From various places the intrinsic validity and the impact that this kind of evaluations can have on the company is questioned.
They are blamed for being invasive towards the candidate; of not being able to accurately measure what is intended; and the most critical point out that they border on magic.
However, the degree of reliability that many of these tests have is unquestionable and is supported by their instrumentation. That is, in what the experience of its application in different people allows to conclude.
In the first place, I think it is convenient to make a first distinction between psychometric and projective tests, paying special attention to the latter since commenting on both would make reading this article too extensive.
The power of the examination of a projective nature lies in a first and radical cause: the existence of the unconscious. Unconscious that from Freud onwards we know it through its effects: the dream, the failed acts, the symptom and its repetition among others. And that from Lacan we rediscover it as an instance constructed in the manner of a language, with its logic of metaphors and metonyms.
Continuing with this, it is through graphic techniques that we can analyze and see the subject's unconscious in action. With its advances and setbacks. With its difficulties and strengths. Through the drawings we access what the person is not able to tell us with words. Because it hides, or because it cannot do it directly.
Thus, those of us who dedicate ourselves to the study of people, to later indicate their future work, use the psychoanalytic theoretical corpus, orienting it to the organizational task.
The client demands to know how the subject learns, how he will adapt to new circumstances, tolerate pressure and how he will bond with superiors and colleagues. Being able to predict it avoids innumerable losses of time, and ensures that the personnel to be hired or the one who works in the organization adjusts to the requirements of the current or future position.
As practical applications, a correct psychotechnical exam should serve to:
- Detect and prevent mental pathologies capable of influencing absenteeism Describe the main characteristics of the Personality in order to guide each subject according to their structural features Motivate in a particularized way, obtaining improvements in performance Know who has development potential. Prevent dishonest behavior. Determine conflictive people and opinion leaders who are apt to create union complaints in the future.
Just to mention those of greatest interest to entrepreneurs.
To finish and as a first approach to the initial question, it is necessary to understand that in order to achieve the intended results, consisting of accessing the unconscious nuclei of the examinees, it is essential that those professionals in the task deserve an academic journey; experience as an analysand and solid practice in the field of organizational psychology. In this way, the profession of the psychologist, comparable to that of the artisan, makes projective techniques one of the instruments of greater depth, validity and reliability when narrating what a subject is like.
