Benefits of Psych Tests in Human Resource Management

PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING: HR PERSPECTIVE Psychological testing is a field characterized by the use of samples of behavior in order to assess psychologicalconstruct such as cognitive and emotional functioning, about a given individual. Itinvolves the integration of information from multiple sources, such as tests of normal and abnormalpersonality, tests of ability or intelligence, tests of interests or attitudes and so on. These Psychological tests assist the HR manager in planning and making placement decisions, diagnosing andevaluating the overall personality of the individuals and facilitate them for a better future.It uses multiple assessment techniques to evaluate employees for a variety of manpower purposes and decisions. It focuses on providing information on the individuals current and potential competence to perform a jobsuccessfully.It squarely focuses on the behavior that an individual demonstrates and should ideally demonstrate. It helps elicit personal and capability information and data on people to help make more informed decisions andencourages greater objectivity in decisions pertaining particularly to career, potential and succession planning. It enables in effectively and efficiently hiring new, smarter recruits given the war for talent.A psychological testing in context to HR consists of a standardized evaluation of behavior based on multiple inputsobtained through tools & techniques.It helps in recruitment and selection, talent retention, turnover reduction and performance management.
A companys Human Resource department is responsible for the hiring and evaluation of competent personnel. This function ensures having the best people doing their job with utmost quality. To achieve this goal, there are various assessment tools especially designed to make

human resource selection and evaluation more comprehensive and reasonable for applicants, employees, and the management. Psychological tests provide very reliable and wide-ranging aspects of human assessment. These materials are readily available through testing centers and even through online assessment centers. Psych tests, as these are more popularly known, are developed by teams of experts. These include psychologists, psychiatrists, HR experts, management supervisors, and online programmers (for user-friendly internet-based tests). The latest psych tests employ a scoring system based on artificial intelligence or A.I. This system provides accurate scoring and comprehensive analysis while requiring a short period of time for evaluation. Psych Tests for Accurate Employee Evaluation Psych tests serve as standardized tests done to accurately determine and assess the psychological profiles of employees. Companies hold regular testing of their employees, from the assessment of their technical skills, personality, communication skills, and intelligent quotient. Psych tests, however, dig deeper into the individual characteristics of employees, providing the company with ample information about the emotional and mental stability of a staff, thus determining his or her capability to deliver the required work according to the companys standard. Today, there are online psych tests that greatly aid companies in managing vast databases of human resource. Psych Tests to Improve Job Performance Studies have been made to find out the efficiency of conduction psych tests to boost the performance of a companys employees. A study done by some professors of the University of Toronto and Harvard University shows that the use of psychological testing can be put to further advantage. While the testing of personality and intelligence has been proven to be effective in evaluating the knowledge and skills of employees, these tests can also be done to improve the output of the workers. New psychological testing techniques have been developed to build up a bigger pool of potential managers and executives. Psych Tests to Enhance Employee Turnover Psychological tests provide companies the advantage of having a lower rate of employee turnover. Job hunting is initially seen to be more of a challenge to an applicant. However, this also poses an important responsibility to any company. Just as companies want to hire the most promising individuals, they would also prefer to keep competent employees on board for a long time. Psychological tests have been developed to help companies retain the most productive employees. These tests look into the details of the individual personalities and characteristics that serve as important factors in the employees psychological and professional satisfaction. These psych tests evaluate the employees regard for work environment, work arrangements, and occupational requirements. It also looks into the employees attitude towards changes imposed in the organization. Data from these tests are used to develop a reward system, and ultimately maintain a team of loyal employees

Psychologists explore human behaviour with a focus on perception, cognition, emotion, personality, behaviour, and interpersonal relationships. Psychology encompasses all aspects of human behaviour, using tested theoretical frameworks to examine, explain and predict what we do as individuals and groups. This double degree has a highly practical component, applying psychological knowledge via professional practice units. Youll be provided an introduction to all major areas of knowledge and applications in psychology, as well as written and oral communication in health sciences. Youll undertake practical work to gain experience in interviewing and conducting and reporting on research exercises. A degree in commerce provides students with a foundation of knowledge, insights and abilities required of managers in a wide range of sectors, industries and functions. Human resource management is a dynamic and evolving area related to the management of people with organisations. A double major in human resource management and industrial relations will provide you with a career in an area releated to the management of people within organisations. It also involves activities related to employment relationships. Youll explore the functional areas of strategy and planning, attraction and retention, learning and development and develop the knowledge and personal skills and techniques required to operate in global business world.

