How to handle psychometric tests

Such is the dilemma faced by anyone taking a psychometric test. Designed to probe the inner recesses of the mind, psychometrics consist of a barrage of questions ranging from the innocuous, 'Do you enjoy familiar food?' to the more intrusive, 'Do you like people to act in a close and personal way with you?'

Investment banks are keen to know the answers. Anna Barton, a senior consultant at OPP Limited, applied business psychologists, says she has various investment banking clients and that they test everybody from graduate trainees to senior staff. 'Banks are very interested in personality tests. They usually combine different types of personality assessment to increase the chance of getting a good picture,' she says.

Barton says different banks look for different results: 'Some are more laid back and easy going than others. This is reflected in the kinds of results they look for in tests.'

When investment banks use psychometric tests, it is usually for one of two purposes: selection or development. Andrew Pullman, head of human resources for capital markets at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London, says personality tests sometimes play a role in identifying candidates. However, Pullman says the bank mostly uses them as tools for boosting managers' self knowledge during management development courses.

Tests used to aid management development typically assess overall personality types. Most are based on the Myers Briggs type indicator, pioneered by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung. The Myers Briggs indicator works on the basis of sixteen personality types, which are gauged from questions about preferred ways of behaving. Individuals may be introvert or extrovert, judging or perceiving, thinking or feeling, for example.

Conversely, tests used to select candidates are usually trait based: they look for particular personality traits and attempt to quantify how much an individual has them. Under a trait based test, a candidate might be assessed on his or her degree of boldness, shrewdness, emotional stability, or radicalism.

Learning that you are an intuitive feeling extrovert during a management development course can be interesting. However, facing a trait best test during a selection process is a different matter. Not only is an employer asking you to bare your soul, but you are liable to be rejected as a result.

Rodney Warrenfeltz, managing partner of US based Hogan Assessment Systems, a provider used by several large US banks, says results to its 'personality inventory' can make or break career moves. 'Assessments are taken very seriously and can very well keep someone from getting a job', he warns.

Warrenfeltz says the personality inventory can identify potential 'leadership derailers.' These include over excitability, passive aggression, and a tendency to micromanage. Banks use the tests to help select candidates for promotion, says Warrenfeltz.

If personality tests can derail careers, it may seem a good idea to try and influence the results in order to appear as appealing as possible.

Test providers disagree. They say tests are best completed with minimal forethought. If this means betraying oneself as a lazy individualist unable to relate to other people, then so be it. Warrenfeltz says: 'Good tests will have faking scales built into them. When folks try to make themselves appear better than they really are, the scales will alert us to the fact that it is an invalid assessment.'

Precisely how faking scales work is a closely guarded secret among test providers. However, Mark Parkinson in his book, 'Psychometric Tests', says they ask respondents to answer true or false to statements such as, 'I have never been late for an appointment,' and 'I have never told a white lie.' Because everyone has been late or told a small lie at some time in their life, candidates who deny both are considered among the fakers.

Efforts to massage results may also be stymied by the sheer volume of questions. Many tests comprise 200 questions or more, each of which forces respondents to choose one of several answers. Selecting false responses in order to build a personality portrait that is both appealing and consistent is hard to do.

Warrenfeltz says: 'There are 600 questions. Sooner or later you are going to trip yourself up. - You just cannot hold that amount of information in your head. Don't try and outguess the inventory. The best way to do well is simply to be yourself.'

This does not make faking personality tests entirely impossible, however. Paul Babiak, an occupational psychologist working in New York, says psychometric tests are not immune to fakery by pathological liars. 'Traditional psychological tests are inadequate because individuals with psychopathic tendencies can easily defeat them,' he says.