So you have prepared, completed the practice questions, had a good night’s sleep, arrived at the test centre early or done the assessment in the peace of your own home. Now what happens next?
Many companies do not proactively offer feedback to candidates on their psychometric assessment results, so you will generally have to ask for feedback yourself, once a decision has been made. A brief telephone appointment is often a very good way to make it easy for a busy recruiting manager to have a useful conversation with you about your application.
As candidates, we often move onto other things and forget or don’t feel able to ask for feedback on our results. Sometimes we ask for feedback and receive a computer generated report that is difficult to navigate or understand.
Here’s some advice to help you understand and get the most out of your Psychometric Assessment results.
Understanding automated reports
Have a conversation with a trained practitioner about your report so they can provide you with an informed summary of the key messages of the report and how they related to the ultimate decision made about your application.
Interpreting ability test results
Ability test results are typically provided as percentile scores. These are created by your overall score in the test being compared and ranked against a comparison group. Typically the comparison group is made of people with a similar educational and occupational level to the target job allowing recruiting managers to get a sense of how quick and accurate you are compared to your peers.
The percentile score gives an indication of the percentage of people in the comparison group you scored better than. For example if your score what at the 56th percentile, this would indicate you scored better than 56% of the comparison group. Overall percentile scores give an indication of your overall performance in the exercise and, in some assessments, are supplemented by scores that look at speed (how quickly you answered questions compared to the comparison group), accuracy (the percentage of questions you attempted that were correct), caution (the amount of time you spent reviewing or checking answers compared to your peers).
Questions to ask about your ability test results
■ How did my results benchmark against the comparison group?
■ What levels of performance where you looking for in each exercise?
■ What comparison group did you use to benchmark my performance?
■ How much did the results in this exercise influence your overall decision?
■ Is there anything I could have done to improve my performance in this area?
Interpreting personality profile results
As assessments of preference rather than ability, personality profile scores generally provide an indication of how likely you are, compared to a reference group, to prefer to demonstrate the behaviours being measured. These preferences provide a general indication of your habits of behaviour, so are used in recruitment as an indicator of how you are likely to behave in each area at work.
While reports provided can be rather definite in their language, it’s important to review these in the context of such things being regular behaviours, rather than the way you always are. Also, try to take the rough with the smooth, if you see a comment you disagree with be honest with yourself, are there times when you don’t behave as effectively as you could? Why is that and is it related to any of the comments about preferences that are significantly higher or lower than your peers in certain areas?
Questions to ask in personality profiling feedback
■ What areas of my profile did not fit with your requirements and why?
■ What aspects of my results suggest I wouldn’t fit with your business/department?
■ Are there any areas you recommend I focus my future development activities on in order make me suitable for such a role in the future?
■ What did you identify as my likely strengths?
Receiving solid feedback from your assessment means you can be well prepared for future assessments and highlight areas of development you may need to work on.