Advantages of Assessments

Advantages and Disadvantages of Psychometric Assessments

Advantages

• Psychometric assessments are a valuable selection tool to provide specific information on strengths and weaknesses or to back up information that was gathered in an interview
• Well-researched tests are fair, objective, valid, reliable and can discriminate between candidates
• Candidates' abilities, motivation and personality can be assessed, more specifically some cognitive and behavioral characteristics, that are difficult to explore during interviews, can be highlighted
• How a candidate would fit into the organisation's culture can be determined
• The cost of assessments are greatly outweighed when considering the cost of selection errors through a new employee not working out for reasons such as personality or performance
• There is the potential to improve the organisation's selection decisions and to also target development to enable good performers to continually improve
• Assessments can be used later in a person's career for career management, performance counseling or vocational suitability
• There is a wide range of psychometric assessments to choose from which assess ability, vocational suitability and personality for a variety of positions such as management, technical and sales
• Tests are performed and analysed professionally by an external organisation and the recruitment process can provide an ethical, objective and defensible view of an individual

Disadvantages

• Increased time for the selection process (but consider time saved in the long run by selecting a better candidate)
• Increased cost involved (but consider costs saved with a more valid selection decision)
• They may put candidates off (this is not generally the case)
• At times there may be conflicting information with the interviewing process as differing methods are used to obtain informationnAll references to recruitment consultants presuppose that a recruitment consultant has requested the assessment on behalf of one of their clients.