Psychometric tests in India are faulty

RECRUITMENT, retention and exit in India's corporate world is not carried out scientifically.

Psychometric tests in India are faulty

RECRUITMENT, retention and exit in India's corporate world is not carried out scientifically.

Experts also say that only a single test is conducted during a person's entire career with a company which is a vague representation of the individual.

People who conduct the test are not adequately trained.

These facts came to light when MiD DAY spoke to some psychologists on the concluding day of the three-day seminar on Resource Psychometric Testing.

Former director of the Maersk (group operations, India) Milind Joshi said, "Personality traits are tested only once by a large number of corporate; and only when people join the organisation."

According to him, this is unrealistic as a person may have changed during his association with the company.

"During recession, decision on retrenchments are done on the basis of this lone test; such people, who the test shows are dispensable, are asked to leave," he added, which, he felt, was unfair and inaccurate.

Joshi, who now runs an HR consultancy, does not take into account the positive or negative changes a person may have undergone until he is asked to leave. "Psychometric tests must be done periodically to see whether a staff has adjusted, grown and is satisfied with his job," he said.

Chairing the seminar India's senior phsyco-analyst D G Deshpande said students become psychological counsellors immediately after their MA/Mphil/PhD without any experience. "Ask counsellors how many of them actually visited and studied a mental asylum, or even met a client before printing their visiting cards as counsellor,'' he said.

Kalpana Srivastava, scientist (E) and head of the clinical psychology department at the Armed Forces Medial College was critical about the psychometric testing practices and standards in the country. "We translate tests that are made abroad and are not culturally meant for Indians," she said.

Shrivastava said, tests are being published and sold across the country without any regulator. "Like the Medical Council of India, there needs to be a Psychological Council of India to monitor publications," she said.

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