Psychometric Testing
Increase the accuracy of your recruitment decisions by up to 40% using our online psychometric assessments.
Predict work behaviours with psychometric testing
SACS has a range of psychometric assessment tools to predict workplace outcomes, including:
- Likelihood of success & failure at work
- Counterproductive work behaviours (such as misconduct, bullying, theft)
- Occupational health and safety issues (like behaving unsafely at work)
- Attitudes towards diversity (for instance behaving disrespectfully to different ethnic groups)
TEST
Verbal reasoning
Abstract reasoning
Numerical reasoning
Work worded values assessment
Values assessment
Work worded personality assessment
HEXACO Personality
Short Form Personality
QUESTIONS
34
20
34
52
57
125
210
117
TIMED
15 min
15 min
20 min
untimed
untimed
untimed
untimed
untimed
RESEARCH
ACER ML
APTS
ACER MQ
SACS Work Values Scale
Schwartz Values Assessment
SACS 6 Personality (6-factor)
6-factor test
5-factor test
Try a free psychometric assessment and analysis today
Find a wide range of organisational psychology resources in our new Knowledge Hub
The SACS Consulting Knowledge Hub serves as a repository for our intellectual property on a range of organisational psychology topics, including psychometric testing, employee engagement and recruitment optimisation.
You can search for topics of interest and browse the personalised recommendations for videos, white papers, events, presentations and more.
Visit the SACS Knowledge Hub today.
SACS offers psychometric testing for recruitment
Vocational psychometric tests
SACS offers a comprehensive and expanding range of vocational psychometric assessment tools for recruitment testing. Currently, these include:
- Psychometric assessments tailored to your company and role profiles
- Executive and Leadership assessments
- Role-specific assessments – 18 different professional roles
- Emotional intelligence development
- Care Worker Assessment (Targeted for aged care, disability and human services)
- Foundation Assessment
- High Performance Modelling (Recruitment based on current best performing staff)
Standardised psychometric assessments
- Measuring individual psychological characteristics and propensities e.g. counterproductive work behaviour, OH&S risk, change resistance etc.
- Results are then compared to Australian norms for that individual’s profession (or for the general population).
- Based on rigorous, international, psychology principles, our assessments have been developed for determining the suitability of applicants for specific roles in all types of employment, from executive roles to manual labour.
Personality Assessments
Personality has been shown to be an excellent predictor of both success and failure at work. Our assessments look at It looks at factors such as honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience.
Cognitive Ability Tests
Cognitive abilities have been found consistently to be one of the best predictors of job performance ever discovered. People with higher levels of cognitive ability complete work faster, solve problems more easily and learn faster. They’re also less likely to undertake counter-productive work behaviours.
Personal Values Questionnaire
Values influence certain aspects of a person’s behaviour and are significant predictors of positive and negative work outcomes. The Schwartz personal values questionnaire gives you an evidence-based approach and examines ten core values that affect people’s behaviours irrespective of the culture they come from.
Resilience Testing
Resilience is important to assess for any roles where the ability to cope with challenges is critical. This can apply to senior positions like Chief Executives or more customer-facing roles such as in retail or call centres.
360 Degree Feedback
360 degree feedback is a powerful tool that can be used for a variety of purposes, including individual performance management, group or organisational performance assessment and leadership development.
Employee Engagement Survey
Engagement surveys provide valuable insights into how engaged staff are right now, and also help to identify what needs to be done to reach your ideal state of employee engagement.
Professional Interpretive Assessments
Upgrade your candidate psychometric assessments with a comprehensive, professional recommendation, backed by the SACS evidence-based methodology.
Get psychometric analysis and bespoke guidance on a candidate’s fit, based on their specific strengths, skills and the requirements of the role.
Psychometric assessments based on research and backed by science
Scientist / Practitioner Model
SACS psychometric assessments are extremely rigorously evaluated by virtue of our commitment to the Scientist / Practitioner model of business. The psychometric products and services that we offer are developed and enhanced through research partnerships with independent researchers in a range of universities.
In particular SACS is involved in a very active research partnership with Deakin University which has led to a number of peer-reviewed publications. You can use our psychometric measurement tools with a high level of confidence in their accuracy due to this rigour.
Internationally accepted, scientific critical psychometric analysis and testing ensure the most accurate outcomes. Qualified psychologists can advise on how the different types of psychometric tests can be tailored to meet business objectives or mitigate risk exposure.
Try a free psychometric test and report today
Benefits of psychometric testing and analysis
- Increases the validity of recruitment decisions by up to 40%
- Predicts future job performance (Validity (r) 0.65 as per Robertson & Smith (2001))
- Significantly increases likelihood of candidate being a good fit for role and organisation
- Provides information that cannot be obtained through other recruitment methods such as interviews, reference checks etc
- Reduces interviewing time
- Ensures consistency in recruitment by taking away human bias
- Tested employees are more productive than untested employees
- Decreases negative behaviours in the workplace
- Provides crucial information for coaching and developing staff
Helps with recruitment
- Protects you from the cost of the wrong hire
- Best practice for HR, both here and overseas
- Objective and helps formalise processes
- Saves time e.g. better filter of candidates before 2nd interviews
Helps with staff reviews
- Are today’s employees what you’ll need in the future?
