Employing new staff can be very expensive for organisations. 

To help reduce this costs, many companies now will use psychological testing to ensure that employees are suitable before they hire them. They may also use testing right at the start of the recruitment process to remove applicants straight away who are not suitable.  Imagine 100 people apply for a job and one of the main criteria is that the person must have a great attention to detail.  A question is asked in the psychological test right at the start of the application process and 50 of those 100 are immediately “weeded out” as not suitable.  You are then left with 50 to interview. 

The initial psychological test may be done online when the person first applies. This reduces the time the recruiter wastes answering potential job applicants, as the person is immediately informed whether or not they can move on to the next stage of the recruitment process.
The recruiter may then look at their applications and remove other applicants as not suitable. They may not have the right work experience or qualifications.  This may bring the list down to 20 people, who the recruiter may then interview.

The interview process may bring the amount down to five people. At this stage, the recruiter may ask for another psychological test to see who is the best person for the job.  This can help them to make a decision. As we have said, psychological tests are not the only way to recruit, but they can help the recruitment process.
What we have discussed here is just an example. High level jobs may have more psychological tests and a longer recruitment process than we have mentioned here.

But why use psychological tests in recruitment? The main reason is to help recruiters to make informed decisions when hiring new staff.  They may consult companies or people who specialise in the tests and aim to keep the tests as unbiased as possible.  The tests can help to determine if the job applicant has the right skills or personality for the job. Can they work well in stressful conditions? Can they work to tight deadlines? Are they friendly? Are they patient? Etc

Psychological tests can also help to retain staff.  By making sure the person is the right one for the job before they start, this makes sure they have the potential to do the job well.
It also means that the potential employee has had to invest time and effort to complete the tests, apply for the job and so on, so they have invested more in the job than someone who simply sends in their resume/CV for a job.

We have to be aware that no psychological test is completely reliable or valid.  One test is often not enough and a battery of tests is more useful.  However, psychological tests are likely to be more objective than convention recruitment methods where a person has an interview.  A person who performs well at interview and the interviewers like may well get the job, but that does not mean that they will actually be good at the job. Psychological tests will give the interviewers an unbiased idea about the person beforehand on whether they are suitable or not. People put on a “good face” in interviews and may answer the way they think the interviewer wants them to, but this does not mean that they would actually be good at the job. This goes back to social desirability again.

Say a potential recruit goes for an interview. They are asked how they would perform in a certain stressful situation. They have time to think about it and come up with a good answer.

In the psychological testing, they may be asked various questions about how they perform when stressed.  For example, questions such as –

What do you do when you are stressed?

The person may be more honest here and put that when they are stressed they like to relax with a glass of wine.

Or questions such as Do you often become irritated when waiting in a queue?
Might show a person is patient or not so patient.

Using the psychological test and the information from the interview, we can get a better overall picture of the person.

Psychological tests can be expensive and may require trained assessors. This has to be balanced against the costs of interviewing lots of people or trawling through lots of application letters.  

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