce the necessary skills.
Identify the Skills Gap
Using the results, identify the skills gap in your workplace to see what needs to be prioritized.
For instance, see what training is required and how they could improve in a particular area of work. Once you know what these are and if a candidate in the pipeline has the right competencies for your work environment, it helps with making a hiring decision.
The Disadvantages of Using an Aptitude Test
On the other hand, there are 4 disadvantages of using an employment aptitude test. Unless it’s minimized (which we’ll get to later in this article), each of these could pose a risk in your decision-making.
The Focus on Theoretical Knowledge
There’s no problem with seeing how up-to-date an applicant is. But, it’s a flaw in an aptitude test because it’s in favor of assessing theoretical knowledge as opposed to how they use what they know to solve a problem.
In this case, there’s a risk of missing out on your ideal group of technical candidates.
And if the aptitude test is too difficult or easy, then it won’t provide much insight or value for the HR team.
Soft Skills Aren’t Taken into Account
The main focus of an aptitude test is the candidate’s hard skills.
Whereas, their soft skills aren’t really being assessed. Although hard skills determine whether or not they can carry out the job responsibilities, it doesn’t determine their character or how well they would operate as part of the team.
For example, it doesn’t accurately assess their:
- Leadership skills
- Creativity
- Communication skills
- Personality
Lack of Cultural Fit Assessment
On top of soft skills, the cultural fit aspect isn’t a core focus. This means you’re missing out on evaluating the job seeker based on their:
- Attitude
- Beliefs
- Values
- Mindset
Unlike a psychometric test that assesses a candidate’s personality profile and their potential in your organization, it’s difficult to conclude who exactly it is that you’re hiring. One consequence of hiring without taking into account their cultural fit is that you’re prone to selecting those that are difficult to retain for the long-term.
Test Anxiety
Anxiety can affect the performance of a candidate, therefore leading to inaccurate data and not measuring their true cognitive abilities.
It’s understandable, especially for those new to the workforce. Employment pressure is common since they realize it’s a vital opportunity for them in their career. As a result, it could lead to easy slip-ups or mistakes, which would show in their final scores to the recruiter.
Are Aptitude Tests Still Reliable?
Overall, aptitude tests are valuable pre-employment screening tools when used appropriately.
Rather than reading each resume individually and trying to interpret what they know, you can narrow down the list of applicants based on their job skills.
In terms of whether or not it’s reliable – by itself, it doesn’t always represent a candidate’s true skill because there are other variables that can affect their performance. In other words, there are risks of leading to an inaccurate representation.
That’s why it’s important to integrate other types of candidate assessments.
The Alternatives to Using an Aptitude Test
The more data and context you have on a candidate, the better.
This is why Testlify offers a range of candidate assessments in their test library. Each of them enables you to get the insight you need to confirm the expertise of each person.
What’s more important is not just to see what they know.
But, how they use what they know to overcome roadblocks and unexpected challenges that come along the way. Otherwise, the knowledge isn’t as valuable as it’s perceived because it’s not being utilized to its full potential.
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Final Thoughts
After going over the advantages and disadvantages of an aptitude test, it’s clear that while it provides insight into a job seeker’s skills, it also has limitations and other variables which could affect the final results.
However, each flaw can be minimized by using a range of cognitive assessments.
With that being said, it’s effective to use them as a tool as opposed to making them the decisive factor. In this aspect, it’s a great solution for objective hiring and reducing unconscious bias.