Psychometric Assessments 101

A beginner’s guide for organisations to make evidence-based people decisions

With roughly 3 in 10 workers leaving their employer each year, the cost of mismanaged talent is too high to leave to chance. Many leaders often rely on gut instinct to make critical people decisions. However, intuition can often be a disguise for unconscious bias.

To build high-performing teams, organisations must move toward evidence-based decision-making. Psychometric assessments provide this scientific framework through measuring individual characteristics such as cognitive reasoning, personality preferences, or behavioural tendencies. By moving away from subjective interpretation, organisations can ensure that their talent strategy is rooted in evidence rather than ambiguity.

If you are not sure what psychometric assessments are, or what they do, you are in the right place to find out!

What Psychometric Assessments Are (and Are Not)

The term ‘psychometric’ comes from the Greek words for ‘mind’ (psycho) and ‘measurement’ (metric). Essentially, it refers to the scientific measurement of psychological constructs, such as a person's abilities, personality, or motivations.

While many tools claim to measure these areas, a high-quality psychometric test must meet specific standards. This means that they must be rigorously developed, objective, and administered in a standardised way. Unlike informal methods like scanning a CV or an unstructured interview, psychometric tests have a solid scientific underpinning that makes them fairer and more accurate.

Reliability and Validity

However, no measurement is ever perfect, which is why establishing reliability and validity is essential.

Reliability = Consistency: A reliable test ensures that the results consistently reflect the person's true characteristic rather than random error.

• For example, if 20 people measure a table with the same ruler, and all the results are the same, or similar, then this is likely a reliable ruler.

Validity = Accuracy: It answers the question, "Is this test suitable for my specific purpose?". A valid assessment actually measures what it claims to measure.

• For example, the ruler might be a very reliable tool for determining length, but it has no relevance in measuring someone's intelligence, and therefore would be invalid for this purpose.

The Main Categories of Assessment

In the world of workplace testing, most assessments fall into a few main categories.

Cognitive Ability Tests measure what an individual is currently capable of doing. They have right and wrong answers and are often strictly timed. Common examples include verbal reasoning (understanding written reports), numerical reasoning (making sense of data), and abstract reasoning tests (learning new skills and dealing with novel situations).

Personality Assessments look at preferences, not ability. There are no right or wrong answers, and they are usually not timed. These assessments help organisations understand how someone prefers to work. For example, someone who scores high on conscientiousness is likely to prefer working in a structured and organised way. Some personality assessments, such as the HUCAMA Personality Factors, place people on a scale (for example, being more or less extroverted), while others group people into clear types (such as being classed as either an introvert or an extrovert).

Emotional Intelligence Assessments measure an individual’s emotional and social skills. Some emotional intelligence tools measure the frequency of certain behaviours (such as the EQ-i 2.0 & EQ 360), while others are ability-based with right and wrong answers (such as the MSCEIT 2).

Use Cases in Recruitment and Development

Psychometric assessments are a useful way to understand employees at different levels of an organisation, but they should not be used on their own to make decisions. They are particularly helpful in recruitment and development, for example:

In recruitment, you can use psychometrics to:

• Generate targeted, structured interview questions

• Use within an assessment centre to compare candidate performance

• Map assessments against job competencies to evaluate candidate fit

• For more, please see our Recruitment Assessment Flowchart

In development, you can use psychometrics to:

• Identify leadership potential and derailment risks

• Conduct one-to-one coaching

• Understand team dynamics to strengthen the group

• For more, please see Development Assessment Flowchart

When used effectively, psychometric assessments can transform the way you recruit and develop your people.

For those who want to take evidence-based decision-making a step further, our BPS Test User: Occupational, Ability & Personality Qualification provides the skills and confidence needed to administer and interpret psychometric assessments with ease.

If you have any questions about getting started or how to use psychometrics effectively in your organisation, please contact us.