Behind the mind science
Tom Pullar-Strecker looks into psychometric testing after the IRD’s controversial bid to use it.
Jeff Simpson of Ethos Consulting has interviewed thousands of job candidates on behalf of the many employers that are choosing to hire a trained psychologist to help them pick the best talent.
Simpson, who prefers to go by the title ‘‘psychometrician’’, says there are two characteristics that he looks for that tend to mark out top performers.
The first is ‘‘really good selfinsight’’, so they know themselves well, what does and doesn’t affect them, and they know why they like working with some people and not with others.
The second golden attribute, called ‘‘projective awareness’’, is also knowing how you come across to others.
‘‘What we are looking for is the maturity of people’s personality.
‘‘Donald Trump’s personality profile is probably quite similar to Gandhi’s, but the maturity between the two of them is the difference.’’
Simpson’s approach is based on the research Ethos Consulting has undertaken into what highperforming people look like versus low performers.
‘‘One of the things we find is that in the majority of cases it is personality difference, not competency,’’ he says.
‘‘We can get a group of people with the same qualifications, the same intellectual functioning, but their performance can be vastly different, and when you look at what the difference is, it is personality based.’’
Psychometric testing has again hit the headlines after the Public Service Association took Inland Revenue to the Employment Court last week over its decision to use written tests to screen 860 of its staff for new roles at the department.
In 2013, Employment Court chief judge Graeme Colgan awarded a former Transfield Services worker $15,000 for wrongful dismissal after a psychometric test was used as part of redundancy considerations, ruling the test was ‘‘irrelevant’’ and led to a ‘‘plainly wrong’’ conclusion.
Simpson says he does use such tests – which usually come in multiple-choice formats – as a conversation starter with the candidates he interviews.
But he is scathing about their value as a standalone tool to assess a candidate’s suitability, saying ‘‘you may as well get the person’s horoscope’’.
Personality questionnaires often attempt to determine where people sit on a series of attributes; for example, whether they are ‘‘conceptual’’ or extrovert, Simpson explains.
‘‘Where this goes wrong is that somebody will look at the profile and make a judgment about you from it. That happens an awful lot.’’
The problem is that personality is a ‘‘madly complex thing’’,.
‘‘I’ve done 15,000 profile interviews with people and I still learn something from each one.’’
Simpson’s doctorate was in narcissism and he warns that it is not a quality that would show up in a standard psychometric test.
‘‘And narcissism has a massively negatively effect in organisations.’’
Interviews usually go on for about an hour, but sometimes do go off the rails, he says.
‘‘Sometimes people can get defensive really quickly, but that probably means they are going to do that in the job as well.’’
Simpson says candidates going through an interview process need to understand it is for the employer, not for them – though Ethos does offer all interviewees free follow-up sessions to assist with their own individual development.
‘‘High performing people tend to be adaptive, humble, slightly self-critical and they tend to be bright.’’
‘‘Donald Trump’s personality profile is probably quite similar to Gandhi’s, but the maturity between the two of them is the difference.’’ Jeff Simpson