Undertaking a psychometric assessment as part of an application process can often be daunting, but knowing what to expect and how they work can minimise any anxiety you might have and set you up for success.
What Is A Psychometric Assessment?
Simply put, a psychometric test is used to measure a candidate's suitability for a role based on their intellectual and personality traits. A company that uses these type of assessments believe that it significantly helps with finding the right applicant from a skill, intelligence, and personality perspective within specific roles as well.
For example:
- A graduate trading position – Might favour numerical skills and being able to perform in a fast paced, high pressure environment
- A graduate analyst – Might favour more drawn out attention to detail, logic and reasoning as well as a focus on interpersonal skills for stakeholder management
Typically, most assessments will have 2 parts:
Aptitude Assessment (Verbal /Numerical Reasoning)
This section measures your intellectual capabilities such as your problem-solving skills, decision making, and interpreting information in a limited time frame. The most common tests are verbal and numerical reasoning which assess your ability to solve written or numerical problems. These tests can either be in the form of multiple-choice questions or more game-oriented exercises. Popular psychometric testing platforms include Pymetrics, HireVue, and Revelian.
Personality Assessment
These assessments aim to inform recruiters about your behavioural style, interests, preferences, and motivations. The question formats include multiple-choice, true/false, and rating scales. The way you answer these questions forms a personality profile that tells a company about how your approach and solve problems, how you like to work in a team, how you like to be managed, and how you handle stress and conflict.
Even though there are no 'right' or 'wrong' answers, it is often better to answer honestly instead of trying to gear your responses towards answers you perceive the recruiter may be looking for.
How do you prepare for these assessments?
Familiarising yourself with these tests can go a long way to ensuring you ace them. Here are a few tips:
- Understand the different tests and their methods
- Practice as much as you can to get comfortable before applying for that graduate program or internship
- Ask your friends for any advice if they've sat the test in the past
- Sit the test in a quiet and comfortable environment
- Use all the tools that are allowed
We've collated a whole list of practice tests to get you started over here!