In this double degree, you'll be provided an introduction to all major areas of knowledge in psychology, computer literacy, elementary research methods and statistics for health sciences. Youll undertake practical fieldwork to gain experience in interviewing and reporting on research exercises. Combined with the human resource management component, this unique degree provides you the opportunity to explore theoretical and practical knowledge and research skills required for your career in psychology and human resource management. Psychological testing helps hiring managers and executives do a better job of hiring key people. Prevues employee psychological testing measures you how well a person may fit in a given company and can help determine if an applicant has what it takes to be successful. Financially psychological test affect the bottom line of any company that uses them by preventing expensive bad hires. There is no better growth strategy than using Prevue psychological tests to hire and develop the best people. Prevues psychological screening is proven to assist companies in hiring and developing productive employees. Prevue measures 3 key areas psychometric test used for hiring: General Abilities, Motivation and Interests and overall Personality. Individuals psychological profile scores are mapped against a Job Profile (benchmark) for determining suitability. Once a job candidate completes one of Prevue psychometric tests the company will receive hiring reports to conduct interviews and determine individuals Job Fit

Introduction
Organizational Psychology is a subject which applies the principles of psychology into one of the most important areas of people's life - work. Specifically, we work with the human aspects of the workplace and aim at improving people's efficiency, and hence organizational effectiveness, through our knowledge about human functioning.

There exist a group of professionals who share a similar aim and are working closely with us, the human resource professionals. Despite the close relationship with HR professionals, Organizational Psychologists are distinctive professionals. Unfortunately, there is always some confusion among the general public that people just cannot tell who is who. More importantly, even some HR professionals do not know what we are doing and what can we offer them. When we tell them we are Psychologists, a frequent reply is "but we don't have any mental problems"! As Organizational Psychologists, we work with a wide range of domains that are related to people's everyday work life. We design work activities, schedules and workplaces; we design reward principles that are based on human motivation theories; we develop training principles and train the trainers; we develop selection procedures and tools; we formulate performance appraisal systems; and we advise on organizational development issues as well as career development decisions. As you may recognise, our work reaches every working individual on the planet and our working field is very closely related with the work of HR professionals. Although there are quite a few overlapping areas between Organizational Psychology and Human Resource Management (HRM), there are fundamental differences between us. The first and perhaps the most obvious difference between us is the knowledge foundation. As psychologists, we base our work heavily on science. All work has to be backed up by scientific evidence and statistics is always in our toolbox. In contrast, HRM is essentially a business study which emphasizes more on the practical side, with less focus on the scientific side. Moreover, in addition to working on overlapping areas, we work on different levels. Organizational Psychologists focus more on the design and development of procedures, tools and principles while HR professionals work more on the operational level, such as implementation of selection systems and applying training principles in real training scenarios. The discrepancy between the knowledgebase of Organizational Psychologists and HR professionals has been documented in academic journals. For example Sally Carless and colleagues pointed out that although there are important advancements in HR-related research, the everyday HR practice have benefited from it to a minimum level. They found that this is due to the lack of knowledge among HR professionals, especially when the training of the HR professionals emphasizes on general skill and knowledge in favour of science. In contrast, the training of Organizational Psychologists is built upon the scientist-practitioner model which emphasizes on both research and practical skills and stipulates that practice must be supported by scientific evidence.

