Online psychometrics hints and tips
Depending upon your selection process and whether you undertake an Individual Leadership Assessment (ILA) or Alternative Leadership Assessment (ALA) you may be asked to complete two to five of the following assessments (generally a maximum of three personality questionnaires and two aptitude tests). All tests are robust, valid, appropriately rated by the British Psychological Society and licensed in the UK.
It is important that you allow sufficient time to complete these assessments as they need to be reviewed by the psychologist before your assessment interview slot. If you have any difficulties with the timeframe for completion please keep your contact point informed so that they can support you with this as much as possible whilst enabling the department to keep the recruitment programme to schedule.
Personality assessments
For the personality questionnaires (FiroB, NEO, WAVE, HDS – further details below), these are untimed and generally require you to tick the extent to which you agree or disagree that a behaviour is like you. Specific instructions will be provided to you before you start the assessment.
In general, our advice is:
- Check which end of the scale (if appropriate) is agree and which disagree as these may differ across the assessments.
- Don’t overthink your responses or agonise.
- Go with your gut or initial reaction.
- It’s natural to think “they are all like me” or “none of them are my preference”, that is part of the test design.
- Work quickly through the assessment (each should take a maximum of 30 minutes, most less than this).
- Do not try to second guess the assessment, they are sophisticated technical tools that have ways of flagging inconsistency in responses.
- Conversely, do not worry if you feel you have been inconsistent, if you have answered honestly it is likely that the questionnaire will reflect this.
- There is no right or wrong personality, only different approaches and styles and the interview will enable you to expand on your responses.
- Also bear in mind that these questionnaires should help you find out if this is the right role for you as much as they find the right candidate for the role.
- You will get some, limited, feedback on your assessments in the interview with the assessor, do take notes if you wish.
- Ideally do these in one sitting, undisturbed, or at least each test in one sitting, although with some of the personality questionnaires there may be an option to pause or save.
- Some questionnaires will require you to press a “submit” button at the end before it is registered as complete – please watch out for this.
Aptitude or Ability tests
If you are completing an ILA and in some instances for an ALA you may be asked to complete aptitude or ability tests – usually of numerical reasoning and verbal reasoning. These will be online tests via a testing platform.
These are not tests of knowledge, but rather tests of aptitude to learn or reason in the given subject. Therefore knowledge in these areas is not necessary but if you are unfamiliar with them we strongly recommend you complete practice tests before you do them.
These are tests of maximum capability to it is very important you give them your full attention and complete them as quickly as possible to get a result that reflects your aptitude.
We would recommend:
- We strongly recommend you complete practice tests in advance. This increases familiarity with the testing process and will help you to know what to expect. There are a variety of practice tests that can be found online. One site that should be helpful is the SAVILLE practice tests.
- Please let your contact know as soon as possible and before you start the test if you require any adjustments.
- The test platforms do comply to accessibility standards but if you have any problems or concerns please get in touch with your contact point.
- Please ensure you are undisturbed for the duration of the test – lock the door and switch off the phone. These are tests of maximum capability and short distractions can impact your results.
- For numerical reasoning tests have a calculator and pen and paper to hand. If using a phone calculator switch off the screen lock so that you do not waste time unlocking.
- Do not panic if you do not finish or do not finish a section, you will not be the only person to do this and the test will be looking at how you perform compared to your comparison group (usually Managers and Professionals).
- Do not despair if you do not feel you did well on the test. Firstly you may have done better than you think, secondly these tests are just one part of the ILA (or ALA) and that is also just one part of the overall recruitment process. They are not a hurdle or barrier.