The Relationship Between Individual Aptitude Test Scores And Job Performance For Employees In Selected Harare Companies

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this study was to test the relationship between individual aptitude tests

score results and actual job performance, as measured in selected Harare companies. The

rationale for the study was based on the observation that some people who do well on the

job but have not necessarily passed psychometric tests, also experience has shown that

candidates fail psychometric test when they have excellent reference letters from previous

employers. The significance of this study was to enable selected Harare companies to have

an insight into the relationship between psychometric tests and job performance as a way

of informing their recruitment policies. There are no studies to the researcher’s knowledge

that have been carried out in Zimbabwe on aptitude test as a valid predictor of job

performance. Also the previous studies did not focus much on aptitude tests. This study

was quantitative in nature and the simple random sampling technique was used. The

researcher obtained the performance rating score of employees who took part in the

research from their respective companies through the help of Industrial Psychology

Consultants, the aptitude tests score results were obtained from Industrial Psychology

Consultants since they are the tests administrators. Individual test scores on aptitude tests

where correlated with performance rating scores. The major finding of this investigation

was that all three subtests of differential aptitude tests namely verbal reasoning, numerical

reasoning, and abstract reasoning correlated positively with job performance. A moderate

correlation r 0.39 between aptitude tests and job performance was found leading to the

rejection of all the null hypothesis. The researcher would recommend that the organization

which use aptitude test/ psychometric test to continue using these tests as they are valid

predictors of job performance, and also organizations which do not use these to start using

them for their recruitment/ selection process. To the future researcher would recommend

that they focus on larger sample or include many job families in order to generalize results.