Another reason may lie in the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) requirement. As Organizational Psychologists, CPD is a statutory condition for registration and this helps them to keep updated with the latest developments in the field. However there is no such requirement for HR professionals. Carless's study confirmed that Organizational Psychologists are experts in the field, especially in the area of selection and the authors articulated that "scientific integrity is a key differentiating feature of I/O (Organizational) psychologists."
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Having closely related working areas, our work is actually complementary to each other. Without Organizational Psychologists in the design and development work of various HR processes and tools, the HR professional would not be enjoying these scientific and highly effective products. On the other hand, without the help of HR professionals we could never apply our work to such a broad range of people. Moreover, our relationship is much more complex and interactive than one might be aware of. Besides the above mentioned supplier-user relationship, HR professionals are also partners, advisors and sometimes suppliers for Organizational Psychologists. HR professionals are our partners in projects where we provide them with the technical skills and knowledge while they take care of the operational part. Furthermore, HR professionals are experts of their company; therefore we work side by side during consulting jobs where we need them to assist us with internal matters as well as providing us with an insider view. More importantly, as HR professionals are frequent users of our services and products, we rely a lot on their opinions and requests in developing our products and services. They are also providers of valuable data and participants for us to carry out scientific studies (e.g. validation of assessment tools). All in all, we are inter-dependent parties with entwined relationships rather than independent parties or competitors. Being Organizational Psychologists, what can we offer to HR professionals? A lot. With the

expertise in assessing human characteristics and knowledge about human performance, we are experts in selection. Based on the understanding about the requirements of the job as well as the characteristics needed for any particular position, we can come up with an ideal person profile that the organization is looking for. Then we can design, or choose among proper tools that accurately measure the required characteristics, knowledge and skills. According to research these procedures enable us to create the best selection system which predicts future performance of the employed staff. One should not be surprised that the best selection tools like psychometric tests, assessment centres, and structured interviews as well as standardized selection procedures are all designed and developed by Organizational Psychologists. Another contribution of the organizational psychology profession to the HR field is in training. A brief look at the training market reveals that it is flooded with many training courses and providers. Obviously their quality varies and some of them do not even know what they are talking about! Our own company has undertaken work for clients who have come to us after being dissatisfied with trainers who appear to have simply taken some information from the internet to put together a training session without any real understanding of the subject matter! As Organizational Psychologists we are working hard to turn around this situation. We are experts in training design; some understand how people learn and how people learn the best! In designing and delivering training courses, scientific human learning theories and training principles are followed, but not just by gut feelings or experience only. Factors like transfer of learning, specific needs of the organization and maintenance of learning are all fully considered. Besides selection and training, Organizational Psychologists also offer various consultancy and advisory services to HR professionals. The range of work can be as small as reviewing a performance appraisal check list or an assessment centre exercise to as big as designing a tailored selection system. On top of that, we can also go into the organization to diagnose the roots of problems and solve them accordingly, using our scientific approach and advanced knowledge about mechanisms and dynamics within the workplace. However, as mentioned at the beginning of this article, one big obstacle we face is the lack of knowledge about our profession within the HR profession (particularly in Asia), as well as the public in general. The implication is that we often face questions like "what is organizational psychology?", "what is the difference between Organizational Psychologists and HR consultants?" and even "why do I need to employ scientific tools and procedures?" It can be hard work explaining all this to prospective clients! Another related problem is people always think we are very expensive!

