Employees are considered the backbone of any organization. Without them, an organization cannot achieve its goals. Choosing an appropriate candidate is like cracking a deal worth millions. Therefore, an organization has to undergo a great recruitment procedure that can reduce the time involved for searching the candidate, interviewing the candidate and its training.
Recruitment is a linkage activity bringing together those with jobs and those seeking jobs. Every organization, big or small has to engage in the recruitment of persons as recruitment provides the most productive of all resources viz. Employees to an organization.
Recruitment has two important aspects mainly:
- to find out the number of vacancies to be notified and the type of applicants needed to fill them
- to approach the potential applicants to apply for such vacancies.
There are a number of ways of recruiting an employee. These may be on the basis of seniority, former employees, present employees, advertisement, gate recruitment, etc. Recruitment of the right personnel at the right place is an important task for the organization to be accomplished. Also during this process, a pool of talent is gathered under one roof.
Well, once when the candidate is selected, he has to undergo a specific selection process which involves his adequate screening whether he is suitable for the job or not. Hence, there are various psychometric tests being performed to evaluate the dexterity of the candidate.
Psychometric tests are considered to be proficient as long as if it delivers the same results over time, ensures repetitive administration and validity. Both proficiency and validity should go hand in hand. If a test is not proficient, it may not be valid as well. Psychometric tests are conducted by the employers to assess the Intelligence, personality, and skills of an individual. Also, they help to evaluate the potentiality of an individual for working with others, coping up with the stress level of the job, processing information, etc.
Though, these tests are not a unique concept to the employers. Hence, it started in the early ’20s. Moreover, the first Intelligence test was introduced by Alfred Binet in 1905. These tests prove to be an authentic mark of good futuristic job performance. Psychometric tests include mainly three forms of tests.
The first form of tests involves Personality tests. These tests assemble information about the personnel to display personality traits such as behavior, thoughts, feelings, emotions, etc. They are successfully designed to determine the performance level of the individual at work, relationships with peers at the workplace, task management skills, motivation, etc.
The structure of the organization may be divided into teams or members of a particular team may be affected by their peers or co-workers. The leader of the team would guide the team, motivate all the members and thus encourage everyone for interaction and respond so as to entail the best out of them. The personnel characterized by the negative personality traits would have a harmful impact on the performance of the team.
Employers recognize that many aspects such as education, experience, the intelligence level of an individual are not sufficient while hiring an employee or manager. But also the personality characteristics play a major role. Therefore, Personality tests help to determine the personnel being fit or unfit according to the work environment of the organization.
The second form of tests includes the skills test which is mostly exercised testing technique. It helps the employer to evaluate how quickly the candidate can grasp a new skill to effectively carry out the assigned task. During the skills test the candidate might be asked to perform a task which will exhibit his potential for the concerned job. Skills tests help to gauge and assess the personnel’s personality type, the skills and the area of his expertise which would help to view a clear picture of whether the person is prolific for the organizational culture.
Also, with the advancement in technology, the ideology of pen and paper are slowly getting dispensable. Online examination tests are becoming the future of education globally. The combination of reliability, security, and scalability makes it likely desirable. Most of the organizations invest their time in recruiting and selection of the personnel through online tests.
The third and most important form of testis the aptitude test. Aptitude and intelligence quotient are somehow related to each other. Intelligent Quotient refers to a range of mental abilities whereas on the other hand Aptitude Discloses the remarkable abilities and provides with the strengths and weaknesses of an individual. Also, they are a way for employers to gauge the candidate’s aptness through a variety of testing formats. It basically involves numeric skills, problem-solving tasks, and prioritization. They include
- Diagrammatic Reasoning: they test the efficiency of logic reasoning through flowcharts and diagrams.
- Numerical Reasoning: they test the mathematical efficiency by averages, percentages, etc.
- Verbal Reasoning: they test the ability to determine verbal logistics.
- Abstract Reasoning: these tests are similar to Intelligence Quotient tests which help to evaluate general knowledge of an individual and their ability to utilize the knowledge in different situations.
- Situational Judgment: these tests help to determine the problem-solving ability.
- Logic Reasoning: these tests help in testing the individual’s ability for recognizing patterns, sequences, and relationships between imagery and the shapes.
- Inductive Reasoning: these test the efficiency to see patterns and analyze the data in a stressful environment.
- Error Checking: these tests assess the individual’s attention and their potential to identify errors in the data sets and also to assess the information correctness.
- Concentration tests: these tests determine the ability of an individual to perform various tasks in a quick and accurate manner within the given time frame.
Conclusion
Hence, an individual has to be interested in a particular thing to be motivated to perform it well. Various tests by the organizations help to hire personnel who are not only intelligent but also competent, confident, reliable and have all the qualities which would contribute to the achievement of organizational goals.
Recruiting the right person can bring wonders whereas the wrong choice of personnel would eventually lead to the downfall of the organization.
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