Psychometric or Behavioural Assessment

The conventional method of recruitment process is more of a technical process and does not give any assessment of the candidate from the psychic point of view. That is you cannot judge whether a person who claims to be a very patient person is really patient, a candidate claiming to be friendly is really friendly and a person claiming to be team player is really a team player. To overcome the shortfall of the traditional recruitment process the latest buzzword found is : PSYCHOMETRIC or BEHAVIOURIAL testing. Comapnies like Microsoft, Texas Instruments, Dell, GE, AOL, Siemens are all implementing these tests in their recruitment process. Mr. Murlidhar S, director of MeritTrac, a comptency assessment company says that, "Psychometric assessment completes the selection process along with the ability and skills/knowledge tests. This is the current buzz in the BPO industry, where the call agent has to demonstrate a great deal of patience & empathy while handling a customer call." The emphasis in now given on the 'emotional intelligence' and candidates are now being evaluated for their 'real' personality characteristics, interpersonal style and job specific aptitude.

But what about companies using the buzz words 'equal opportunity employer', 'annual assessment', 'annual appraisals', 'performace linked incentives', 'healthy environment' etc. etc. Think about it.