IAM Group Ltd Japan | The Importance of Psychological Testing Among Employees

The Importance of Psychological Testing Among Employees

When applying for a job, we sometimes think if it is necessary to take exams when we already have the right credentials to show to our employers and they are also doing background check on us. One of these exams is psychological test given to the employees either upon hiring or by schedule.IAM Group Limited has asked some of the best Human Resource companies to know the purpose and the real importance of psychological exams in hiring a person.

Psychological exams are conducted in companies for decades. This is to secure the intellectual and mental capacity of applicants and assure the workforce of the company. This is why most Human Resource Personnel are graduates of Psychology degree. We have even encountered some psychological test in Yokohama, Japan which a series of exams are conducted in an actual lab at least twice a year for its more or less a hundred employees.

Psychological tests as a selection technique have definite advantages over other methods of selection. They are less time-consuming and costly compared with interviews. They are more objective and have a lesser probability of biases, however unintended, creeping into the selection procedure. They also uncover talents and potentials which are not necessarily detected by other selection techniques.

However though, one common weakness of all psychological tests is that unlike the scales used in the measurement of such physical characteristics as height, weight etc. here we cannot use scales which have a known zero point and equal intervals. In a sense, there are also certain flaws in using this especially during recruitment.

Personality and interest tests suffer from one additional weakness. It is difficult in their case to obtain truthful answers from the applicant. An applicant's desire for a certain job may impel him to take certain interests or personality traits which he does not possess and which he feels may help to get the job. Even in the matter of proficiency tests they indicate only what a man should be able to do-they cannot measure what he will do.

In brief, tests alone are inaccurate predictors of job success. Tests are designed to supplement other screening methods, not to replace them. They are like a barometer which may provide an accurate measure of air pressure, but a prediction of future weather conditions based solely on this measure, may be relatively unreliable.

IAM Group Ltd. believes in the use of psychological exam in recruitment and in consistency during the duration of employment. However though, we cannot trust in this alone as we also believe that human assessment through interview is as important.

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