Psychometric testing in recruitment and development is a significant industry, with dozens of providers offering instruments ranging from well-validated cognitive ability batteries to personality inventories of variable quality. The major providers, SHL, Talent Q (now part of Korn Ferry), Criteria Corp, cut-e, Hogan, and others, differ substantially in the types of tests they offer, the quality of their normative databases, and the use cases they're designed for. Understanding the landscape helps both candidates preparing for employer-mandated tests and HR professionals selecting assessment platforms.
The Major Enterprise Providers
The enterprise end of the market is dominated by a few large providers with decades of normative data and established employer relationships:
SHL (now part of Eversheds Sutherland)
SHL is one of the oldest and most widely used providers in the UK and internationally. Their core offerings include the Verify cognitive tests (numerical, verbal, inductive reasoning), the OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire), and a range of situational judgement tests. SHL tests are used heavily in graduate and professional recruitment, particularly in financial services, consulting, and large corporate employers. Their normative databases are large and segmented by job level and industry, which improves the quality of comparisons. Candidates taking SHL tests through employer portals often also encounter shortened "business-critical" versions.
Talent Q / Korn Ferry
Talent Q, now operated under the Korn Ferry brand following acquisition, is known for its adaptive testing technology, questions adjust in difficulty based on previous responses, which produces more precise measurement in shorter test sessions. Their Elements series covers cognitive ability; their Dimensions inventory covers personality. Adaptive formats tend to feel harder to candidates because the system never lets you stay in comfortable territory, difficulty tracks your ability level throughout. Korn Ferry has significantly expanded the platform since acquisition, integrating it with their broader leadership assessment and development suite.
Criteria Corp
Criteria Corp is a US-founded provider that has grown substantially in the UK and EU markets. Their platform (now branded as Criteria) offers cognitive assessments (Ccat, WPCT), personality inventories (Employee Personality Profile), and emotional intelligence measures. They're often selected by mid-size employers and tech companies for their clean platform UX and broad test library available as a subscription rather than per-administration pricing, which suits organisations doing large volumes of hiring.
cut-e (now Aon Assessment)
cut-e, acquired by Aon, specialises in gamified and technology-enabled assessments alongside more traditional psychometric instruments. Their scales series covers reasoning abilities in a compressed format (often 12–15 minutes for an ability battery). They're particularly common in high-volume recruitment for graduate programmes and early careers, where speed of assessment matters and candidate experience in the process is a priority. The gamified assessment formats they've developed have influenced the broader industry toward more engaging test designs.
Specialist and Niche Providers
Hogan Assessments
Hogan occupies a distinct niche: their instruments are explicitly designed for occupational contexts and built on a socioanalytic theory of personality. The HPI (Hogan Personality Inventory) covers bright-side personality; the HDS (Hogan Development Survey) covers derailment risk under stress, the so-called "dark side" traits; the MVPI (Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory) covers core drivers. Hogan's focus on performance prediction and derailment risk makes them particularly common in executive selection and leadership development contexts rather than volume graduate screening.
Saville Assessment
Saville Assessment (now part of Willis Towers Watson) was founded by Peter Saville, one of the original creators of the OPQ at SHL. Their Wave personality series is known for incorporating both typical performance (what you usually do) and potential performance (what you can do when needed) into the same instrument, which they argue provides a more complete and predictive personality profile. Wave has gained significant traction in UK and European organisations and is a credible alternative to OPQ for organisations wanting a personality instrument with a strong research base.
What Separates Quality Providers from Poor Ones
The psychometric testing industry has a significant range of quality. Key indicators that distinguish well-validated instruments from poor ones:
| Quality indicator | What to look for | Red flag |
|---|---|---|
| Reliability | Published test-retest and internal consistency coefficients (≥0.80) | No published reliability data |
| Validity evidence | Criterion validity studies linking scores to job performance | Claims of validity without studies |
| Normative data | Large, recent, demographically described norm groups | Small, undescribed, or dated norms |
| Adverse impact data | Published group difference statistics and adverse impact analysis | No adverse impact disclosure |
| BPS/EFPA accreditation | Instruments reviewed under BPS Psychological Testing Centre standards | No independent review |
Preparing for Employer Psychometric Tests
Candidates can meaningfully prepare for the ability-based tests used by major providers. Cognitive ability tests, numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, abstract/inductive reasoning, are skills that respond to practice. Familiarity with item formats, timed practice, and understanding of common reasoning patterns all improve performance, not just confidence. Free practice materials are available through most major providers' websites; dedicated preparation platforms (e.g., JobTestPrep) offer provider-specific practice sets.
Personality questionnaires are a different case. Attempting to "game" a well-constructed personality inventory is harder than it appears, and most enterprise-grade instruments have response consistency checks that flag inconsistent or highly socially desirable responding. The better approach is to respond authentically and thoughtfully rather than trying to guess what the "right" profile looks like.
Our free IQ test provides a well-structured cognitive ability assessment covering the reasoning domains most commonly tested by major psychometric providers, giving a useful baseline and preparation reference.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which psychometric provider's tests are hardest?
Difficulty in cognitive ability tests is partly a function of the role level being recruited for, graduate-level tests are calibrated harder than operator-level ones. Among the major providers, Talent Q's adaptive format is often described by candidates as particularly demanding because it continuously adjusts to keep questions at the edge of your ability. SHL Verify tests at senior levels are also demanding. The "hardest" test for any individual depends on their ability profile relative to the comparison group the test is normed on.
Do employers share psychometric test results with candidates?
This varies significantly by employer and provider. In the UK, candidates have a Data Subject Access right to their test scores under GDPR. Some employers share results proactively; others provide them only on request. Organisations using Hogan and Saville Wave in development contexts typically share results with candidates as part of a feedback session, personality assessments are most valuable when the person who took them understands what the results mean.
Are online psychometric tests as valid as supervised ones?
For personality inventories, online and supervised administration produce essentially equivalent results, there's limited scope for cheating on a personality questionnaire. For cognitive ability tests, online unsupervised administration introduces the possibility of assistance and can inflate scores relative to supervised performance. Major providers address this with follow-up verification testing (shorter supervised tests at assessment centre stage), and most large employers use the online score as a screening filter rather than a definitive measure.
What is the BPS Psychological Testing Centre?
The British Psychological Society's Psychological Testing Centre reviews and accredits psychological tests for use in occupational contexts. Their review covers technical quality (reliability, validity, normative data), adequacy of user guidance, and compliance with testing standards. Tests that have received BPS review provide greater quality assurance than those that haven't, though BPS review is not universal and absence of review doesn't necessarily indicate poor quality for instruments from other national psychometric traditions.
Can psychometric tests screen out good candidates unfairly?
Yes, this is a genuine concern. Cognitive ability tests consistently show group mean differences across demographic groups (particularly by race and socioeconomic background), which creates adverse impact when used as screening filters. Well-constructed tests are designed to minimise construct-irrelevant variance, but they can't eliminate socioeconomic and educational background effects entirely. Best practice involves using cognitive ability tests alongside other selection methods (structured interviews, work samples) rather than as standalone screens, and validating cut-off scores against actual job performance in the specific role context.