26 July 2017 - Presentation at the 1st HR Forum of the year. Discovering the Myths and Realities of the psychometric assessment industry. Modern assessment techniques have added strong science to the previously rather intuitive process of selecting and hiring staff. This presentation shares what to expect and also what to look out for in this market.

1. Myths and Realities of
Psychometric Tests
Presented by:
Coen Welsh - M.A. (Ind. Psych)
Managing Consultant
Venue: Arebusch Travel Lodge
Date: 26/07/2017
Time: 7:30 for 8am

2. The Myth of Cupid & Psyche

3. Myth 1
Good quality
psychometric
tools must be
expensive.

4. Shedding some light…
• Psychometric tools are expensive
due to lack of competition.
• Who set the benchmark?
• Why do consumers accept this
benchmark?
• Cost as a measure of quality?

5. Myth 2
Being a dominant
test provider
means they are
the best.

6. Shedding some light…
• Dominance comes from being first.
• Not a guarantee of quality.

7. Myth 3
Psychometric
testing is a
transactional
service.

8. Shedding some light…
• Psychometric testing is
a strategic initiative.
• Use collected data to
model performance.

9. Myth 4
Psychometric testing is the
domain of psychologists
whose main interest is in
furthering the discipline of
psychology.

10. Shedding some light…
• Psychometric testing is too often
the domain of non-psychologist
business people interested solely
in making a profit.
• Test producers should provide
information on the psychometric
properties of their tests.

11. Myth 5
Good psychometric tests
are made by psychologists.

12. Shedding some light…
• Good psychometric tests are
made by psychometricians.

13. Myth 5
Internet based tests are
unsafe and the results
cannot be trusted

14. Shedding some light…
• Internet testing is convenient and has popular appeal.
• Item Banked and Adaptive Tests minimise risk
• Spiders, robots and crawlers
• Item Response Theory

15. Shedding some light…
7’000+ studies have compared the
results between online unproctored
and face-to-face proctored
assessment.
No significant differences.

16. Myth 6
People have a ‘work
personality’

17. Shedding some light…
• Work-personality negates the whole
concept of personality.
• Work is not itself a single construct.
• Meta-analysis suggest that a test which
provides a good measure of the ‘big five’
personality traits does predict
performance regardless of the setting.

18. Myth 7
Psychometric tools
should only be
interpreted by a
psychologist.

19. Shedding some light…
• Psychometric tools can be interpreted by anyone
who has had the relevant training.
• Psychometric tools are built to be interpreted in a
standardised way.

20. Myth 8
There needs to be an
additional charge for
reporting.

21. Shedding some light…
• You need only be charged once for testing.
• Test producers look at various means of
extracting additional money from client
organisations.
• Once the test data is inputted into a
scoring system, no additional time is
required for a report to be automatically
generated.

22. What do we know for sure?
• Smarter people are more likely to perform
well. (Schmidt, Oh & Schaffer, 2016)
• Those who work hard, are goal oriented,
and have an eye for detail tend to perform
well. (Barrick, Mount & Judge, 2001)
• Intuition alone (interviews) are not
sufficient. (Tomas Chamorro-Premusic, 2016)

23. Issues in the psychometric testing industry
• The market operates at a transactional
level.
• Consulting organisations are the keepers
of psychometric data = high cost, limited
access.
• Psychometric testing is being promoted as
a specialist activity, leading to high costs
and reduced uptake.

24. Issues in the psychometric testing industry
• Limited access to robust technical data to
support the claims by test promoters.
• Test users weren’t encouraged to do their
own sourcing of independent information,
and education was limited.
• The Internet and the growth of
commercialisation.