More and more personnel decisions in Germany are made only after aptitude testing assessments.
But what constitutes a high-quality aptitude assessment?
Why a psychological aptitude assessment?
It can be costly to shortlist an unsuitable candidate, if the shortcoming isn’t recognized and corrected early through a professional aptitude assessment. Likewise, wrongly rejecting a suitable candidate is a lost opportunity. Professional Aptitude Diagnostics include many possibilities to make the right personnel decisions. Wrong decisions can be avoided, for example, by paying special attention to the development potential of the future job holder.
Therefore, the focus is on the application disciplines including career Aptitude Diagnostics in personnel selection and further qualification in personnel development.
While aptitude tests have not yet become established in all companies in German-speaking countries, they are already a frequently used personnel selection instrument in the USA. They can be divided into intelligence tests, personality tests and performance tests.
What is Aptitude Diagnostics?
Occupational Aptitude Diagnostics is a field of applied psychology that is primarily concerned with finding correlations between personal characteristics and occupational success. This knowledge can then be used for personnel decisions. As a scientific basis, Aptitude Diagnostics use findings and theories from personality psychology and a variety of different methods for measuring and classifying personal characteristics.
Trimodial approach of Aptitude Diagnostics
The field of application of Aptitude Diagnostics procedures thus encompasses all areas in which job-related counseling, applicant selection, or decisions regarding career choice are involved.
There are three different approaches for personnel selection:
- Construct-oriented procedures (intelligence tests)
- Biography-oriented procedures (recruitment interviews)
- Simulation-oriented procedures (assessment centers)
People-Environment-Fit
The world of work is developing at a rapid pace, with the complexity and speed of tasks increasing significantly. Technical innovations, globalization effects and tougher competitive conditions are playing a significant role.
In the classic selection process, current required skills were assessed. But now the development and qualification process for future skills has become much more important. Now it is about the person-environment fit: finding a fit between an individual and the future requirements of a position that they will be able to fill successfully.
What do psychological tests measure?
Psychological test procedures examine very different competencies and personal characteristics. They particularly frequently analyze leadership behavior, social competence, resilience, communication behavior, motivation, team behavior, willingness to perform, creativity and willingness to innovate.
Other topics include work style, sales skills, emotional intelligence, analytical thinking, technical understanding and numerical reasoning. In addition, there are aspects such as leadership potential, self-confidence, emotional stability and problem-solving skills. The range of topics addressed by personnel diagnostic procedures is thus very wide.
„Hiring the best is your most important task.”
Steve Jobs
Services and Process for Psychological Aptitude Assessments
Professional aptitude and hidden potential cannot be recognized at first glance, but only with solid diagnostic procedures.
I support your personnel selection process by
- Creating a personality profile based on a 90-minute competency-based interview
- Conducting Aptitude Diagnostic tests
- Presenting the results in a detailed final report, which is made available to both the client and the candidate
The aptitude diagnostic procedures I use meet the quality criteria and standards according to DIN 33430.
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DIN 33430 quality criteria and standards
Together with the German Psychological Society (DGP), the Professional Association of German Psychologists (BPD) has developed and certified the standard 33430 for job-related aptitude assessments in the committee of the German Institute for Standardization (DIN).
DIN 33430 provides quality criteria and standards for job-related Aptitude Diagnostics. The standard applies to all situations in which aptitude is assessed for individuals. It is classified by the German Institute for Standardization as a service standard and makes statements on:
- Qualification of the persons involved
- Quality of the instruments used
- Interaction and design of process steps and procedures
As holder of the personal license for Aptitude Diagnostics according to DIN 33430, I am your professional contact for high-quality processes of aptitude assessment and optimized personnel selection. Employee potential can also be assessed more accurately and assessment centers and/or aptitude interviews can be conducted more efficiently and reliably.