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Lean-staffing strategies are prompting corporates to employ psychometric tools to find the perfect ‘organisational fit’ in a candidate. Radhika Sachdev tracks the trend

The verdict was out in 17 minutes flat. “You are a decisive, individualistic and forceful self-starter. You respond well to a boss who negotiates on a one-on-one basis, setting clear objectives and time scales for you. You take on too many tasks and need to pace yourself.” Hmm. I fell for it hook, line and sinker. My boss took the next bait and declared that her description was also bang on target! We aren't the only suckers for such psycho-mumbo-jumbo.

Fewer posts, a tightening job market, cut-throat competition and the heavy cost of recruitment (a new hire can cost three times more than the retention cost of an old hire) is making psychometric tests a useful (and sometimes reliable) tool in the hands of interviewers. Log on to the Net to find out the number of sites offering "free" psychometric profiling. How reliable these are, is anyone's guess, but one tool,
which does appear

Career Track

Work Smart

Industry Speak

Recruiter's File

Personal View

Expert Corner

World Wire

In Black & White

Introspect

to have gained some credence is the Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) offered by Thomas International.

Leading PSU, BHEL employs it on senior managers as back-up for promotions, HLL for identifying training needs, Ranbaxy for creating better team synergies amongst senior scientists and UPSE is toying with the idea of including it in the Civil Service examinations.

Meanwhile, the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad and the Symbiosis Institute of Foreign Trade in Pune are using the Thomas system for career counselling — helping students pick electives based on their personality types! Designed by Thomas Hendrick, a disciple of William Moultan Marston, the Harvard School graduate credited with the invention of the lie-detection test, the reliability of the Thomas system (about 85%, according to market surveys) lies in its software base that is easy to administer on a large sample. Another advantage is the time factor, as it takes merely seven minutes to administer and another 10 to interpret the test, a list of multiple-choice statements.

Deceptively simplistic, the Thomas system is based on four behavioural traits (Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance) but can yield up to 96 permutation and personality combinations, according to Yogesh Mishra, Brand Manager, TVPS-Thomas International, the licensed marketers of the tool in India. The tests can also be used for demographic surveys. For instance, a study done recently indicated an increased level of insecurity, stress and frustration in software programmers in India, the results tallying with the psychometric profiles obtained during Edward Heath's time (1970-74) during the UK economic slowdown. “A majority of our clients, however, use the PPA only as an interview tool to build questions around it or to validate their gut feeling about a candidate,” adds Mishra.

Other innovative uses lie in compatibility studies prior to mergers planning or acquisitions or succession planning. “We use it to predict which teams might work and which won't,” says, Saugata Mitra, Sony-India's Manager (HR). While BHEL uses it for annual appraisals “though never as a single mechanism of selection or promotions,” says Partha Sarthy, AGM-HR, BHEL. TVS-Thomas International also issues a license to train a resource person in a company for Rs 20,000, besides charging Rs 1,200 for processing each psychometric report and Rs 420 for a follow-up consultations.

What are the Thomas reports?
Thomas International is a US-based consultancy specialising in psychometric profiling for manpower selection and development. Till the 1960s, their main instruments — Human Job Analysis (HJA), Personal Profile Analysis (PPA) and Team Analysis System (TAS) — were considered classified documents used during World War II. Today, they are available in over 51 countries with a client base of 30,000, including some 300 Fortune 500 companies. The Indian associate of the company started operations in 1998 and boasts a huge clientele with bigwigs like — ABB, Arthur Andersen, Asian Paints, BPCL, BHEL, Citicorp, HLL, HAL, J M Morgan Stanley, Maruti, Pfizer, TELCO, to name a few. The company does functional audits for management, sales, administrative, technical, customer service and call centre teams.

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