How does a behavioural test give you an all-round assessment?

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Most companies around the world who want to build up on growth use a wide range of tests to help them develop employees, build high performing individuals and teams and help them arrive at decisions. With so many tests around, how does a person choose which test to administer? Every test has a different use and some uses speak to an organization. When it does, the organization can make use of that test.

The benefits of bringing testing into a workplace environment, whether for team development, recruitment, personal relationship, includes:

  1. Providing an objective, external view of the individual that is not tainted or made better by the perspective of the manager or boss or by the culture of the organization.
  2. These tests help individuals to learn about each other and themselves by providing them information in a new light. When you get a tailored information like this, you get to see where your career is progressing and by how much and you find the motivation to push through. It also gives you the opportunity to set targets based on the kind of performance you give to the company.
  3. To identify and fit in the right individual with right jobs so that the kind of training needs one requires and their appropriate skills can be placed together.
  4. Teamwork can be established by assessing which individuals can work productively and harmoniously together.

Before you delve into a testing method you need to analyse a few points. The first being what exactly does your organization or you, hope to gain from the testing. The second being, what is the kind of advice and information you want to get that will help you in building up the development process of the organization and it’s recruitment procedure. The third being, how will the HR, the trainers, line managers and consultants use the information provided.

Why are psychometric tests different from behavioural tests?

A lot of the tests out there claim that they cover both personality and behaviour but in reality, these two are very different so rather than grabbing this opportunity of two tests in one, find out what exactly the test will be measuring so that the testing process does not yield inaccurate results.

A behavioural test does not have any Psychometric properties. There is a vast diversity of factors that affect and influence the way we behave and our personality is one such factor. Other factors include things like values and motivation, abilities and skills, external influences and experiences. While someone’s personality is not immediately visible to people, their behaviour is. Behaviour is kind of an outward projection/manifestation of the given factors acting on people and working together.

What a psychometric test does isthat it provides results that only focus on the personality of an individual and the traits of the personality. You must bear in mind that an individual’s personality is just one of the factors for maintaining his behaviour. Therefore, this is not the most useful form of feedback for the organization in question. What is more advantageous is to get practical advice and results based on a 360 degree review which especially focuses on the work environment and its setting.

What is exactly a psychometric test?

There are numerous tests out there that focus on the personality aspect of the individual. Aspects of an individual’s personality like introversion, extroversion, feeling and thinking are also measured and are considered relatively fixed. All the personality aspects are decided after a range of questions. There is no particular 360 degree analysis of the individual. This makes this test pretty much two dimensional and the outcome is as good as the knowledge the individual has about himself.

The question an employer must ask is that, does the outcome of a psychometric test place a great deal of emphasis on and gauges the entirety of an individual’s performance at the workplace? Is it that important to know whether an employee is an extrovert or introvert or is it more important to see how a particular staff member contributes and gives his all to a work environment? Without a shade of doubt, for any successful company, the latter is more useful.The personality is a very important factor but only one of the factors that affects an individual’s behaviour.

What is a behavioural test?

A behavioural test sees your propensities towards a particular lifestyle, the way you interact with others etc. It doesn’t just measure your personality traits but a whole lot of other things. Behaviour is more flexible and more changeable than personality because we tend to adapt our behaviour in changing situations depending on what is required of us in a particular role or situation.

Behaviour can be observed. This simply means that our behaviour is affected by and affects the people around us. This makes the entire process of adapting and understanding our actions a very democratic one. This is because we don’t tell people that something is wrong with their personalities but we do tell them that something is wrong with their behaviour.

Behaviour is that one aspect of humans that determine how people see them. It determines all their interactions. It makes a person likeable or not likeable. A person who has a bad behaviour is more likely to be not hired than someone who has good behaviour. This test helps in seeing through the behaviour people put across versus the behaviour that is inherently present in them so that there are no surprises once the employee starts working. It makes employers sees the true potential and inherent characteristics present in the employee.

Last but not the least, behavioural tests provide an opportunity to give constructive feedback which directly informs a person assessing an individual as to how he or she functions in the workplace. The personality of an individual is not likely to change, so to get an organization to be more functional and effective, employers need to put more effort on the points where changes can be made- i.e. the behaviour.

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