Psychometric tests provide one such alternative method. Since the 1980s, businesses
in the UK have been making increasing use of psychometric tests as part of the selection
process for job vacancies. The tests attempt to measure the abilities, attributes, personality
traits and various skills of the candidates under consideration for particular vacancies. The
main advantage of using these tests as a means of assessing skill demands in the UK
economy is that employers have to pay money in order to use the tests: either the costs of
training their staff to use and administer the tests plus whatever it may cost to buy in the test
from a commercial test publisher, or the cost of employing external consultants to administer
the tests. Because of the costs involved, which are quite substantial, in principle the tests are
more likely to measure the skills which employers really want rather than those which they
report over the telephone in response to business surveys. On the other hand, compared to
skill surveys, using information about psychometric tests is an indirect approach to the
assessment of changing demands for skills. They are also less representative, because not all
organisations use tests, nor are they used for all types of vacancy. Moreover, while survey
results on skill shortages are plentiful, as far as we are aware, no work has been conducted to
date which uses psychometric testing in this way. Most of the research literature on psychometric testing has been written by psychologists, and they have not focused on economic issues of skills and skills shortages.