Before diving into the difference between aptitude and personality tests, we first understand a typical psychometric test. Psychometric tests are a set of tests that can assist people in identifying certain skills, their knowledge, and their personalities. These tests are very popular among recruiters and entrepreneurs because they evaluate performance conveniently to understand, even for those who are not tech geeks.
While most psychometric tests can do with web evaluations, some still need to be filled out with a pen and paper. One similarity between personality and aptitude tests is that they are timed and often cannot be completed in the first attempt.
What is a personality test?
While there are many individual personality traits, they can all be grouped under 5 main categories: openness, extroversion, neuroticism, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. A personality test can help individuals with a strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT) analysis.
A personality test can tell if someone is easy-going, controlling, anti-social, etc. Personality tests can identify many traits in a person, which can help them when they seek to become an entrepreneur or look for a job. Likewise, this test allows employers to filter candidates for the right employee.
What is an aptitude test?
With an aptitude test, individuals can assess their ability to complete tasks without knowledge or training. Literacy, verbal, logical and numeracy are among the most common factors measured in an aptitude test. When you have a deep understanding of the different paths the test can go, you will perform better in them.
Similarities between a personality test and an aptitude test
While we’ve seen the differences, let us understand what these psychometric tests have in common. These factors are measured in both tests:
- Verbal reasoning: Evaluators measure your level for understanding written content, arguments and communication skills. Before answering any questions, you will be required to read a few passages, and tests will assess your understanding. The tests can also measure your ability to think and arrive at conclusions. If necessary, your spelling and grammar skills will be evaluated too.
- Numerical reasoning: Your skills for mathematics is tested here. These tests are meant for individuals who seek to apply for job roles, including professional positions, sales positions, supervisory or managerial positions. These roles require that the employees use charts, statistical data, etc. The numerical reasoning tests may also evaluate your knowledge of trends, ratios, percentages, etc.
- Error checking: These tests present candidates with appropriate data. The candidates are tested by how quickly they can pinpoint errors in the data. Candidates seeking clerical job roles that require data entry can apply for this job. Individuals may also apply for fault-diagnosis tests. These tests check the candidate’s ability to solve problems purely by logic. This personality quiz helps employers fill technical roles in electronics and mechanics with highly skilled employees.
- Spatial reasoning: The candidate’s thought process concerning three-dimensional objects is evaluated in this category. Present with a limited amount of information, individuals must come to conclusions in a short period. Good spatial reasoning may choose to rotate the object to look at it from another angle.
- Diagrammatic reasoning: Diagrammatic reasoning assists recruiters in evaluating the ability of the candidate to solve problems with logic. If you are applying for management, finance or engineering roles, you will need to have high problem-solving skills that can be evaluated with this test.
Final Words
Both personality tests and aptitude tests have their place of importance in assessments of different personalities. Personality tests focus more on the individual and their interactions with society along with inherent traits. Aptitude tests focus on the deliverability and consistency in individual tasks, especially in how they perform in linguistics, numbers, logic, and the like. The tests enable HR personnel and other organizations to perform a psychometric evaluation of individuals in their personality and their skills.
The personality and aptitude tests are also crucial for employees to find what works best for them. They can certainly put in the right efforts and improve on every level. However, there is an entrepreneur personality test too. This test can help entrepreneurs gain a deeper perspective about their business and evaluate the kind of employees they need.
