The Benefits of Psychometric Testing for Marketing Hires

Struggling to find talented hires that align with your organisation? Or perhaps you’ve made promising hires only to notice they fall flat on the job? You’ve come to the right place. It can be challenging to gauge a candidate’s true qualities solely through resumes or interviews.

That’s where psychometric tests come in. Integrating psychometric testing into the recruitment process is a complete game-changer. These assessments provide you with invaluable insights into candidates’ abilities, personality traits, and cultural fit – beyond what it says on their resume.

This provides you with the crucial information needed to evaluate a candidate’s potential success within your organisation, considering not just their skills and experience but also their mindset, personality, and aspirations.

If you want to find the most talented individuals in the field who will stay long-term and make a real impact, these assessments are a must. In this article, we’re going to delve into what a psychometric test is, the various types of psychometric tests available and the benefits they offer during the hiring process. 

What is Psychometric Testing in Recruitment?

Let’s get straight to it: what are psychometric tests and what do they have to do with recruitment? Psychometric tests are assessments designed to analyse a candidate’s competency, skills and overall reasoning, providing insights into their intelligence, abilities, potential, and general characteristics.

Employers use these tests to gain a deeper understanding of applicants’ suitability for a job, as well as the company as a whole. The assessments often come in the format of self-report questionnaires and performance ability tests.

However, there are various types of psychometric tests tailored to analyse different aspects of a candidate.  Key areas of assessment include logical skills, problem-solving abilities, numerical data analysis, and factual interpretation. 

By evaluating these fundamental areas, you gain valuable insights into a candidate’s thought processes, attitudes and behaviours that would otherwise remain unknown. This enables you to discover top-tier talent who will succeed in your company and seamlessly align with its values.

Types of Psychometric Tests in Recruitment

Now you’re clear on what psychometric testing is, let’s move on to the versions on offer. With a fair few options to choose from, you might be wondering where to begin with incorporating these assessments into your hiring process. Explore the different types of psychometric testing used in recruitment below to uncover the perfect match for your needs and supercharge your recruitment stage.

Personality Tests

Personality tests are one of the most common psychometric tests for jobs. These aim to gain an understanding of the applicant’s characteristic variables such as their motivations, values, weaknesses, strengths, communication preferences and leadership potential. 

By identifying these traits, personality psychometric tests indicate how candidates will behave within the workplace. This allows you to make an informed decision about whether they are a good fit for the role and the business. 

Popular examples of personality psychometric tests include the DISC assessment test and the Myers-Briggs Personality Test.

Aptitude Tests

Otherwise known as ability tests, this option identifies cognitive capabilities by assessing critical thinking and numerical, verbal, thinking and logical skills. The purpose of this type of psychometric test is to evaluate a candidate’s potential to acquire certain skills or knowledge.

Numerical Skills Tests

Numerical skills tests consist of mathematical assessments. This type of psychometric test may be relevant to you if you are hiring for roles in niche areas of marketing that require candidates to be talented in this specific area, such as marketing managers or sales executives.

9 Benefits of Psychometric Testing for Marketing Hires

With various psychometric test options swirling in your mind, it’s time to explore their benefits. Let’s dive into the advantages they offer for marketing hires.

1. Recruitment Process Efficiency

Including a psychometric test in marketing recruitment can be a highly effective way to streamline the hiring process. You can screen applicants for specific traits and skills that you are looking for from new employees. 

You can save time by narrowing the talent pool to those with the particular aptitudes and behavioural traits you’re looking for. Doing this before the interview stage can be an especially effective way to boost the efficiency of the recruitment process.

Many digital marketing psychometric tests are readily available online. This makes evaluating responses a breeze as the answers are easy to access and analyse.

2. Selection Objectivity and Fairness

Another of the key benefits of psychometric testing is its ability to foster selection objectivity and fairness. By incorporating a well-researched assessment you bring structure to the selection process, promoting increased fairness and transparency.

In situations where companies solely rely on unstructured interviews without psychometric testing, assessments, deductions, and decisions can be swayed by subjective opinions and assumptions.  This can lead to high-performing applicants missing out on the role due to prejudice and human error. 

You do not get this bias in psychometric testing. Instead, candidates are evaluated based on a standardised set of parameters, which ensures equal opportunities as all candidates are measured on the same scale.

3. Cultural Fit Assessment

Using psychometric testing for marketing hires allows you to delve beyond technical skills and access and gain a nuanced understanding of a candidate’s alignment with the organisation’s culture. This includes values, work ethics, and interpersonal dynamics within the marketing team. 

By evaluating cultural fit, organisations can ensure a harmonious integration of new hires, promoting a positive work environment that enhances collaboration and overall team effectiveness. This holistic approach to cultural alignment contributes significantly to employee satisfaction, retention, and the overall success of the company.

4. Tailored Skill Evaluation

Another of the key advantages of psychometric testing is that it provides a sophisticated means of evaluating a candidate’s marketing skills as you can tailor assessments to test for skills that specifically align with the skills demanded in the marketing field. From communication and strategic thinking to analytical prowess and adaptability, these assessments can effectively identify candidates who exemplify the specific skills required for the role.

