My Recruiting Blog

Centraltest, an online UK psychometric specialist with over 2,500 corporate clients, will later this month launch a highly modified version of a temperament assessment tool that it has licensed to its clients. The 'temperament evaluator' has been recalibrated to account for changes in the wider UK and London job market, many of which are impacted by new European regulations pertaining to workplace diversity.

The evaluator has been calibrated to account for recruiters and employers’ changed needs, the company says. The company especially addressed "tenacity vs need for diversity" issues, which forms one of the test’s twelve chapters.

The changes account for the recent overhaul in UK employment law following the October 2006 introduction of new European regulations aimed at stamping out (age) inequality in the workplace. The alterations make up some 25 percent of the 98-question test to the test now render ‘homogeneity to the candidate's personality’, the company writes in a statement on its website, adding that it was achieved by factorial analysis of the items in the test.

The company has recently completed testing its findings on thousands of internet users worldwide and is now offering the temperament evaluator to its clients, including the 79 recruitment companies on its roster.

Temperament issues have begun to gain significant traction in the UK jobs market, yet practical initiatives like Centraltest’s are few and far between. People point to US giant Google as one trend setter in terms of measuring human capital in innovative ways. The company, often criticized for its cumbersome hiring rounds , recently is being tipped to make use of quite immaculate user-end recruitment metrics.

Google moved from relying on recruiter information that was word dense, free form to a more targeted point by point feedback style. The new format includes highly precise questions about someone’s past and personality, which are rated on a piecemeal basis. Sample questions are ‘How strongly would you describe yourself as someone with an assertive personality?’ and ‘At work would you prefer to manage others or do the work yourself?’

One blogger outlines the significance of this development; "These two points are interesting [...] because [...] the hiring metric "time to hire" is becoming more critical, especially with global competition for a limited talent pool. And [...] companies are increasingly trying to match the right job with the right candidate using factors besides just skills and experience like a candidate's personality."

Centraltest optimizes some of its tests as often as every six months, but indicates its new version of its personality temperament is a landmark development.

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