Despite the commonly held belief to the contrary, you can in fact study for and fool a psychometric test. However it does take a rather large investment in time and emotion.
Psychometric tests were designed to be used as a tool by a trained psychologist in conjunction with a face to face interview. These days, due to the stingy nature of airline recruitment departments the psychometric tests are interpreted by a computer program and the subsequent interview carried out by a HR person whom often have no real background in psychology and often simply use pro-forma type questions to tick boxes. These are the easiest tests to fool.
Fooling a psych test is like fooling a lie detector test - if you truly believe that you are telling the truth then your answers won't spike to indicated a lie. So it is with a psychometric test. You need to be the personality that the specific test is looking for and you need to carry that off for the duration of the test and any subsequent psychologist interview. You need to understand the specific psych profile down to the finest detail. It may be that you know someone who strongly exhibits this profile, you further study this profile from every source that you can find and put yourself in those shoes when giving an answer.
Seriously the psychology breadth of field that we are talking about here is not great. Broadly speaking, the tester will try to pigeon hole you in one of six or so profiles and then ask some pretty basic (canned) questions to back that up. With a bit of study you can know the intent and correct response to a psych question before the interviewer has even finished asking. The trick then is to remember to leave a thoughtful pause before responding.
Then again you can just be brutally honest. You might be surprised to find that you're exactly what they're looking for.
Last edited by psycho joe; 12th Jun 2013 at 00:41.