Psychometric evaluations comprise multiple in-depth questions that provide insight into your attributes, such as cognitive ability and behavioural characteristics. These assessments are also an efficient means to measure your strengths and weaknesses and identify potential progression opportunities during your career at a company.
Such evaluations provide specific insights about a candidate that is not easy to determine during the preliminary steps of the process. They help to streamline the recruitment process and allow any company to make well-informed hiring decisions. It is one of the many reasons for using them in DotActiv's recruiting process.
A psychological assessment is a process-oriented activity that gathers information from various sources. That includes tests, interviews, a person’s history, and collateral sources.
The idea behind these assessments is not to negatively impact your application but rather to enrich it and assist in the development and relationship building. Thus, it helps DotActiv (or any other company that uses them) understand your strengths and weaknesses so that if a company places you in a role, you experience success.
Again, we need to reiterate it: It is by no means a way to label or disadvantage anyone. Instead, we use it as a positive tool to encourage your success within the role and set you up for future growth.
Here is another point worth highlighting: there is no pass or fail in a psychometric test.
However, as much as you cannot fail such a test, each role does require a specific set of traits. These traits ensure that you are in sync with the requirements and have the right capabilities and competencies.
The purpose of psychometric testing is also to get an objective, scientific assessment of your strengths and weaknesses so we can decide how best to utilise your skills for current and future positions.
If you are interested in reading more about your rights and the process around such assessments, you can visit Psytech SA’s website here.
DotActiv uses a variety of psychometric evaluations during the recruitment process. They include the following:
These assessments enable any employer to assess the suitability of candidates for a role based on their behaviour, attitudes, and preferences.
These assessments help employers understand candidates' values, motives, and interests.
These assessments centre around a set of skills that a candidate must perform in the role. It consists of verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning tests with visuals that need interpreting.
These tests also set the foundation for how a potential colleague would approach and perform in their daily work life.
A primary factor for why DotActiv uses psychometric evaluations as part of the recruitment process is to assist with career pathing. These evaluations assist in guiding your growth strategy and help us set realistic career goals by identifying areas in which you may need training or coaching.
It ultimately leads to organisational development, assisting DotActiv in creating and developing interventions to bring about improvements at various levels of our company.
At DotActiv, we have an in-house psychometrist to perform these assessments. The role of the psychometrist is to make these psychological assessments accessible to promote the psychological wellbeing of the diverse South African population.
That involves the following:
The Employment Equity Act (2.4 Section 8) states the following:
“Psychological testing and similar assessments are prohibited, unless the test is scientifically valid and reliable, can be applied fairly to all employees, and is not biased against any employee or group.”
Hiring a new colleague is expensive, and recruiting someone does not come without risk. That is why at DotActiv, we look beyond hard skills.
We want to know more about a potential colleague and their soft skills, interests, ability to lead, and how well they work with others.
Psychometric assessments are a bonus to complement traditional recruitment procedures and help hiring managers make more informed decisions when selecting candidates.
Some benefits include the following:
Have you ever wondered what career will be the best one for you? I am sure many of us have had this thought, and it may take some of us a few tries to find that thing that we are really passionate about and love doing.
That is where a psychometric assessment comes in. You might know yourself to a certain extent, but you might not always be able to articulate it as well as a scientific examination. Thus, when we review the results of these tests, we want to see if you are in sync with a role based on your capabilities and competencies. If you are, it means you can expect to thrive in the position without being stretched too far out of your comfort zone. And that is even before you begin any work.
Here are a few more benefits for you when doing psychometric assessments:
We assess psychometric evaluation results alongside experience, knowledge, and interview performance. Ultimately, our goal is to ensure that the ‘gut-feeling’ we have about a candidate is accurate, and that the position we want to place someone in is actually a good fit for them. Before you join, we know the role will not overwhelm you. Likewise, we know that it will not underwhelm you.
Using psychometric evaluations allows us to employ a candidate who is a good fit for a role. We also know that when we find such a person, we believe they will thrive and be happy.
Conclusion
Psychometric evaluations are by no means a standalone tool. Instead, they are one piece of a multi-layered approach to recruitment. While they assist us in narrowing down our candidate pool and identify those most suited to join our company, they are part of a broader picture.
Traditional assessment methods like CV screening and interviews are, of course, valuable too. They also form part of our recruitment process. However, we believe we must include psychometric assessments into the process if we want to build a company that can play a critical role on the global stage.
Are you interested in joining the DotActiv team and providing category management solutions to retailers and suppliers from across the world? We’d love to hear from you. You can read up about DotActiv, what we stand for and how we operate here or apply for any open positions here.