The traditional hiring process typically involves sifting through mountains of resumes, holding interviews in hopes of gaining a deeper understanding of a candidate’s characteristics in a five-minute slot, and then chasing references to confirm.

But how successful really is this method in understanding how well a candidate will perform at your company?

Resumes, interviews and reference checks only show a recruiter a tiny fragment of the picture – the part a candidate wants you to see.

Psychometric assessments, on the other hand, reveal a much bigger picture. Using scientifically proven methods, they can make an accurate prediction of whether a candidate is likely to succeed at your company.

These assessments measure a number of attributes such as intelligence, critical reasoning, motivation, and flexibility. Unlike facets such as skills and education, these behavioral and personality traits of a candidate are much more difficult to gauge during a traditional interview.

A psychometric assessment aims to provide measurable, objective data that can provide businesses with a much more effective, all-around view of a candidate’s suitability.

The use of psychometric assessments during the hiring process is by no means new. Businesses have long been using them to gain a deeper understanding of a candidate, originally in the form of pen and paper and multiple-choice questionnaires, and more recently, delivered digitally, meaning they are much easier to integrate and implement. And with such a vast and diverse talent pool available today, this is a fast and efficient way to screen (and thus eliminate) large numbers of unsuitable applicants at the beginning of a recruitment drive.

Thanks to advances in technology, the accessibility of data has grown exponentially along with the ease of interpretation and reporting. This means that the ability to analyze “people” data effectively is now available to HR departments across varying industries in both large and small businesses.

Revelian is an Australian-owned organization specializing in the delivery of cutting-edge psychometric assessments to businesses. Operating since 1999, the company has an extensive range of products developed by experienced organizational psychologists and software engineers.

Its products have helped organizations from a range of industries – from governments to retail – make smarter HR decisions, from whom to hire through how to manage existing employees.

Hire the very best people

As discovered by psychologists Frank L Schmidt and John Hunter through the analysis of 85 years’ of research across 32,000 applicants and 500 jobs, cognitive ability assessments are the most effective way of predicting performance at work.

Revelian has developed a range of cognitive ability assessments which aim to provide your business with data to predict the future performance of candidates.

With these tools, businesses can easily compare candidate test scores from a general cognitive ability test to a relevant normative group – accurately predicting applicants’ potential job performance.

And why not add an element of fun to the hiring process? Many big-named companies are introducing game-based assessments into their recruitment strategy in a bid to attract millennial talent.

Unlike traditional survey-based psychometric assessments, in which candidates typically can guess which responses the recruiter is looking for, gamified tests can accrue much more accurate and authentic answers.

This offers businesses a powerful, factual, objective, and unbiased ability to evaluate candidates’ fit for the position.

One of Revelian’s game-based assessments is Cognify, which assesses a candidate’s ability to deal with new or complex problems, to learn quickly, grasping of numerical information, spelling and grammar via six short, engaging games.

The advanced psychometric analysis going on behind the scenes of this fun and interactive game provides recruiters with powerful insights into candidate behavior and has been validated independently by some of the leading researchers in the field.

Ensure your workforce is diverse

Unfortunately, when it comes to hiring, our decisions are very often swayed by unconscious bias. These are unknown biases people hold towards others, relating to an individual’s sex, age, and race.

It is simply human nature to warm to people who are similar to us, but this shouldn’t be allowed to influence hiring decisions.

Psychometric assessments can help provide a level playing field for individuals, offering objective metrics about a candidate’s traits, behaviors, and cognitive abilities.

Instead of caring about things such as whether the candidate went to the same university as the recruiter, these assessments provide a fair prediction of the candidate’s potential to perform in a job role.

Psychometric tests are not only a fantastic way to discover the very best diverse talent for your company. They are also a great tool for measuring and growing the performance of your current workforce.

Build a strong company culture

The key to a successful business is the creation of a strong and connected company culture.

A Gallup survey of 1.4 million employees found organizations with high levels of employee engagement experience 21 percent greater productivity and 37 percent lower absenteeism.

Through psychometric tests, your business can gain an understanding of your culture on a much deeper level.

Revelian provides a variety of assessments to gain a holistic view of your employees’ or candidates’ behaviors and values. These include:

• Understanding an employee’s unique behavior style and preferences to see how well they’ll fit with the rest of the team.
• Measuring how closely an employee’s or candidate’s values align with your organization.
• The assessment of personality types to predict how individuals may perform in different roles.
• Measuring the emotional intelligence of candidates to identify who would thrive in leadership positions.

With this data, you are empowered with the information needed to take the practical steps that improve and build upon your company culture.

Significantly reduce health and safety risks

While your business may have extensive measures in place to try to ensure optimum health and safety in the workplace, avoiding risks entirely is never easy.

Injuries, damage, fraud, and unproductive behaviors pose significant costs for businesses, and this is more often than not a result of human error.

With the help of psychometric assessments, you can strive to reduce risk in the workplace by accurately predicting unsafe and unethical behavior in individuals. As a result, you can improve the safety of your employees while reducing costs.

Through a range of questions centered on safety attitudes and beliefs, Revelian’s work safety assessment allows you to identify those employees or candidates who are more likely to engage in risky behavior.

During a 12-month pilot, a leading freight transport business used Revelian’s assessment to measure the risk levels of its employees. The test results were then compared to the number of actual workplace accidents, injuries, and absences within the period.

It was found that those employees deemed as ‘high risk’ were responsible for notably more safety-related incidents.

Adding the work safety assessment to their recruitment process allowed the company to significantly reduce workplace accidents and injuries by screening out high-risk individuals.

The use of psychometric assessments can add significant value to decision-making, whether it’s recruitment, promotion, or leadership development.

Not only can this method help grow your business through the identification of top-performing, suitable applicants, but it can reduce costs associated with wrong recruitment decisions, and drastically reduce a recruiter’s workload.

To learn more about how psychometric assessments can smarten up your HR decisions, get in touch with a Revelian representative today.