Using psychometric testing to assess culture fit

The pandemic has left us with greater employee flexibility where hybrid and remote working has become a permanent arrangement for many. This is great news with businesses focusing on growth and building back stronger. To grow your business successfully you need to get the culture right – which means recruiting the right people in the first place to make that happen. Could psychometric testing help you?

This is easier said than done. During interview it’s not easy or straightforward to work out how well a candidate will fit in with your team and culture. Someone might have been a high performer in their previous company. But, if they aren’t aligned with your values and behaviours in your team and business, there’s no guarantee they’ll be as successful when they come to work for you. Employers want to avoid bringing someone into their company, only to realise they’ve made a costly mistake.

So how can you find out if new employees would be a good fit?

Your business needs someone who’s going to thrive in your environment, and the applicant needs to fit in comfortably to be happy and able to do their best work.

This is where psychometric testing plays a really valuable role. The tests quickly helping a company get useful insights into an applicant’s behavioural style. This helps you get a feel for how that style might impact on their working relationships and performance in your team. The tests can give information about behavioural traits, leadership styles and motivation. They’ll indicate how candidates might differ in the way they respond to particular situations, and how they are likely to interact with other people in their working environment.

There are some limitations to the tests and we don’t recommend you use them in isolation to make a recruitment decision. While these types of tests will help you get a more informed view about a candidate’s suitability for a role, they should form part of your wider recruitment process. Don’t use them as ability tests, they simply reveal preferences towards certain types of behaviour styles.

Psychometric tests can provide some really useful information to use in combination with other stages of your recruitment process. In an interview, we all know it’s not always easy to get a true feel for what someone’s personality is like. But use the psychometric testing profile to guide questioning and the conversation during the interview, and it can help open up lots of areas for discussion.

Do the tests impact on diversity?

We’re often asked if psychometric testing for cultural fit can negatively affect equality and diversity efforts. After all, if you restrict yourself to looking for a particular “type”, your company could miss out on some great talent, and do a major disservice to candidates who could have gone on to do the role really well. If the profiles aren’t used correctly, it could have an impact, so it’s important that the tests are assessed properly and not assessed against a highly prescriptive list where candidates have to be a very close match.

If used properly we find that psychometric tests can contribute towards greater diversity. The tests can help you understand more about how your candidate could potentially add to and complement your existing mix of people in your team, They can even help take the culture in a new direction that you’re aspiring towards. They’ll encourage you to think in terms of the overall blend of styles and what somebody could add, and help you avoid unconscious bias. It can help you stop appointing an individual because they “feel” right as they’re similar to the rest of the team.

What are the other benefits of psychometric tests beyond recruitment?

Psychometric tests don’t only have to be used at the point of recruitment though. They can also be highly effective tools to use for the development of your existing employees, providing insights that create a greater understanding of dynamics, motivations and working styles, and improving engagement by using the feedback to build stronger relationships and encourage better communication. You can use the information to assist with identifying progression opportunities and internal promotions too.

Need help with psychometric tests for your company?

Using psychometric tests can add a great deal to the recruitment process, helping you find the right person in terms of working styles and values. As part of our Employer Solutions, we can provide psychometric testing and pre-employment testing service to help screen and filter to assess suitable candidates. Get in touch to find out more about how we can help you attract talent and plan your recruitment strategy.