www.womanthismonth.com 47 January 2013 | Many women want more from their career or need a clear ‘life purpose’ as their children get older. These are the same emotions that teenagers feel when they are embarking upon course and career decisions. What can you do? How can you help your child choose the career and life they want? How can transition be eased? Effective solutions include working with objective, qualified and experienced career guidance professionals, as well as using psychometric profiling appropriately. Knowledge of strengths, personality traits, abilities and learning styles means informed decisions about career and course selection. Sound advice and accurate evidence goes further by ensuring best culture-environment fit, as well as taking into consideration family, financial and other important factors in these all important decisions. Students’ career choices are sometimes squashed inadvertently by parents due to lack of motive (motivation) and talent (ability) alignment. What this means is, even if your child is able to become a Doctor, Banker or Lawyer, if this is not the field that they really want to study, they may be good at it, but will they really be happy? No. This demonstrates how important it is to look at all the variables when making course and career choices. What are psychometric tests? Psychometrics is concerned with the measurement of various human abilities and attributes using various instruments, particularly questionnaires and tests. The use of psychometric tools is very popular in areas such as selection and recruitment, professional, team and personal development, guidance and leadership. Each year many students could avoid dropping out of their undergraduate courses or changing their A level and IB options if they took a psychometric test that ensures informed, impartial advice. It’s uncomfortable catching-up to others who have already started or staying behind until the next year has started. And this means that many parents could also save a lot of money by ensuring they invest in a test for their children too! Tests can highlight careers that have not been considered, therefore, opening possibilities. Ultimately, a career choice that links abilities and personality traits is a career that you will be happy in and also suitably challenged! It also opens up communication between you and your child, which is very helpful as some children do not feel confident raising a different career, that does not fit with parental expectations. In the recruitment process there are a number of ways to distinguish between applicants, however, most have problems attached to them. Interviews can be governed by bias and prejudice of the interviewer, references can be vague and application forms may not be filled in objectively by the applicant and so on. Psychometric tests are designed to be fair and objective and free from personal bias and prejudice. The tools used give comfort to the users as there is no right or wrong answer. They allow different people to be assessed under the same conditions so comparisons can be made. You can’t compare the interview of two different people, for example, if they were not asked the same questions under the same conditions. Some people use zodiac signs, others use feng shui or gut reaction and others hire family or friends because they should and/or because they have trust in their performance. Some students choose a course because of the weather in that location or its prestige. Decision-making is very subjective and although powerful, psychometric tools should not be used in isolation as they are one measure. They are more effective when used alongside other measurement tools, such as interviews and can help minimise the costly mistakes of hiring the wrong person, or otherwise making a poor decision. Likewise, 360 degree ‘feed forward’, a term coined my Marshall Goldsmith, voted Number One Business Thinker this year, is important too. So feed forward, as opposed to feedback, where feed forward looks at what someone wants more of, is positive and highlights the future as opposed to the past. In short, the views of parents, teachers, colleagues and friends as well as professionals in the field in relation to where markets are going and employability in a particular field, should also be involved in decision-making. There are a number of uses for psychometric testing; perhaps the most common is in recruitment and selection of staff. They are also used within organisations to identify training needs, team building and talent among other things. They are also being used heavily in graduate selection for training programmes and more and more for course and career selection from the age of around 14 and for personal development. Many organisations, such as Sony, have designed programmes and trained staff internally then weaved psychometrics and coaching through their organisation, making them a company of choice. The Royal Air Force (RAF) in the UK use psychometrics during their fighter pilot training to determine how each recruit would react under different conditions. This is not designed to exclude, but offers trainers a better understanding of how best to focus on each person’s needs. It has been calculated that this saves the RAF thousands of pounds by identifying development areas that can be worked upon. Basically, psychometrics can be used in any situation where accurate measurements of skills, abilities, personality or where other human factors are important before making a decision.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk0MTkxMQ==