But the fact is all the products and services we offer are based on scientific research which means they have undergone lengthy and sophisticated processes of development and the cost of all these are huge. By employing our scientific tools and principles the benefit is long lasting and continuously contributing to the performance of the organization, and these are all documented in the scientific literature. Another hidden obstacle for us in Asia is caused by the organizational hierarchy. Very often, the first contact point between our clients and ourselves are assistants of HR professionals who have minimal understanding of what we are talking about. When they do not understand they just cannot relay our message precisely to their manager. The result is obviously that the management level does not receive our message and the name of Organizational Psychology just remains unheard no matter how hard we try! As Organizational Psychologists, we see a real need to educate the public, and more importantly, HR professionals about the subject of Organizational Psychology so that the fruit of science can be returned to them. There are major overlapping work areas between Organizational Psychologists and HR professionals such as selection, training, career development and performance management, but we work on different levels and perspectives thus our relationship is actually collaborative rather than competitive. Organizational Psychologists can offer help to HR professionals in various areas such as training design, development of selection systems, supervising performance management processes and many more. Nevertheless Organizational Psychologists in Asia face obstacles as the subject is relatively unheard of among HR professionals and communication is often blocked by organizational hierarchy. Therefore one very important task for us as Organizational Psychologist is to promote this subject so that people know what we can offer and make use of our expertise! We are sure that with the growing popularity of the subject, HR professionals, and other related professionals like career counsellors and coaches, will benefit highly from Organizational Psychology

PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING: HR PERSPECTIVE

The Psychological testing is a field characterized by the use of samples of behavior in order to assess psychological construct such as cognitive and emotional functioning, about a given individual. Psychological testing is a process that involves the integration of information from multiple sources, such as tests of normal and abnormal personality, tests of ability or intelligence, tests of interests or attitudes and so on.The Psychological testing assists us in placement decisions, treatment planning, diagnosing and evaluating the overall personality of the individuals and facilitates them for a better future.

A psychological testing in context to HR helps us in a procedure that uses multiple assessment techniques to evaluate employees for a variety of manpower purposes and decisions. It focuses on providing information on the individuals current and potential competence to perform a job successfully. It squarely focusses on the behavior that an individual demonstrates and should ideally demonstrate. It helps elicit personal and capability information and data on people to help make more informed decisions and encourages greater objectivity in decisions pertaining particularly to career, potential and succession planning. It enables to effectively and efficiently hire new, smarter recruits given the war for talent. A psychological testing in context to HR consists of a standardized evaluation of behavior based on multiple inputs obtained through tools & techniques. It helps in recruitment and selection, retain talent and reduce turnover and performance management. RELEVANCE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING IN HR Reviewing the effectiveness of attracting and retaining top talent with the help of psychological testing.

To give insights into the process of aligning human resources with the need to develop capability and chart out the differences between the superior and average performers of an organization including identifying and developing technical, managerial, business, functional and behavioral competencies of an employee in reference to psychological testing. To analyze and develop the managerial competencies with respect to industry demands. The psychological tests are used in different aspects to measure the overall personality of the individual. The tests include IQ test, EQ Test, Attitude, aptitude, stress, anxiety, and personality tests. Relevance of these tests - Attitude test helps in assessing an individual's feelings about an event, person, or object. Attitude scales are used in marketing to determine individual (and group) preferences for brands, or items. It will help in judging the attitude of the employee towards organization and job satisfaction. The IQ test acts as a measure of intelligence and achievement tests measure the use and development of an ability. The intelligence test assists HR professionals in predicting the performance of an individual in virtually any job.

Next, the responses of an individual are compared with the evaluations made by successful employees in the relevant position. These measures may prove to be highly valuable tools for predicting team playing or other interpersonal skills. Psychological measures of personality are used for assessing the inner personality of the individual as TAT and sentence completion test. These tests help in evaluating the inner traits that predicts future perspective of the employee. It also measures conscientiousness, openness to experiences, how extrovert a person is, emotional stability, agreeableness, integrity, predicting teamwork, responsibility, and integrity on the job. Stress test is a form of test that is used to determine the stability of a given system or entity. It involves testing beyond normal operational capacity, often to a breaking point, in order to observe the results. Anxiety test helps us to measure the psychological condition in which a person experiences distress before, during, or after a test or other assessment to such an extent that this anxiety causes poor performance or interferes with normal learning. The role of psychological testing plays a vital role in the organization which helps the company in right selection and retaining the employee thus building the long term relationship with the organization and enhances organization effectiveness.