Tink Recruitment: Connecting people through psychometrics

As a boutique recruitment agency operating in a high-stakes market, Tink Recruitment can’t afford to be wrong about people.

Director Aimee Tink explains how specialised predictive psychometric testing helps her team back winning candidates for their clients in the NSW real estate, property and development industry.

A people-first approach

In an increasingly automated world, successful recruitment requires something inherently human.

Better recruiters have high emotional intelligence (EI), equipping them with the skills to empathise, influence, lead and motivate people, and to find out how clients and candidates tick to make mutually fulfilling professional matches.

For Aimee Tink, Director of Tink Recruitment, making these mutually fulfilling professional matches means getting to know both the client and candidate inside-out.

“We create rapport and relationships with our clients and get a feel for their culture and the candidate’s needs and wants, and where they want to be,” she says.

“We meet with our clients, we find out about the office culture, the structure of the office, and where their core values and ethics lie. We then go to the candidate and we start looking at what their needs are – it’s pretty much matchmaking really.”

Delving deeper with psychometrics

Mis-hires can be expensive – in fact Josh Bersin from Deloitte suggested that losing an employee can end up costing businesses up to twice that person’s annual salary.

One of the things that sets Tink Recruitment’s service apart is the way it picks candidates’ brains in order to accurately predict how likely they are to thrive in a given role.

They do this via predictive psychometric assessments. These online assessments harness the power of data to scientifically predict a candidate’s suitability for a role. Test assessments provide remarkable insight into a person’s individual strengths and weaknesses, how they will behave in a particular workplace, and how to get the most out of them as an employee.

“The psychometric testing we use is for sales people, administrators and property managers,” Tink explains. “(The tests) go right through how likely candidates are to abide by guidelines and rules, how they are with time management, how good they are at sales, what areas they’re lacking in, and how you (employers) can help them.”

In an interview situation, candidates may be nervous, or trying hard to affect the persona they believe employers are looking for (also known as “impression management”). But there’s no fooling the assessments, which can be tailored to specific roles and delve deeply into the taker’s psyche to reveal their proficiency in key skill requirements.

For example, measuring a potential salesperson’s attention to detail, drive, sales focus, resiliency and flexibility, and the strength of their communication, negotiation, problem-solving and relationship-building skills.

For this reason, Tink also uses the predictive psychometric tests in-house when hiring, and then as an annual barometer of her own employees’ professional development.

“I use the tests for our own company recruitment as well,” she says. “And then, I get my team to re-do them every year to see how they’ve grown – if they’ve advanced or if they’ve actually gone backwards, which areas need improvement, or where they have improved and where they’re lacking.”

Getting the best out of the best

Tink says the predictive psychometric assessments used by her team have added long-term benefits to her company because they indicate to clients which management techniques can be used to help get the most out of incoming employees.

This also means Tink Recruitment can set up clients with realistic expectations regarding a candidate’s personality and future performance, and how likely they are to respond to different motivating tactics.

“(A psychometric assessment) adds value to the Tink team. It allows us to service our clients better,” she says. “It helps us understand each candidate, as no two people are the same.

“It also tells us literally how to manage a person – it gives a summary of what to look out for and how people will react to situations (when under extreme stress, for example), and how to know what management style is needed.

“So, it’s a great tool because every individual is different and we can give all this information to our clients so they know how to manage (a new employee) within their existing team. That’s what I use psychometric assessments for (in house) as well.”

Tink gets a genuine buzz when her candidates are successful, and is looking forward to the opportunity to take an even more tailored approach to recruiting in the not-too-distant future.