Can you practice for psychometric tests?

Some personal characteristics, such as team-working skills, reasoning ability and personal empathy, are difficult to assess at interview, and employers have found that psychometric testing can be a more reliable indicator.

Today it’s estimated that around 75% of medium to large organisations, and 95% of FTSE Top 100 companies, use tests or questionnaires during the recruitment process. Psychometrics, such as personality questionnaires and 360-degree (multi-rater) feedback systems, are also playing a growing part in graduate recruitment and management and leadership development.

So a psychometric test could well be used in the sales job recruitment process to assess your abilities, aptitude and personality alongside more subjective parts of the process such as interviews and presentations.
Psychometric tests are thought to minimise recruitment bias on the basis of gender, race and disability and may also allow the interview to be tailored for the individual. So although many people wonder what the point is, and why they should be tested, it’s worth remembering that these tests can make the recruitment process fairer to both the employer and the applicant.

What will you be tested on?

Personality tests

These assess your typical behaviour when presented with different situations and your preferred way of doing things. They examine how likely you are to fit into the role and company culture. Assessors may match your responses with those of a sample of successful managers or graduate recruits. Employers look for people with certain characteristics for particular jobs. For a sales role they may want someone who is very forward, sociable, and persuasive.

In the case of personality tests, it’s best not to try to second guess what you think the employer wants to see. There are no right or wrong answers, and personality questionnaires are careful to assess consistency in responses. If you’re right for the job and the employer is right for you, you’ll do fine. If the job and employer isn’t looking for people with your personality, you’ll make a lucky escape.

Ability/aptitude tests

These are designed to assess the skills/knowledge you possess that are important for the job and come in many forms. With technical jobs, they might involve specialist questioning or practical testing. You would probably be told beforehand if this kind of test were to be conducted, so you can prepare by:

• Finding out what you will be tested on
• Revising it
• Looking at sample questions
• Doing practice tests

Some aptitude tests may assess your potential to learn rather than testing specific skills. These are usually multiple-choice questionnaires, with definite right and wrong answers, and your work is generally timed. The most common types of aptitude tests include:

• Numerical tests, which test your mental agility and how quickly you understand numbers. It may be worth reminding yourself of times tables, percentages, fractions and long multiplication. You may be asked to complete a sequence of numbers, state the largest fraction or interpret date tables.

• Verbal tests, which may assess how you respond to written text. For example, you may be presented with a paragraph of text and asked to interpret the information.

• Non-verbal reasoning tests, which assess how well you follow diagrammatic information or spot patterns. Can check spatial awareness. Diagrammatic or abstract reasoning tests are sometimes described as inductive reasoning tests.

• Logical reasoning, which usually involves spotting patterns. Practice reading complicated texts about subjects you do not understand. Practice extracting the main points from passages of information and summarizing their meaning.

Tips on the making the most of tests

• Be yourself, as you don’t know exactly what qualities the interviewers are looking for. They may be looking for a variety of different personalities rather than just one profile. Personality questionnaires usually contain checks to test whether or not you are being consistent, so try to answer as honestly as you can.
• Read the instructions carefully.
• Put down the answers that immediately spring to mind, rather than spending time pondering their meaning.
• Do not worry about your answers. Your interview and CV also provide important information about you, so your tests results will not represent the be all and end all.
• As there are no ‘correct’ answers as such in personality tests, you can’t revise for them. However, to ensure you don’t suffer from last minute nerves, you can undertake some practice questionnaires ahead of your interview, which are available free-of-charge from many websites.
• The test may have some practice questions at the start. Make sure you understand these thoroughly before the test itself begins and, if you do not, ask the administrator to explain them.
• If you have a disability and require special provisions, you should contact the employer in advance.
• If you get stuck on a question, move on to the next one. However, do not abandon a question prematurely, if with a few extra seconds you might have solved it.
• If you change your answer, make sure your final choice is clear.
• Don’t waste time checking each answer thoroughly until you are absolutely convinced it is right.
• If you are not sure of an answer, put down your best guess and move on. However, avoid wild guessing – especially if marks are taken off for wrong answers.

How to prepare

• There are ways to have a ‘practice run’ of all types of psychometric and personality tests. Visit specialist online sites where you can find practice tests – for verbal, numerical, inductive reasoning, accuracy and motivation tests. Here are a few which offer free tests for you to try.

• http://www.shldirect.com/practice_tests.html
• http://www.practiceaptitudetests.com/
• http://www.psychometricinstitute.co.uk/Free-Aptitude-Tests.asp

The final piece of advice is to get a good night’s sleep the evening before the test. Plan to arrive in good time, with a positive frame of mind.

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