By pinpointing specific strengths and areas for improvement, employers gain valuable insights into a candidate’s potential contributions to marketing campaigns, market research, and brand development. This tailored approach not only informs hiring decisions but also facilitates targeted professional development. 

It also ensures that marketing teams are staffed with individuals possessing the precise skill set required for the industry, along with additional talents or areas for development that could benefit the business.

5. Improved Team Dynamics

Psychometric testing plays a crucial role in building effective marketing teams by uncovering individual strengths, communication styles, and collaborative tendencies. With this insight, organisations can purposefully assemble teams that bring together diverse skills and personalities, creating a dynamic and creative workplace. 

By understanding how team members work best together, leaders can improve collaboration, assign tasks strategically, and foster an environment that appreciates each member’s unique contributions. This focused approach enhances overall team efficiency, promotes innovation, and equips the team to navigate complex marketing challenges with greater success.

6. Enhanced Employee Engagement and Job Satisfaction

Psychometric testing significantly contributes to increased employee engagement and job satisfaction among new hires. These assessments delve into candidates’ unique strengths, motivations, preferences, and personality traits.

This provides organisations with vital information about what drives each applicant. Consequently, psychometric tests arm companies with crucial insights that enable them to select candidates whose own personal abilities, motivations and interests align seamlessly with the demands of the role.

Moreover, when there’s flexibility within the company, organisations can leverage this information to strategically place new hires in positions based on their personal interests and preferences. Consequently, companies can ensure that employees find themselves in roles that resonate with them on a personal level.

This targeted approach goes a long way in enhancing job satisfaction, as employees feel more fulfilled and passionate about their roles. This heightened satisfaction, in turn, has a positive impact on engagement and motivation levels, prompting employees to work more diligently and become committed, valuable members of the team.

7. Identification of Leadership Potential

Another reason why companies use psychometric testing is that it can be extremely helpful for identifying leadership potential.  Personality tests can be particularly useful for this. They can discern qualities like decisiveness, resilience, and compassion in applicants. 

In doing so, psychometric tests can highlight candidates who embody the desirable traits for effective leadership. This process assists in securing hires with the potential to advance within the company as needed.

It ensures a strategic alignment between sought-after leadership qualities and the selected candidates, thereby nurturing a leadership pipeline that contributes to the organisation’s long-term success.

8. Continuous Development Opportunities

The advantages of psychometric assessments extend beyond hiring, providing practical insights for ongoing professional growth. As the tests identify strengths and weaknesses, they pinpoint key areas to work on and to make the most of. 

This information enables you to fine-tune and tailor training, mentorship, and career plans to help candidates succeed in the most effective way possible. This will not only propel individual careers but elevate the success of your marketing company as a whole.

9. Boost Retention

Reports show that the cost of a bad hire is about three times higher than the salary paid. So, you’re best equipping yourself with as much relevant information as possible to make informed decisions when taking on new team members.

Psychometric testing provides insights into applicants’ intelligence, strengths and potential shortfalls, all of which can indicate the likelihood of them succeeding in a role. Additionally, these assessments provide a glimpse into candidates’ personalities and values, helping you assess whether they are likely to feel passionate and fulfilled in the role and the organisation.

When employees feel satisfied and successful in their roles, they are more likely to stay with the company for the long term. Therefore, having psychometric tests in place to ensure the right fit from the start can significantly contribute to higher retention rates.

How to Implement Psychometric Testing for Recruitment

Now you know the advantages of psychometric testing in recruitment, you may be wondering how to integrate these assessments into your hiring process. 

Firstly, you should identify what your priorities are. For example, if you’re seeking a psychometric test for a marketing manager role, you may wish to include a personality assessment to identify leadership qualities. 

Once you have decided which tests you want to include, the next stage is to integrate them into the recruitment process at the stage you think will be most beneficial. This may be during the initial screening so you can streamline numbers before the interviews.

Or, you may wish to implement them as a final stage in the recruitment process to make it easier to decide between the strongest applicants. Whenever you decide to implement it, ensure that candidates are informed that it will be part of the process and how the results will be used. 

Do not forget to train any members of the team who will be evaluating the responses to the tests. Ensuring they know how to interpret the answers correctly not only results in more accurate deductions but also ensures a fair and accurate evaluation of candidates.

That being said, one of the easiest and most beneficial ways to embed psychometric testing into the hiring process for marketing companies is by hiring a sector-specific recruitment specialist such as The Marketists. We are experts in identifying qualities and traits that help businesses find the top candidates for positions within the industry. 

Summary

As you can see, integrating psychometric testing can take the recruitment process to new heights in a way that benefits both new hires and the company. From boosting retention to improving team dynamics, the advantages are undeniable. We hope that reading this article has shown you how valuable psychometric testing can be and how you can integrate it into your hiring process to achieve exceptional results.

Expanding your business and trying to attract high-performing applicants? The Marketsits is a specialist marketing recruitment business that can help you find the most suitable candidates for the role. Contact us to hear more about our services or check out our other articles to learn more.