How to choose the right psychometric assessment

Getting the right people in the right roles is critical to gearing people and organisations for success. Our psychometric solutions provide New Zealand and global organisations with the objective data and insights needed to build confidence and back-up in critical selection decisions. But how do you choose the right psychometric assessment for your needs?

The history of psychometrics can be traced back to Charles Darwin and the publication of The Origin of the Species in 1859. Darwin’s work inspired Sir Francis Galton, a scientist often referred to as "the father of psychometrics,"

Galton’s book Hereditary Genius described different characteristics that people possess and how those characteristics make some more "fit" than others. The first psychometric tests were designed to measure intelligence but since then the field has evolved to measure a range of specific aptitudes or skills that add value in the workplace.  

At Added Insight we offer a range of psychometric assessment options that deliver modern, contemporary measures of personality and leadership such as intellectual curiosity, resilience, adaptability and agile mindsets.  

We do psychometrics differently from most other providers who tend to use one core personality profile. Relying on one personality assessment means the reporting does most of the heavy lifting. It assesses different competencies using different lenses on the results. The challenge with doing it this way is there's so much information in the report that much of the meaning and impact gets lost. People don’t know what to focus on and it becomes a box-ticking exercise rather than a process that delivers real value.  

We believe there’s a better way to do psychometrics. Our philosophy is to keep things as simple and straightforward as possible. The goal is to deliver as much meaning and actionable insights to our clients as possible.  

To do this, we offer six different types of psychometric assessments, five that focus on Personality/Style and a variety of Reasoning Ability assessments. The reason we do it this way is so clients can focus on the most relevant traits for different roles in their organisation. Our psychometrics are used by organisations for ongoing development of their people and as part of the recruitment process.

Added Insight Assessments

Typically people know they want some type of psychometric assessments, but they don't always know exactly what they want. We assess what they need and recommend assessments that are aligned to their specific needs. For example: What traits are most critical for them to measure? What's the level of the role?

We can tailor the assessments on the basis of job and organisation specific information to ensure the best evaluation of critical job criteria.

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1. InSite Business Mindset

The Business Mindset is a unique, multifaceted and statistically valid measure of business acumen, highly relevant for roles where a strong commercial focus is required such as running a business, or business unit.  

This is our flagship assessment and is unique in the market. It is focused on the fundamentals of business. Most psychometrics focus on personality, interpersonal and thinking style but business acumen is a critical skill for successful leaders and successful businesses that is often overlooking in the assessment process.  

It helps identify leaders who:

• Can identify economic drivers and help position the business to make money;​
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• Can clearly articulate strategic priorities and link to individual and team objectives;​
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• Are socially astute, anticipating and addressing stakeholder needs and objections;​
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• Have the curiosity, adaptability and confidence to challenge thinking and articulate possibilities​;
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• Are capable, energised and confident in the world of business​.

‍The Business Mindset is typically paired with the Leadership Insight assessment to give a well rounded view of leadership style and approach, as well as their business acumen.

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2. InSite Leadership Insight

The Leadership Insight Questionnaire is a personality measure applicable to many work scenarios and roles where leadership is important. As applicable to self-leadership as it is to people leadership, the Leadership Insight assessment measures 19 traits across 4 key factors:

• Leadership/Motivational Style
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• Thinking Style
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• Interpersonal Style
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• Resilience

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‍‍‍3. InSite Sales Success

A robust, research driven questionnaire specifically designed and proven to predict strong sales performers.  The Sales Success Questionnaire measures 21 traits across 5 core aspects of sales roles and sales leadership:

• Solution Seller
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• Relationship Seller
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• Resilient Seller
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• Competitive Seller
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• Leadership & Development

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4. InSite Customer Service & Sales

This is designed to identify candidates who possess the traits required for successful customer service or sales through service. The Customer Service & Sales assessment measures 19 traits across 4 key factors:

• Customer Service
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• Sales
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• Work Delivery Style
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• Resilience

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5. InSite Customer Service Insight

A personality measure applicable to roles where excellence in customer service and customer experience are critical. The Customer Service Insight questionnaire measures traits in 4 key areas:

• Customer Service
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• Solution Orientation
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• Work Delivery Style
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• Resilience

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6. Reasoning Ability Assessments

Our Reasoning Ability Assessments include Verbal, Numeric, Abstract, Reasoning across General, Critical and Executive Reasoning levels. We recommend using all three aspects of reasoning ability verbal, numeric, and abstract to provide a robust measure of General Mental Ability (GMA), which is the single strongest predictor of performance across a range of job roles.

We also offer a range of other assessments including: Hogan, Psytech, Saville,. Raven's Progressive Matrices, and Watson Glaser Critical Thinking.

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What you get when you work with us

1. Expert guidance and Advice from Organisational Psychologists for embedding psychometrics for impact e.g. scores interpreted against role requirements rather than blanket good/bad evaluation.
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2. Complimentary hiring manager briefing to gain further insights on key results.
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3. Strong focus on candidate care. We see ourselves as an extension of our client’s brand in the market. The experience their candidates have with us reflects on them as an organisation and as an employer.
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4. Supervised assessments with face to face or online assessment supervision.
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5. Feedback for candidates. We put our candidates at ease by talking them through what to expect. We make sure they know what they're doing and support them through the assessment. Our feedback process is very thorough and aimed to deliver value to the candidate.

“Receiving feedback based on the answers given helped a lot to understand my strengths and shortcomings and my area of focus. Extremely professional but at the same time a very friendly conversation.”

“I appreciated the person to person feedback session and the opportunity to agree or disagree and discuss what came out of the tests. Communication throughout was on point and efficient.”
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1. Robust yet simple reporting to drive meaningful insights and impact with flexible report options aligned with role and budget requirements.
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2. Utilise assessment results to support your People Analytics strategy.  Map psychometric results to performance metrics for demonstrated value. Identify key candidate trends and insights. Use our analytics as an overall Quality of Hire measure. Leave the hard work to us. We can gather performance insights from your hiring managers and run the analysis to identify performance impacts, candidate trends and outcomes.
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3. Professional development. We can train and accredit your internal team to deliver and interpret our assessments.