What is a Psychometric Test? Why You Should Need a Psychometric Test

Psychometric test is a scientific method used to measure an individual's cognitive abilities, personality traits, interests, and skills. These tests are widely used in career counselling, recruitment, and personal development to help individuals understand their strengths and weaknesses.

The term 'psychometric' is derived from two words 'psyche' meaning 'mind' and 'metric' meaning 'measurement'. Psychometric tests are a scientific method used to measure an individual's cognitive abilities, personality traits, interests, and skills. Psychometric tests help students to become aware of their pre-existing interests, personality, and aptitude and choose the right career at the right time accordingly.

Why are Psychometric Tests so important in career counselling?

Every morning, when you scroll through your social media feeds, you will come across at least a few posts, ads, stories or reels asking you to ‘be yourself’. A wise advice! It surely brings a positive change in the way you view yourself. But to ‘be yourself’, you need to ‘know yourself’ first.

Very few of us take the time to introspect and assess our strengths and weaknesses. Least of all teenage students, who are already confused with school, entrance exams, college admissions, etc. But it is at this stage that a student needs to know who they are because their career decision depends on it. And this is why psychometric tests are given to a student in career counselling.

It helps them assess their strengths and weaknesses, their interests, their personality, their learning style, and their type of intelligence. This gives them a complete and unbiased assessment of their identity. It helps them understand the various career options available to them and decide what is the right choice for them.

3 Psychometric Tests Students Must Know About

A) Personality Type Tests

Each one of us has our own natural tendencies, right? Introverted, extroverted, shy, chatty, cheerful, morbidly existentialist, there are so many adjectives we use to describe people with specific temperaments. Now imagine a test that is scientifically designed to assess your personality, not based on biased impressions, but considering how you think and act in specific situations. A personality-type psychometric test does exactly that.

Personality type tests provide students with a questionnaire and assess a four-letter personality code out of sixteen personality types. It proposes the selection of career paths that match the personality of the student.

B) Multiple Intelligence Tests

Intelligence - it is one of the most frequently used adjectives for students, sometimes as a compliment, sometimes as a comparison. But what is intelligence and how do we measure it? Is it the ability to remember a lot of information? Is it the ability to solve a lot of mathematical problems? Is it getting the highest marks in the class?

While it is true that in everyday life we ​​take these characteristics as markers of intelligence, this is not accurate. Nor is it correct to take IQ tests because those tests rely only on logical and analytical skills.

C) Learning Style Tests

When it comes to students and learning, historically we have only relied on reading and writing as learning styles. But over the past 10 years, there has been a growing awareness about different learning styles and adopting them in classrooms. Especially with the growth of virtual classrooms and e-learning, students now have the flexibility to explore different learning styles.

Now that they have the choice, students can assess which senses they rely on the most while learning. This psychometric test will help them know their preferred learning style and how they can use it as their strength.