Over the past two decades there has been a vast increase in the use of psychological instruments in recruitment and selection processes. Such tools can be extremely helpful, providing rich information for employers. However, they need to be used with care. Choice can be the creative spark in organisational life. In this article, Peter Lawson examines the nature of such instruments, and discusses how they are selected, and how to use them skilfully and sensitively.

There is a rather sombre Spanish proverb which says: ‘Choose what you will and pay for it.’ We make our choices and we know, although we may not accept it, that our choices have to be paid for. We enjoy the benefits of right choices and suffer the penalties of poor choices. Making choices is a serious, yet potentially uplifting business – and the outcomes of our choices have untold repercussions for ourselves and others.

Choice is the very essence of human existence. One writer has asserted that: ‘The art of living is, in its essential meaning, a development and transformation of the power of inward choice. It is of all the creative arts the most difficult and the most distinguished. Its products are fashioned in the workshop of the soul.’ ²

The rationality of the social scientist may suggest that our choices are constrained by our biographies. The ‘accident’ of our birth will confer class, status, race, religion and education upon us. This biographic inheritance, it is argued, will constrain our choices and limit our life chances. The intuition of the artist however tells us that although our role may be assigned to us by the ‘Great Producer’ we can choose to write the script. The musical form may be supplied but the symphony can be our own creation.

Choice is a gift and should we care to accept it we, in some way, take on the attributes of our own personal Gods. The gift of choice makes possible the exercise of that creative spark in ourselves which is accompanied by the awesome potential of creation. In accepting the gift of choice we experience the price of choice – consciousness, self-awareness and self-judgement which lead to the possibility of transformation.

The sense of this discussion thus far has been about how the individual choices we exercise determine the creativity or destruction of our own lives. However, it is not so simple as this. We populate personal, professional and other social communities in which the choices of individuals set up a warp and weft of interesting and interacting possibilities.

Choice in professional communities is problematic. If individual choices can make or break us or other members of our personal communities, it follows that the potential implications of professional choices are much wider. Not only are the outcomes for individuals at stake but also the outcomes for organisations in which they work. The pressure to make the ‘right’ choices is immense as organisations struggle with the competitive realities of their environments.

It is arguable that the most critical choices that are made in the professional sphere are those concerned with people. Clearly it is important that managers choose to spend their capital investment wisely. Ultimately, however it is their choices about people – recruitment, retention and development decisions, which will influence how well the capital investment decisions operate in practice. This will have a critical impact on overall business performance.

Whilst we have noted that living is an art, it cannot be a wholly creative process. In the professional sphere when choices about people are being made, the creative and intuitive have their place, but there is also an objective element which is essential in this creative act. Real creativity comes in maintaining the balance between the subjective and the objective element. These days, fortunately, there is more sophisticated help at hand in gathering data on the objective elements.

To a certain degree there has always been objective evidence about people and their performance: interview summaries; CVs; performance appraisal and assessment evidence have long been brought to bear on people decisions. However in recent years the use, complexity and sophistication of technologies such as psychometric tests have increased significantly. Such instruments need to be selected and used with care.

Selecting and using psychometric instruments
The first task is the careful selection and use of psychometric instruments. Firstly users need to satisfy themselves that the instruments used are going to collect data which relates to the qualities and characteristics which are desired. Once such an instrument is located it must be administered with skill and the data gathered interpreted correctly. The ethical and best practice use of psychometric instruments is being given more and more consideration by both professional bodies and also the publishers of tests and instruments. ³

Range of instruments
The range and type of psychometric instruments which are available fall into three categories. In the first category are instruments which collect data about assessing specific abilities or personality. It should be noted that personality in this context usually refers to personality at work. Specific ability tests can, for example, provide data on spatial perception and numeracy. Tests of more general mental ability are available such as those providing information about an individual’s ability to reason analytically or to think critically. The third group of instruments available are general personality questionnaires which gather data about specific aspects of personality such as values, preferred interests, learning, leadership and subordinate styles and also team role preferences.

Making choices
The first key choice to be made is to ensure that the psychometric information gathered is relevant to the choices being made. For example, if you were recruiting, collecting data which does not relate to what represents good performance in the recruitment posts may be informative and interesting but fundamentally irrelevant.

Thus the first questions to be answered are:

• What qualities and/or characteristics correlate with desired performance?
• What valid tests are available to identify and assess the desired qualities?

So, having decided what is required in terms of qualities or characteristics, you can begin to make choices about which instruments are more valid than others. To check out the validity the following framework, as used by occupational psychologists, is a useful guide.

Checking out the validity

Face validity refers to how valid the test appears to respondents in relation to the content of specific roles or jobs. Content validity refers to the extent the factors which are measured by the instrument are relevant to the work under consideration. In this case job content and instrument content will need to be analysed and matched to ensure that the instrument outputs will provide data which is relevant to the job content.
Empirical validity refers to the extent to which a particular instrument has been shown in practice to predict job suitability or the achievement of certain levels of performance. These can be divided into two groups: predictive and concurrent validity.
Predictive validity is based on actual evidence of the performance of employees in post in order to ascertain the extent to which their performance in practice was predicted by their test results. The importance of predictive validity is clearly paramount where test results are being used as part of a selection process.
Concurrent validity establishes the relationship between test results of current employees and their performance. This form of validity is based on data which is obtained simultaneously – test results and some measure related to performance. This measure is regarded as a less reliable predictor of the relationship between test or questionnaire outcomes and performance at work. Another issue to consider when selecting a test or questionnaire for use is the presence of bias in the tests which discriminates on, for example, grounds of gender or race.

Skilful use of psychometrics
Gathering psychometric data requires careful planning. It is important that psychometric tests are not used as the sole guide; the data and its interpretation should provide part of the recruitment process, not act as the process itself. The psychometric data itself should add richness and texture to the recruitment process, but be interpreted along with other factors. Skilful and sensitive use, for example, of individual measures on personality scales can provide the basis for a dialogue which illuminates the basic information already available from the tests. For example, very often people are aware of aspects of their personality which may show up on the tests, but compensate for these aspects in their behaviour. To this extent, people are more complex and more
competent than the basic information would suggest. It is quite possible that
the following dialogue could take place in the recruitment interview.

‘Yes I agree that I am not naturally particularly confident socially but in a work
situation through development, practice and taking risks I am able to be very effective.’

‘I have a preference for working on my own but I know this is not always the best way to get things done; working alone isn’t always feasible or effective. I know that if I want to achieve long term effects I need to work closely with people therefore I am much more inclusive in reality.’

It is clear from the above examples that, for example, the use of psychometrics is also relevant to development and assessment processes. However, as such processes are time consuming and therefore can be costly, it is vital that they are well planned. The above examples provide a moving reminder to each of us to have the courage to be open to that creative spark in ourselves which leaves us with the option to make choices and thus to exercise the awesome potential of choice. Selection processes must be designed to allow the time and space for this dialogue to take place – if not employers are likely to miss out on creative and innovative employees, who have enough self-awareness
of their own personality to shape it to the needs of the organisation.

For further information, please contact : emer.gruselle@erconsultants.co.uk

¹ From the Hebrew saying ‘Man was created for the sake of choice’ quoted in Wickes, F.G., Coventure Limited, 1977
² See footnote 1 above
³ See, for example, the publications of the British Psychological Society – Steering Committee on Test Standards; also see the range of best practice guidelines published by Saville & Holdsworth