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Traditionally, one of the main steps in the Executive Search recruitment process are in-person interviews. Companies would rarely make business-critical hires without meeting candidates, and they’d often fly top talent across the world to discuss roles and opportunities. 

But then Covid struck and things changed.

Now, millions of interviews for Executive roles (C-Suite, VP, or Director) are taking place over Skype, Zoom, or Teams. People are hired remotely, and even on-boarded from their home office (or dining room table). 

In fact many company founders have never even met their executive level hires in person.

During the pandemic, companies like Twitter, Google, and Morgan Stanley announced employees could work from home indefinitely. They began hiring remotely too. Ben Crudo, CEO of Diff Agency recently wrote in forbes.com; 

“We’ve been fortunate enough to grow our team by nearly 10% since Covid-19 hit, and the process of hiring remotely has been eye-opening. Everything from recruiting to interviewing to on-boarding looks and functions very differently at a distance.”

It’s now common for recruiters to discuss executive level roles on video chat, and it’s increasingly uncommon for companies to fly people across the world for interviews.

And one of the ways they’re making up for the lack of this interaction is through psychometric testing.

Gut-feel is increasingly being removed from the final selection through processes like scorecarding and blind shortlists. But companies still want to be sure that hires at this level will definitely be the right ones.

Companies are hyper-aware they only see the best side of people in interviews, and that even face-to-face, they’re not getting a full overview of candidates.

Most of the top Fortune 500 companies have used psychometric testing for years. The aptitude tests remove the uncertainty of hiring based just on what the candidate reveals, and give hiring managers a deeper view of their capabilities.

How does Psychometric Testing work?

There are various types of tests. From workplace personality, to aptitude, and personal profile analysis.

Candidates answer a series of questions that provide insight into how well they’ll fit into your company culture, how they respond to certain situations, and how they deal with stress. They can even help identify leadership qualities.

These tests reveal how that candidate can be best supported at work, helping them perform to maximum potential.

This sounds a bit too good to be true… What are the negatives?

While most psychometric tests come with guides for interpreting results, they can be subjective.

The in-house team needs to be trained on the tests — and if they aren’t, there’s a good chance they could misjudge the results. It’s possible for nervous candidates to accidentally answer in a misleading way, and it can be skewed by cultural background and English being a second language. 

Psychometric testing isn’t perfect 100% of the time, but it does have its positives.

What are the positives?

Psychometric testing enables hiring teams to get a better judgement of people’s personalities, especially for key roles in the executive space. It removes the objectivity of CVs and face-to-face interviews, giving unbiased outlines of candidates’ capabilities and emotional maturity. 

They also put the onus on the candidate, saving the company putting in a lot of work figuring out their suitability. The prospective employee undertakes the tests and the results are fed back to the company. In a fast-moving hiring market, the services provided by psychometric testing companies free up the hiring team’s time to get on with other work. 

At Solutions Driven, we work with Thomas International to complete tests on behalf of clients.

It gives hiring managers peace of mind that their candidates are being vetted properly, and nothing is being lost in a remote hiring process. It’s also useful when our clients are finding it hard to choose between multiple great candidates.

In a world where the hiring process and work environment is changing rapidly, psychometric tests can bring some stability and surety to recruitment. They give hiring managers the confidence that they’re hiring right. Alongside other metrics like stringent scoping and scorecarding, it ensures the person in your role is the perfect fit, first time.