Dispelling the myths about Psychometrics

1. The tests don't work:- Developing a properly researched, robust and reliable psychometric tool takes years of development and needs to pass an extremely stringent validation process to prove that they actually predict the kind of outcomes that they do.

2. There is no Return on Investment from psychometric assessments:- There is overwhelming evidence that different tests have various impact on the talent within an organisation.

3. Psychometrics are no better than a gut feeling:- Our human gut feelings are plagued with bias that we don't even realise exist in our thinking.

• Confirmation bias: We form an early hypothesis about someone and seek confirmation for it.
• Halo effect: If we like (or dislike) something about a person, this spills over into our perception of other personality areas.
• In-group vs out-group: We tend to prefer people who belong to the same groups as us.
• Group attribution error: We assume the characteristics of a person reflect those of the group as a whole. Or, we assume that outcomes of decisions made by a group reflect the preferences of the individual members.

4. Psychometric tests are not relevant in the real world:- For some people, its difficult to see how an assessment that asks candidates to guess the next number in a sequence or decide whether a statement proves that Sally likes wearing orange on a Tuesday relate to real-world, on-the-job performance...

5. Candidates say what we want to hear:- This MYTH relates to what we call ‘fake-ability’: how easily the candidate can create an overly favourable impression by answering questions in what they think is the most appropriate way. Valid and reliable tools have rigorous measures build in to counter the fake-ability.

6. Candidates don't like assessments and it reflects badly on the hiring company:- Quite the opposite, high calibre candidates know the value of assessments and are able to see that they not only benefit the company, they benefit the candidate too.

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