Psychometric testing

I'm no fan of psychometric profiling. In my experience it's only used in firms where the management are remote from the workforce. Rather than interview the staff themselves, they employ intermediaries called Personnel, or the even more arcane and forbidding Human Resources.
When I worked for Superdrug and Volume One a few years later, I was interviewed by the Managing Director and he employed me on the basis of that interview lasting half an hour or so.
Recruiting staff is like weather forecasting. No matter how sophisticated or expensive the methods used, the results are statistically no more accurate than pine cones or seaweed.
In my long career I've interviewed a lot of potential employees, and attended a good few interviews as well. There's an old saying- "First impressions last", and psychometric profiling is a poor substitute for a face to face interview. When a vacancy occured in one of my shops I interviewed the applicants with an eye to what the job entailed and how they would fit in with the team I'd assembled.  When I was in retail the staff turnover averaged about eighteen months, that is, you'd have a new member of staff in every position every eighteen months or so. This meant that the manager would be forever recruiting and training staff, knowing full well that they'd only stay for a month or two. This often meant that he spent less time training his staff and that brought even more problems. So the answer lay in keeping your staff for as long as possible. In my experience profiling was no more effective in achieving this, and cost a whole lot more.
For the record, my last management position was as manager of a bookstore in Northampton. I was there for five years and when I was made redundant by the incoming owners, more than 90% of the full and part time staff had been with me from the start. That was way, way, way above the industry average. My record of recruiting and training and retention of staff speaks for itself.


The first time I encountered profiling was when I was interviewed for a management position with Lewis Meeson, a subsidiary company of Barker & Dobson, maker of Everton Mints. I was working at Superdrug and anxious to get out. I'd been there too long and my reputation meant that my career was stalled. I'd just got married again and we were happy to move almost anywhere in the country in pursuit of my retail career.
I saw the advert in the Grocer and applied and in due course went for an interview. I passed that initial interview and received a profile test in the post. The test involved answering a load of stupid questions, most of them variations on the same theme. I had to fill  it in and return it before my next interview with the Managing Director at head office in Liverpool. I can't remember everything the profile was supposed to reveal about me, but they went ahead and hired me anyway.
The salient point was that the profile test was as an adjunct to the two face to face interviews I undertook. The face to face interviews took precedent, and the profile was just background.


Fast forward twenty years and I'm working as a temp in a call centre. A good temp has to be able to walk into any job and pick it up straight away. I'd done a lot of call centre work, both inbound and outbound. I prefer inbound, where you respond to calls from customers.
This call centre was run by a large photo copier manufacturer and distributor. Everyone has used a photocopier at some time, but my recent jobs hadn't involved any contact with them. All of a sudden I was answering calls from customers whose copiers had packed up. I'd identify the customer and the machine using the AS400 software on the computer in front of me, and I'd try and find out what the fault was. Some faults can be cleared over the phone. I had diagrams and photos of the various models on the computer, and together with the customer we'd try and find the fault. We had a couple of skilled engineers that we could refer the difficult calls to, and if all else failed we'd get an engineer out to them. The object was to keep their copier working, although that wasn't always possible if some burley policeman had broken the glass while trying to photocopy his private parts (It happened more than once).
After a week or so I was approached by the call center manager who had been listening in on my calls and monitored my success rate. He wanted to know if I wanted a permanent job.
I was temping because there were no permanent jobs around, so I said yes. As part of the interview process I was given a psychometric test to complete.
One look at the form and I despaired. It was more psychobabble and arcane nonsense devised by people who don't like dealing with people face to face. I completed it and handed it in.
Up until that moment my joining the firm was cut and dried. I was good at the job, good with customers, good telephone manner, good clear up rate.
The call centre manager never mentioned my joining the firm again. I stayed as a temp for another couple of months. Other people, less able joined the permanent staff while I continued as a temp, so why did I not get the job?
The answer had to be the profiling. The company, a huge Japanese multi-national had several sites in the UK, with a head office in Feltham. The Human Resources department were based there. I never ever saw anyone from that department at our site. They had worked out the requirements for the job and devised a profile. My form arrived on their desk and it didn't match their profile, so no job for me.

In time I came to realise the short-sightedness of profiling.
If a company only recruits staff according to profiles, it means that there is no possible career path, no opportunities for promotion in that company. It is impossible for someone to join the company at the ground level and work their way up. Their profile wouldn't match the junior jobs if they were executive material, and individual job profiling would prevent them advancing through the company.
If every company adopted profiling it would mean that your job was assigned to you when you entered the job market and all you could expect was to do the same job in different offices for the rest of your working life.
That's my idea of hell.


And all those heroes of business who started at the bottom and worked their way up? Forget it. It would never happen. Profiling will squeeze every ounce of creativity and originality out of a company. In time companies that employ profiling will not have the talent to adapt, to be original, to spot new ideas and opportunities and will ultimately fail.
Good.