Article
One: Psychometric Product Review: PCI by Louise Triance
Company Name: Occupational Performance Solutions Limited
Product Name: PCI Five Factor Personality Profile
Website Address: http://www.opgroup.co.uk
Description (provided by Occupational Performance Solutions):
designed to assess the suitability of people for wide spectrum of positions it is, however, most commonly used for the selection and development of sales, service and clerical management and staff.
Cost: £60.00 per profile on a bureau basis. Price reduces to £20.00 per profile if users buy the in-house system for self-administration.
Do you have to be qualified to interpret the questionnaires:
Not if using bureau service. However, two day’s training is recommended.
Candidate Experience (guinea pig candidate was Cath):
The questionnaire took 15 minutes to complete and was very easy to understand and use. The questions were thought provoking, but not difficult to understand or answer. This did not feel intrusive or give the impression it was trying to catch you out.
When the results came back there was also a note saying that feedback is best delivered by a trained facilitator. The reason for this became apparent as it was written in a very matter of fact style and was accompanied with graphs that meant very little to the untrained eye. The content was comprehensive and was broken down into the individual sections with an explanation of the section and where the candidate was placed. This was then applied to the candidate factually. However, it only focussed on the negative side with no positive attributes highlighted. I felt the different sections contradicted themselves a little and the text was obviously from a fixed programme and repeated itself.
Overview of Feedback Report: The candidate report was 13 pages long and a mixture of graphs and narrative. The profile assesses against 17 personality factors (with “5 big factors” of agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, openness and stability). Each of the “big factors” is split into subscales which are then looked at in detail. The narrative gives an overview of “facilitating characteristics” – which are the positives, and “inhibiting characteristics” - which are the negatives. Then each of the subscales is explored mostly highlighting the negatives. As Cath noted the focus is very much on the negatives as the profile is designed to provide an interviewer with a number of negative indications for further investigation in the interview process. For example a section may read “tend to be unreliable, undependable, careless and often demonstrate a lack of responsibility”.
This very negative style of reporting may help to create interview questions and lead the interviewer to probe areas that may be serious concerns when recruiting. However, a recruiter using this tool for a client may feel frustrated by the complete focus on negatives. It may be difficult to position a candidate in a positive, or even balanced, light when faced with this report. As a result I feel that this product is most likely to be used by corporates rather than consultancies/agencies on behalf of a client.
Summary
I thought this was an interesting product – and the only one I’ve reviewed so far which is so orientated towards client only feedback. It’s specific development as an interview aid means that giving candidate feedback would probably be more difficult than with many reports. This could be a product I would recommend to a client wanting to conduct a questionnaire to help a weak interviewer or in a situation where they were having difficulty choosing between a number of seemingly well matched candidates. OP Group do also offer a softer, more people focussed report called the
CPP.
Contact Details: David Kirkbright is the contact at OP Group, who resell the PCI. He can be contacted on 01684 585232 or by email at
david@opgroup.co.uk
Louise Triance is a British Psychological Society level A&B
trained assessor, conducting psychometrics on behalf of recruiters.
For more information call Louise on 01635 254881 or email louise@ukrecruiter.co.uk
or visit http://www.ukrecruiter.co.uk/tests.htm
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