Several enterprises are yet to discover the key ingredient for effective talent acquisition amidst fierce competition. Recruitment is a time-consuming process that involves identifying appropriate applicants, conducting interviews, evaluating their abilities and determining their suitability for the company.
It’s evident that a considerable number of businesses globally (more than 40% of them) opt to delegate their talent acquisition requirements to specialized agencies. For those managing their recruitment in-house, they must either maintain a permanent team of recruiters or risk overwhelming their Human Resources unit.
Choosing the right personnel is a daunting task during the process. Regrettably, some unethical entrepreneurs try to exploit the situation by peddling kits, techniques, and “shortcuts” that are either futile or nonsensical.
Through thorough research, one may discover that tarot reading is a successful method of talent assessment, alongside voice recognition software, polygraphs, body language interpretation, and psychological testing.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a well-known psychological assessment tool that has garnered criticism for its dubious psychometric properties and low reliability in predicting job performance. Despite these shortcomings, it still holds a significant place as one of the most frequently used methods for gauging a candidate’s character.
The field of evaluating intangible traits is known as psychometrics.
At the beginning of the 20th century, British psychologist Charles Spearman made a fascinating observation regarding academic scores. He noticed that students who excelled in one subject often displayed a matching level of achievement in other areas.
Against the popular belief that hard work leads to high grades, Spearman employed component analysis, a statistical method, to reveal an “underlying construct” behind his observations. This “underlying construct” is now referred to as “Intelligence”.
In summary, Spearman is acknowledged as the pioneer of the fields of psychometrics (the study of measuring psychological variables) and differential psychology (the psychology field devoted to identifying dissimilarities between people and forecasting the implications of such differences).
Historically, the primary focus of both differential psychology and psychometrics was intelligence and personality. However, these fields have now broadened to encompass numerous other psychological factors.
Examining psychological constructs can be difficult as we can only deduce their presence by observing people’s actions. We cannot discern ‘intelligence’ directly, but we can evaluate the consequences of an individual’s decisions and attribute a portion of the outcome to the concept of ‘intelligence,’ as demonstrated in Spearman’s analysis of students’ GPAs.
It’s feasible to appraise the significance of a concept by analyzing people’s conduct; however, like any scientific inquiry, the assessments employed to carry out such evaluations must be accurately calibrated. This process is known as psychological validation. Validating psychological tests can be time-consuming, sometimes extending to years, and depending on cultural variations, must be repeated when exporting the test to a new population.
Studies demonstrate that both Intelligence Quotient (IQ) and Emotional Quotient (EQ) are robust predictors of future success in both academics and the workplace. Individuals who attain high scores on such measures are also likely to excel in other areas of their lives, such as at school and in their professions. Would you say that investing time in them is worthwhile?
The Big Five personality testing model has indicated that certain personality traits can be indicative of success in certain industries, such as sales. Although I advocate for psychometric testing, it should not be regarded as the definitive approach for identifying and recruiting the best talent. Although there is some corroboration, the information is not adequately comprehensive to arrive at any certain conclusions.
Incorporating personality and intelligence tests, such as the Sternberg Triarchic Ability Examination (S-TAT), in conjunction with other forms of evaluation can offer an illuminating perspective on a candidate’s analytical abilities, adaptability and innovation before the interview phase. The S-TAT has undergone rigorous study and has displayed encouraging outcomes.
What an ideal collaboration between AI and psychometrics!
Businesses nowadays confront a unique challenge compared to the situation two or three decades earlier, owing to factors such as the swelling number of job applicants and the globalization of the industry. Finding the perfect candidate for a job was once a complex task; however, today, various individuals are exhibiting their online profiles on multiple platforms.
Works‘ Staffing Hero, powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and utilizing an advanced algorithm to identify the most suitable skill sets for the client’s needs, is helping businesses to locate and recruit the best engineering team from a database of more than one million technology experts. Customers simply have to select their desired criteria, and the offering will handle the rest.
Not long ago, AI-driven technology seemed like a concept pulled straight from a dystopian novel. However, we currently inhabit a world where AI is prevalent, although it necessitates additional advancements. We cannot disregard the reality that AI is enhancing processes in ways that we never imagined possible.
Empirical psychology has shown sustained interest in psychometrics for a while, but there has been some reluctance to integrate artificial intelligence into the discipline, even though some of the most prevalent cognitive models derive from computer science.
The progress of digital technology is bringing about a novel dawn of psychometry. Psychologists have struggled for an extended period to obtain an adequate sample size to evolve their models. However, this is becoming increasingly attainable with expanded access to examinees for test validation and integration with big data.
Psychometric evaluations have the potential to exert a substantial influence on predictive AI. Differential analysis first emerged in the US military, where it served to appraise if job applicants were suitable for specific roles. Nowadays, the discipline has developed to yield an array of evaluations, with the goal of measuring every facet of human conduct.
Numerous companies have relied on psychometric evaluations to evaluate prospective employees in the past, yet only a few have preserved the required data to train Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. Without this data, a considerable amount of groundwork has to be undertaken before we can incorporate psychological traits into algorithms.
Nevertheless, there is cause for encouragement…
In my view, the future of psychometrics entails the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and gamification, and software developers stand to gain much by deploying the meticulous methodologies of psychology and psychometrics. Additionally, a growing number of psychologists are contemplating the data scientist role, while software developers are recognizing the benefits of having psychologists as consultants on their teams.
While a valid psychometric tool may be harmful for a company, it is a litmus test for authenticity, as emphasized by Dr. Knight Craig.
