I wrote this article seven years ago for HR Director and I’ve updated it.
While Republic is good at getting people short-listed for jobs, there’s not much we can do when employers force candidates to sit these ‘voodoo’ tests.
They are proof that sections of modern organisational life are drifting back in to the Dark Ages.
In Australia, about 45 percent of recruiters and employers ask job applicants to sit psychometric tests. The tests are insulting, invalid, unreliable and a waste of time and money.
Applicants are made to tick boxes and manipulate three dimensional objects in space, to divine their ability to perform X, Y or Z or to assert their ‘cultural fit’ within an organisation.
Recruiters promise much with tests that involve verbal reasoning, numerical skills, comprehension and grammar, spatial reasoning, information processing, problem solving and IQ.
Of the 5000 aptitude and ability tests currently on the market, only a handful have been shown to have any internal validity. That is, the questions are logically framed so they elicit the right sort of information.
There are myriad problems with the aptitude and reasoning tests but one of the most serious is the tenuous link between the test and the competency being assessed.
It’s like going to a supermarket and asking for a specific aptitude test in ‘clerical administration’ and being given the ‘one size fits all’ supervisor’s test. You’ll get some sort of test result but it won’t measure what you want.
In many cases, the tests are marked by the recruiters themselves, who have little or no training in the assessment of psychological tests.
It’s like sitting a university exam and having the administration officer grade your paper, rather than a professor.