How to prepare for a psychological exam

Hello friends!

Continuing our series of texts that talk about Money and Profession, we are going to give you tips on how to prepare for competitions, with the aim of helping in the preparation of the psychological assessment. The tips given here are valid for all contests, although they have differences in the form of evaluation, I think the content of this text will be useful for all contestants.

But before we talk about tips for emotional and mental preparation, I’d like to show you how the selection and psychological assessment process works.

In the private sector or in public (or public-private) administration, when a vacancy is created, a needs assessment is carried out. That is, the directors or managers of the area will assess the number of professionals that will be necessary to hire, as well as the professional profile of each one of them.

For example, in a certain city there is a shortage of psychologists. Health managers then consider the need to hire 3 professionals. But what will the professional profile of each of these 3 look like? Assuming that 1 vacancy is for clinical psychology, 1 vacancy for school psychology and 1 vacancy for human resources, the professional profile of each of these 3 professionals (even though they all have a background in psychology) will be different, as each day-to-day job requires specific personal characteristics . That is, a clinical psychologist has a different profile from that of a school psychologist and a hospital psychologist. Of course there are similarities, as they have the same training, but there are obvious requirements in each vacancy that require an adequate profile.

With this, the professional who is trying the contest or is going to sign up or has already signed up must assess whether he is prepared to fulfill that role. For example, I have extensive experience in clinical psychology and I see an opening for an army competition. From the public notice and the specific knowledge test (which lists knowledge in the human resources area) I can already imagine that they want a professional from organizational psychology and not from clinical psychology. Some contests are clearer in the functions that will be performed, while others only give indications from the knowledge test.

Well, evaluating the army contest, I thought: “Do I have the profile for the vacancy? Would it perform the duties well? Would I be happy in 5, 10 years having entered this competition?” Many may think that only the salary is worth the sacrifice. However, we shouldn’t think this way, because if I don’t like organizational psychology why am I going to work with it for years? In fact, it’s likely that I won’t even be able to pass the psychological assessment as my personal profile would not be suitable for this vacancy, while clinical psychology would be.

To give another example, a friend of mine was in dire need of a job. Therefore, it selected the tender for general services. This friend has a high school degree, great knowledge in different areas, speaks another language… but, anyway, he really needed the job. Now, will he pass the contest? Will he be able to perform the role satisfactorily?

Result: he passed the contest but didn’t go to work. I mean, deep down he knew that job wouldn’t be for him for many reasons. Just as the army psychologist job wasn’t for me, the general services job wasn’t for him.

With this, we have to, before registering for the contest, carefully assess which contests are suitable for us. And why this? Because it could be that you have excellent results on all the tests, but fail the psychological assessment. Because the main thing in the psychological assessment is to find candidates who have the profile of the vacancy. It is not just to assess whether the candidate has a serious mental problem, but rather to conclude the contest with the certainty that the selected person will fulfill the function satisfied with the service he will have to perform in the coming years.

This is the first tip, therefore, and it is fundamental. At the time I worked with Human Resources, I did a psychological evaluation of a contest for a public-private company near São Paulo capital. And two candidates from that competition marked me. Evidently, I won’t talk about details to preserve secrecy, but the general idea is valid for everyone who is thinking or studying for contests.

One of these candidates had had experience in a multinational company for many years. He spoke languages, however, in the psychological evaluation it was proven to have a serious mental disorder. Although for the practice of the position disputed by him, he had the capacity, he had most experience, an experience larger, and higher. For this reason – in addition to the mental disorder – he was not selected because in that vacancy he would be subordinate (whereas before he was the leader). What this selection process demonstrates is that there is no point in trying for a position that is much higher than your resume, but it also does not work to try for an “inferior” vacancy. Just like the case of my friend who tried for general services, he would cause problems because he would end up trying to boss his boss around.

Another candidate was a recent graduate of a prestigious college. But the vacancy was not directly linked to his professional training. Although he had scored close to the total on each of the tests, it was proven in the psychological assessment that his interest and overall personality were not close to the professional profile expected for the job. Let’s say: the vacancy was for accounting and the person was newly graduated in engineering. Well, the function could be performed yes. But the company considered short-term dissatisfaction and that it was extremely likely that the candidate would end up leaving the job, which would lead to having to take another contest.

Therefore, evaluate your personality characteristics – your pros and cons but also evaluate what is being asked in the Contest Notice. If you’re applying for a contest in an area other than the one that would be ideal for you, that’s fine. It may indeed be possible for you to pass the tests and even the psychological assessment, but you have to remember that day-to-day work can be a permanent source of stress and unhappiness if you are allocated an area that is not close to your profile.

When we say here mental we mean the logical or rational functions that are evaluated. In many contests, in addition to general and specific knowledge tests, mental assessment tests or tests of intelligence or logical reasoning are carried out. This is the part of the psychological assessment that is easiest to prepare for.

Well, if you are not an extremely rational and logical person, you can start training by doing a series of activities aimed at improving your performance on tests. But it’s important to remember that it’s not a matter of a week or a month. To really improve yourself, you will need time. Anything connected with thinking can be useful to help you develop the mental part of the assessment.

Let’s think of a list (which you can expand):

– Study mathematics

– Study philosophy

– Do puzzles

– Do word searches

– Solve logic problems

And so on. As I said, the list can be expanded. The tip here is to train everything that can contribute to the improvement of thinking, because tests are applied in contests that have objective results, that is, there are questions or figures that have a certain result. In the psychological evaluation, the candidate can be rejected for not having reached the expected average for his age or profession.

The emotional part of training for competitions is a little more complicated. I will explain why. When we say emotion, we are thinking here not only of emotions themselves such as fear, anger, anxiety but also of what we can say is temperament or personality – which is more difficult to change.

Let’s think about a vacancy for tenders for the Military Police. As its name already indicates, the PM is closely linked to the military, defense and, ultimately, war, struggle. A person who will become a police officer has to be firm, secure, psychologically strong. Now, imagine a person who has a more fragile, fearful, sensitive personality… will he be able to perform the function of the Police?

It might be. But as we said above, it would not be the right role for the profile. Is it possible to change the whole personality from a sensitive person to a cold person? Yes, it is possible and it can happen, but in general it is not recommended.

That’s why I stressed so much the importance of knowing your own profile and the profile of the vacancy. But what this tip has in practice is the fact that it is possible to train specific emotions more than training to change the general personality or temperament.

For example, think of a person who in every assessment (written test, oral test) is extremely nervous. Cry, shake, have diarrhea. Well, this nervousness can be worked on by the person until reaching the point where there is no more or little hindrance in the performance of the tests and the psychological evaluation of the contests. Although a little nervousness is natural and is disregarded by the psychologists who will be evaluating, if the person has too much of it, he may be disqualified.

So this tip is simple. Assess your emotions. Do you notice that you have any kind of problem or emotional difficulty, for example, are you afraid of public speaking?

If you notice any difficulties, think that you can change. You can read books, take courses and training, seek a psychologist and perfect your emotional balance.

Tip 4 – Don’t worry about knowing about psychological tests

It is very common for people to look for the psychological tests that will be part of the contest so they can paste, copy, train. This is not the case as most psychological tests do not have a right answer. Apart from the reasoning tests, all the other tests evaluate in another way that cannot be circumvented. With that, instead of looking to acquire, buy, borrow or download psychological tests or memorize the “answers”, keep in mind the tips above:

– Know your own personality

– Train logical reasoning as much as possible by studying and playing with games that train the mind

– Evaluate your emotions and if you notice any particular difficulty, seek help in books, texts, movies, training and psychology

– To help – See also the Contest Manual

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