Evaluate the strength and weaknesses of psychometric testing within employee selection as a tool of workforce management?

Authors Avatar

 BEHAVIOURAL SCIENCE  

                                ESSAY

Evaluate the strength and weaknesses of psychometric testing within employee selection as a tool of workforce management?

NAME: Sabiha Jeebhai

STUDENT NO:

COURSE: Business Administration

YEAR: 1

COURSECODE:  

Evaluate the strength and weaknesses of psychometric testing within employee selection as a tool of workforce management?

Work organisations consist of different types of people working together in the same environment, thus a certain level of understanding needs to be maintained in order to deal with different people. This will help improve the management of people in a workplace, and allow employees to communicate with each other and carry out jobs efficiently. Thus organisations need to consider carefully when selecting workers during recruitment, as personalities and attitudes of individuals effect the working environment. Various types of procedures are used when selecting employees, interviews have previously been a common way of recruiting staff. This can be supported by Robertson et al who found that in UK 80% of companies used interviews (Arnold et al, 1998 p169). However recently psychometric testing has increased in popularity and has been recognised as an efficient tool for all round assessment. The testing is used for selecting employees as well as monitoring employees in a workplace. The icon recruitment have estimated that at least 55% of BRW’s top 100 companies use psychometric assessment as part of their recruitment and selection methodologies (Daily Telegraph 2003 p63) which shows its popularity and effectiveness.

Psychometric testing carried out in workplaces often concentrate on the individuals personality, thus the test are based on the personality features rather than cognitive aspects. It can be argued that although psychometric tests are used widely and has become common in organisations, to a certain extent it can be criticised. The aim of this essay is to focus on this method of assessment used in workplaces and assess the procedure in terms of its strength and weaknesses.

Join now!

This method of testing can bring many advantages to organisations and employers, it is often commonly stated that this type of testing can to a certain extent produce a good degree of accurate information about an individuals personality and how they are likely to behave at work. This will allow employers to understand and relate to the workers as there is a common understanding and positive perception. The information collected helps determine an individual’s suitability for employment and provides a useful amount of quantitative data therefore allowing comparisons on set criteria.

According to (Mckenna, 2000 p171-3) these ...

This is a preview of the whole essay