- How do they stack up against the profile for their sector i.e benchmarking?
- Learn about the developmental needs of staff
- Identify tailored improvement plans
Experience considerable savings
- Reduced staff turnover so less agency fees and ad expenses
- Reduced workplace accidents
- Reduced counterproductive work behaviours such as theft, disciplinary problems, absenteeism and fraud
- Reduced rate of staff termination; and
- Increased success in roles
Pitfalls to watch out for
- Assessments with minimal research backing i.e. not predictive, not measuring what they say they are measuring
- Comparing results to overseas datasets which don’t reflect Australian cultural norms
- Test suppliers which don’t offer the level of support and post-test analysis needed to get the full value of the assessments purchased
- Assessments that are too general and do not match the purpose and job role
Examples of psychometric test reports
Cognitive ability testing
(Verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning)
Cognitive ability assessment results are shown in percentiles and are normed against an Australian normative sample of employees from an extremely wide range of employment sectors.
The SACS aptitude assessment measures a person’s cognitive ability.
Measuring the cognitive ability of prospective and existing employees can be extremely valuable. Research over the past several decades has shown that cognitive ability is one of the most accurate predictors of success at work. People with higher levels of cognitive ability can:
- Complete work faster
- Crack problems that those with lower cognitive ability cannot
- Learn new material more quickly than those with lower cognitive ability
Furthermore, they undertake counter-productive work behaviours less often than those with lower cognitive ability.
The intelligence assessment can be used to maximise the probability of success when hiring new employees. For existing employees it can be used as a predictor of the person’s likelihood of progressing within the organisation and as a foundation for coaching them for future development.
SACS uses the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) aptitude assessments:
- Verbal reasoning – ACER ML
- Numerical reasoning – ACER MQ
- Abstract Reasoning – ACER APTS
Personal values assessment
There is no risk rating for values. Each team or organisation must decide the values they consider to be important to them and then evaluate the potential values match.
Values are a key aspect of an individual’s competencies. They influence certain aspects of a person’s behaviour and are significant predictors of positive and negative work outcomes.
The Schwartz personal values questionnaire was developed through decades of research by Professor Shalom H Schwartz, one of the world’s most prominent and respected researchers on this topic. Many organisations try to match values through interview impressions; the values assessment gives you an evidence-based approach.
Professor Schwartz discovered that there are ten values that affect people’s behaviours irrespective of the culture they come from. Shown is an example of an individual’s results on the Schwartz personal values questionnaire and a brief explanation of what each value means.
Personality assessment
Different jobs require different personality elements, but there are some personality elements that appear to be crucial for any role.
The HEXACO is a six factor personality assessment that has been shown to be an excellent predictor of both success and failure at work. It looks at a person’s score on the factors of honesty-humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and openness to experience. Different jobs require different personality elements, but there are some personality elements that appear to be crucial for any role.
One of the most important areas of employee research right now is that of counterproductive work behaviours. This includes behaviours like:
- Bullying
- Ignoring safety rules
- Undermining leadership or colleagues
- Stealing
- Unnecessary absenteeism, or
- Simply saying bad things about the employer
The short form personality assessment is a 5 factor instrument that assesses the factors of Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Emotionality, Agreeableness and Openness. It assesses a candidate’s suitability for a role and is a shorter assessment than the HEXACO.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you psych test for any job?
Yes, any job is recruited more accurately with psych testing.
Can psych testing help with culture match?
Yes, we can tailor results to particular companies. Psych testing screens out bad behaviours and so a person with better behaviours will fit in with any organisation.
How do we know that the results are accurate?
All our assessments are based on empirical research. Visit our Knowledge Hub.
How much do psychometric assessments cost?
Can people fake psych tests?
Research indicates that people do fake tests but not well enough to invalidate high quality psych tests. See our blog post on Can People Fake Psych Tests.
Does psych testing improve things?
Does this assessment discriminate against minorities?
Research evidence shows that psych tests are less discriminatory than human judgement. SACS instruments are chosen because research shows that they do not disadvantage minorities.
How are these tests developed?
All SACS tests are developed through psychological research. Visit our Knowledge Hub.
Is this confidential?
SACS complies with the highest standards of online confidentiality and data security. SACS also abides by the Australian Psychological Society code of ethics in everything we do.
Can I get help understanding the test results?
Yes, trained & qualified professionals are available to answer all your questions.
Is psychometric testing expensive?
Companies all over the world use valid psych testing because it is profitable. The cost of wrong hires vastly outweighs the cost of psych testing.
When during the recruitment process should I psych test?
Recruitment testing should be completed as early as possible in the recruitment process. That way the interview and reference checking process can be improved by knowing what psychological characteristics the candidate has and what areas should be focused on.
What do the risk ratings mean?
A high risk rating indicates characteristics we are encouraging you to be very cautious about. These characteristics may be associated with non-performance or problems with fitting in to a workplace.
Find out how to increase the accuracy of your hiring decisions with psychometric testing.
SACS offer a full range of psychometric assessments online, and guide you through a simple step-by-step process where you can administer web-based testing to candidates, as well as review results in a single, integrated downloadable report.