Individual career and educational guidance supported by psychometric profiling is one of the key services offered to schools and colleges by VTCM Indigo for the benefit of their pupils/students.

What is psychometric profiling?

Psychometric profiling is a tool whereby various aspects of a human’s mental performance can be assessed. It provides an objective measurement of certain key aspects of an individual. Most commonly such tests will measure different key abilities and/or aspects of personality.

Frequently the test results will be “normed” against typical scores from an appropriate group of people. A person’s numerical ability may be at an average level compared to a group of people of the same age on , say, a business studies course (where you might expect figure work to be a strength of theirs) but the same score may look high when compared to a group of people on, say, a history course (where different abilities than numeracy are more likely to be significant for success).

How does psychometric profiling enhance the guidance process?

If career and educational guidance is to be of real value, it needs, at the same time as offering encouragement, to be based on reality. Whilst interest has a valuable part to play, it is at least as important to gain an objective measurement of a person’s abilities and personality and to see whether these would sustain them in the direction their interests suggest. (It is all very well thinking you might like to be a vet because of a strong interest in animals and a wish to help them when ill or injured – but, if a person is going to be successful in achieving this aim, it will be important for them to know that their underlying abilities and personality would also support them in this).

The fact that a student is succeeding with their grades in a particular subject could be misleading since many subjective factors come into play – whether they like the teacher; the current section of the subject may be particularly interesting to them but marks may drop off when another section of study necessarily follows on.

Psychometric testing can give an objective measurement of a person’s underlying abilities and key aspects of personality. Quite the reverse of saying that person X hasn’t got the general level of ability or the balance of abilities and personality to succeed in a given direction, it may well, instead, suggest that the level of career or course they are contemplating would undersell their general ability level or, otherwise, may suggest alternative ideas career and course ideas which the balance of their profile suggests might be more appropriate. Armed with this knowledge, the individual, helped by a professional adviser, can make their own choice.

The Morrisby Profile

The Morrisby Profile is the main psychometric set of tests used by VTCM Indigo to help its advisers to better help the client.

With Morrisby, the emphasis is on objectively measuring different key abilities and aspects of a person – but not in just a summative way. What matters, is not the stark “amount” of ability revealed by each test but, far more important, is the way one ability in a particular person compares with the level of another within that same person and that with another ability again – providing a profile indicating a person’s greater area of strength. Knowing this, the young person can make their decisions accordingly.

The Morrisby Profile is unusual in that it assumes that any employer or course leader will be interested in the person “in the round” – the balance of their abilities, of their personality and also taking expressed interests into account.  

General benefits of the Morrisby Profile

• Provides information on likely future performance in study or at work
• Provides an all tround psychological profile of the individual
• The system is flexible with different comparison (norm) groups against which people from 15 years upwards can be profiled
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Benefits of psychometric profiling for pupils and students

When used correctly by a qualified guidance practitioner, psychometric profiling (like the Morrisby Profile most used by VTCM Indigo advisers) can:-

• Give a purpose and focus for their studies
• Provide an objective description of where the overall balance of their  abilities really lie and which careers would be best supported by their profile
• Show the balance of personality of the individual. Different careers require different personality profiles and work and study groups require a balance of different as well as overlapping abilities from team members if the study or work group is to succeed
• Show whether the level and type of your personality is more or less significant than your abilities in terms of what you can offer a course or career
• Provide a source of independent and accurate information about careers (and, through conversation with the adviser, courses) which may suit the individual
• Give a clear indication of the style of learning that suits you best – with implications for the type of course you choose
• Show how you as an individual tend to go about solving problems
• Gives a realistic basis for conversation about and decisions on subject, course and career options including higher education choice

Exactly what does the Morrisby Profile assess?

• Abstract reasoning
• Measures and compares verbal versus numerical versus perceptual (diagrams and pictures) abilities
• Spatial and mechanical abilities – showing whether you have a more applied (hands on) approach
• Preferred learning style
• Planning style
• How aware you are of people and things around you?
• Flexibility – do you prefer to stick to one thing at a time or do you love variety and everything “going off” around you? Different careers require different personalities
• Team and leadership style
• Manual speed and skill – just as important for a surgeon as for a jewellery maker and silversmith, for example.