FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

Psychometric Testing Becomes a Critical Tool To UK Public Sector

April 18, 2007

Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK

Psychometric tests have been used for decades for team building and management development in the private sector. Now, psychometric testing has entered the hiring and team building processing in the UK public sector. It has been found to help identify better candidates, reduce turnover, and reduce overall hiring costs.

In an atmosphere of increasingly frequent legal action for “unfair dismissal” and the growing financial judgments awarded by the courts, the public sector must adapt its human resource management practices, as mistakes in hiring can become increasingly expensive to correct.

As an example of how important psychometric testing is to the public sector today, the Audit Commission has issued a tender for occupational psychology services worth an estimated £300,000 over two years. A critical segment of the contract is psychometric testing. Another example is Nottingham City Transport that was able to document £72,000 in annual savings a year in reduced turnover after introducing psychometric testing in their recruitment process.

Psychometric testing has been shown to help define the skill set and abilities that a person can bring to a role. This, combined with vigorous reference checks, can identify poor job candidates. However, there are two challenges to these tools. First, there are over 5,000 psychometric tests available for use. Many agree that the real skill in using these tests is in the interpretation of the results. Second, the requesting of references and the amount of detail a former employer can give about a past employee is being increasingly limited by the law and courts.

A simple process to outsource these processes and the initial risk of hiring the wrong person is to hire individuals through a recruitment firm on a temporary to permanent basis. This advantage to outsourcing is that the public sector department can build the job description and qualities they are looking for in the employee. The recruiter can then source the candidates, use psychometric tests and then the employee can work in the role to see how they can actually do the job without becoming a public sector employee.

This is where www.buyersguide.co.uk helps the UK public sector. There are dozens of companies offering recruitment and candidate testing services. These services can further be searched by geography or by specialization like; psychometric testing, recruitment consultants, recruitment online, IT recruitment, management recruitment, as well as team building services.

Buyers Guide has been helping private companies get access to government contracts since 1996. With over 5,000 company listings on www.buyersguide.co.uk of specific products and services targeting public sector work, Buyers Guide is an easy solution for helping government buyers find qualified suppliers.

Companies listed on Buyers Guide range from multinationals to sole traders, but all have the goal of working on public sector contracts. These include working with schools, colleges, universities, local councils, ministry of defence, NHS, housing authorities, and government funded non-profit agencies.

The advantage that Buyers Guide offers is that the company “profile” on the www.buyersguide.co.uk website is written to specifically answer the pre-qualification questions from public sector buyers. This usually includes information like; previous work with other government bodies, years in business, industry qualifications or certifications like ISO 9002, testimonials from clients, government awards like investors in people, confirmation of equal opportunity employer status and specific contact details.

The Buyers Guide “profile” system allows government procurement specialists to quickly find companies that have government experience, the pre-qualification standards and a willingness to work with the public sector in one place saving time, effort and ultimately money.

Contact:

Buyers Guide
0191 260 5388
0191 221 2287
www.buyersguide.co.uk

Company History

Buyers Guide, based in Newcastle Upon Tyne, was established in 1996 and is the leading online directory of UK companies that are targeting the £600 billion in public spending each year. To date, there are over 5,000 company listings in 1,200 categories on the www.buyersguide.co.uk website.