Understanding an individual’s personal and intellect is the critical first step to shaping successful careers. A career counselor has to traverse the depths of a client's mind to help illuminate their career paths. This aspect of the career coaching job is challenging, sometimes even nerve-wracking. 

A wrong judgment on the counselor's part can potentially jeopardize the client's future. Instead of going by their gut or personal discretion, career counselors generally require a tried and tested methodology to help them guide others.

A psychometric test helps do just that! 

What are Psychometric Tests?

Psychometric tests are the scientific ways used to explore a person’s attitude, skills, and interests to assess their personality. Assessing personality gives an objective indication of his/her workplace behavior, ability to adapt, and potential to achieve success in a role. Psychometric tests for students help them discover their unknown skills and innate talents, thereby indicating the right career path. 

The word psych means mind and metric means measurement. Simply put, a psychometric test is a tool used to measure the mind.

How do Psychometric Tests Function?

Psychometric tests help students identify their strengths and weaknesses better. Psychometric tests try to understand an individual’s capabilities through a set of questions or queries. These questions are designed to interpret the student’s physical and mental state and their conditioning.

Psychometric tests are unique from all other tests as they judge the student’s emotional and cognitive capacity. The results of a psychometric test can be helpful while making important life decisions. It can also help a student find out how a particular subject or career suits their personality.

Advantages of Psychometric Test

Psychometric testing is a valuable tool for career coaching and comes with multifold advantages. Here are some of the advantages of a psychometric test. 

Holistic Psychological Profiling

Often people are much more than what meets the eye. One of the benefits of psychometric testing is its ability to reveal beyond what is mentioned on a candidate’s resume to conservatively predict fitment. Without a psychometric tool, you can’t possibly determine the distinct traits an individual possesses, including his strengths and weaknesses. 

Objective Assessment

It is a common human tendency to develop biases based on personal experiences. In jobs like career coaching, there is no place for your subjective worldview because prejudiced assessments can sabotage your client’s as well as your career. Psychometric tests bring the necessary objectivity to assessments. Years of scientific research and mathematical foundations of psychometric tests combined with technology leave almost no room for human biases and manual errors in the evaluation.

Reliable Method

The incontestable advantage of psychometric tests lies in their reliability and proven results. Many research studies point to the positive impact of using these tests for career guidance. Moreover, the ever-increasing use of psychometric assessments in recruitment processes testifies to its credibility. Using psychometric tests in your coaching can give your client an edge as their career development will most likely sync with the job market.

Cost-Effective And Efficient

The other advantages of psychometric tests are cost-effectiveness and ease of implementation. What may take several months for an organization to know about a person, a reliable psychometric test can supply that information within hours. Psychometric assessments reduce or diminish your chances of bad hires, providing a good ROI. While a good fit candidate is an asset for an organization, a bad hire can prove too costly to the organization and impact other employees’ productivity and morale.

Time-Saving

Because these tests are given to candidates in groups, the company saves a lot of time and money. Online psychometric tests can be administered on laptops, tablets, desktops, and mobile phones. High-end automation helps in the quick screening of candidates and thus expedites the evaluation process. As psychometric tests are highly time-saving, they are widely used by recruiters.

Learning and Development

The advantages of psychometric tests are not limited to finding the right career path or assisting during recruitment. Rather, it spans an employee’s entire career cycle. Psychometric assessments indicate future potential, leadership orientation, and learning agility that can empower HR professionals to make important workforce management decisions. 

Career Counseling - A Booming Field

Career counseling is a booming field, with more and more people taking up this employment, although the art of counseling has been around for a long time.

Career counseling is one of the most effective processes that you can undergo to find the right direction for a successful professional life. It takes you through a series of experiences to help you make the right decisions considering core components like your interests, family values, culture, abilities, and personality. 

A career counselor is a professional who helps clients throughout this process and assists them in planning their careers and achieving their employment goals. Career counselors are employed by state departments of labor, community agencies, schools, two and four-year college career offices, and private counseling firms.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment of school and career counselors and advisors will grow 11 percent from 2020 to 2030, faster than the average for all occupations, with about 35,000 openings projected each year, on average, over the decade.