Give psychometric tests a shot

Starting out with right fits beats having to rightsize later, right?

Manjari Raman

Call me mad, but here’s one smart strategy I feel you should try while hiring people: psychometric tests. Now hang on. I know that you don’t know where the next VC (venture capital) dollar or customer rupee is going to come from and you probably think I need a psychometric test of my own to even suggest that in these cheeseparing times you consider such a wholly extravagant human resource practice. But I do have a rationale and I do have a precedent.

There’s this little software start-up in Delhi called Escosoft, which is heavily into gaming software. They are developing this groovy 3-D fantasy adventure with Indian characters and storyboard which may just give Quake a run for its money, if it’s marketed well in the US and Europe (that’s another case study for another Tuesday morning). Now, the interesting thing is that in order to hire the right kind of person, from day one, the company has invested in psychometric tests to select the critical employees needed to develop the games.

Developing a game requires highly creative, out-of-the-box, even whacky thinking, but at the same time you need people who respect deadlines, other equally whacky colleagues, team work, etc. These people could come from diverse backgrounds: an art school graduate, a copywriter from an ad agency, a high school dropout addicted to games, a Net junkie. And that’s just the creative team. Escosoft also needed a tech-team which would take the impossible ideas spawned by the creatives and actually make them work in a 3-D environment. And it needed techies who were creative too and could come up with textures, options and gizmos to inspire the creative team and so on and so forth.

At the end of the day therefore, Escosoft needed a pretty special bunch of people who would be individualistic yet capable of team work, flexi-workers who knew the value of deadlines, people who would brainstorm but not battle, be passionate but not dogmatic, and half a dozen other conflicting attributes. So, rather than slowly go mad finding such mavericks, Escosoft decided to identify a clutch of key personality traits that it required in each team both, creative and techie. Then, in addition to the normal selection process, the company introduced a small psychometric test while hiring.

The test now acts as a first filter to separate the wheat from the chaff. Remember: you can train someone on new software or even teach them a skill but you can never change their personality. Escosoft was smart enough to realise that and has managed to create a small, tight team of mostly right fits. Now, you can snort and say that sure, you know about Escosoft, it’s part of the larger Escorts Group and of course they would have the money to bankroll something like this, but here you are, a churchmouse of a dotcom promoter: why should you waste money on psychometric testing? Especially as you don’t even have any special needs like Escosoft for gaming junkies?

So for a disbeliever like you, here are some good reasons why you still need to consider psychometric tests. For one, it is better and vastly more economical to have a small team of people that are best suited for the job, than to have a large team consisting of misfits. By hiring the right person for the job you are more likely to get results for the company and that’s a direct link to the bottomline. Two, after last year’s experience where everyone hired wildly and then fired crazily, I would say it is better to spend a little on these tests and hire judiciously so that you have a core team of loyal, secure employees. Moreover, you stand apart from the rest of the pack that is still hiring cluelessly.

Finally, when I say psychometric tests I’m not suggesting brainscans for all employees. Start small and smart. Choose the team that is most important for meeting the company’s goals. Let’s say in your case it’s the sales team. Define the key winning characteristics; maybe just the three most basic must-haves for a crack salesman in your line of business. And then get a consultant to develop a simple test for measuring and spotting those characteristics in a sea of applicants. If you do it right, the cost of running the test will not be that high, and the value of hiring right will far outweigh the spend.

One last reason: thanks to the mass lay-offs, this is the perfect time to hire good people on a fair wage. Pick and choose judiciously to plug the gaps in your organisation chart and you could build a strong company with just the right manpower needed to drive it to success. And smile when your VC gives you points for hiring right rather than ‘right-sizing’ in hindsight.