Psychometric testing hit the headlines recently — and it is not often you can report that — with the UK’s Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) under fire for obliging jobseekers to complete “bogus” psychometric tests.
The test, named _My Strengths_, apparently devised by Downing Street’s Behavioural Insights Unit, was exposed by _The Guardian_ as a “sham”, with results having no relation to the answers given.
Some of the statements on the _My Strengths_ test include: “I never go out of my way to visit museums,” and: “I have not created anything of beauty in the last year.” People are asked to grade their answers from “very much like me” to “very much unlike me.” Respondents were then assigned a set of five positive traits including “love of learning”, “curiosity” and “originality”.
The DWP reportedly claimed the test is “scientifically shown to find people’s strengths”. However, those taking the psychological survey found that by clicking on the same answer repeatedly, users received the same set of personality results as those entering completely opposite answers.
In general, many are highly sceptical about the value of psychometric assessment, and episodes such as the _My Strengths_ kerfuffle do little to help its reputation. Many more, frankly, know very little about it. Yet psychometric testing is now used by over 80% of the Fortune 500 companies in the US and by more than 75% of the _Times_ Top 100 companies in the UK. Banks, management consultancies, local authorities, the civil service, police forces, fire services and the armed forces — to name but a few — all make extensive use of psychometric testing, both for selecting candidates and for developing talent internally.
According to the Association of Graduate Recruiters, blue-chip companies are using psychometric personality tests, as well as verbal and numerical reasoning tests, to select graduate employees because they no longer trust degrees. They blame grade inflation (well over half of students now graduate with a first or a 2:1) and the wide variation in standards between universities.
“There is less faith in the ability of degree classes to accurately mirror the graduate competencies that matter,” says Carl Gilleard, chief executive of the Association. “Research has shown there is little consistency not only between the standard of degree awarded between universities but between subjects at the same university.”
Aside from pure academic ability, employers — including family offices — are increasingly trying to identify ‘soft skills’ such as communication, leadership, time management and emotional intelligence. “In this increasingly competitive global economy,” says Gilleard, “they want individuals who are going to grow within the organisation and make a difference, and that is not always reflected in the class of degree.” Some 90% of employers responding to the Association’s survey said they believed psychometric testing of attributes such as logical thinking and ability under pressure was a useful way of assessing candidates.
Not surprisingly, psychometric assessment is big business. For example, the UK-based global leader in testing, SHL — which supplies assessments for 80% of the FTSE 100 and counts Barclays, Coca-Cola and Vodafone among its clients — was sold last year to Virginia-based human capital firm Corporate Executive Board for $660m.
**Historical use**
Robert Kaplan, an Australian forensic psychiatrist and author on psychometric assessment, claims the Chinese had a relatively sophisticated civil service testing programme more than 4,000 years ago. Over time, testing expanded to diverse topics such as civil law, military affairs, agriculture, revenue and geography, and even running for public office. The Western world learned about Chinese testing programmes through British missionaries and diplomats, who encouraged the East India Company in 1832 to copy the system as a method for selecting employees for overseas duty. When this proved successful, the British government adopted a similar testing regime for its civil service in 1855, with France and Germany following suit.
Charles Darwin’s _The Origin of Species_ discussed how individual members of a species differ and possess characteristics that are more or less adaptive and successful. Those who are adaptive and successful are the ones that survive and give way to the next generation.
Darwin’s ideas inspired the anthropologist — and his half-cousin — Sir Francis Galton to study human beings, how they differ and, crucially, how to measure those differences.
During the 1880s, Galton, often described as the “father of psychometrics”, persuaded over 9,000 people to be personality-tested in his “laboratory” at the Science Museum in South Kensington.
According to journalist Madeleine Bunting, however, the first modern personality test was developed by the US Army in 1917. Its aim was to weed out recruits unable to cope with the stress of battle. Faced with millions of conscripts, military chiefs sought a simple method to select individuals for fighter-pilot training, the pay corps or military police. Psychologists hurried to meet the demand and, two World Wars later, psychologist-designed testing had swept America.
**A myriad of tests**
As testing practices have become more refined, the ambitions of testers have expanded from merely detecting ‘positive’ personalities to probing the ‘dark side’: pathology and personality disorders. Increasingly, tests are used to detect high-flyers who may later derail, or to prevent psychopaths from being recruited.
Today, psychometric assessment falls into two broad categories: aptitude (or ability) tests and personality assessments.
There are at least 5,000 aptitude and ability tests on the market today. Common categories include verbal ability (assessing spelling, grammar, the ability to recognise analogies and follow instructions), numerical ability (basic arithmetic, mathematics and numerical sequences) and abstract reasoning (patterns and logic). There are also aptitude tests measuring specific skills such as spatial ability, mechanical reasoning, fault diagnosis and data checking.
Raven’s Progressive Matrices is an example of an abstract reasoning test. Candidates are shown a sequence of shapes or patterns and asked to identify the final part of the sequence.
Perhaps the tests most useful to family offices are those assessing personality, as they attempt to reveal traits considered relevant to job performance or cultural fit. Candidates respond to a series of statements by indicating the degree to which they agree or selecting the response they feel is truest. Unlike ability tests, there are no right or wrong answers.
A statement might look like this:
1. I enjoy parties and other social occasions.
2. A) Strongly disagree
3. B) Disagree
4. C) Neutral
5. D) Agree
6. E) Strongly agree
These assessments can involve hundreds of multiple-choice questions, the responses to which are used to create a personality profile. They can identify positive qualities such as adaptability, leadership skills and decisiveness, but also investigate ‘negative’ traits such as carelessness, wastefulness and aggressiveness.
Globally, the most widely used personality assessment is the Myers–Briggs Type Indicator, employed by the majority of Fortune 100 companies. It is based on the work of psychologist Carl Jung, who proposed that we experience the world through four principal psychological functions: sensation, intuition, feeling and thinking.
Through a series of questions, the assessment attempts to identify preferences: Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I); Sensing (S) or Intuition (N); Thinking (T) or Feeling (F); and Judging (J) or Perceiving (P).
These combine into a personality ‘type’, such as ESTJ or INFP, which is said to influence behavioural preferences.
Its appeal arguably lies in its seductive simplicity — the idea that everyone fits into one of 16 types. But that simplicity is also the source of scepticism, and many experienced users of psychometrics favour more nuanced trait-based assessments rather than rigid ‘type’ labels.
Today, most job applicants will have encountered a psychometric test at some stage. How much value an employer places on such assessments — and how they are used — remains a matter of judgement.
