Apply before 11:55 pm on Monday 10th March 2025
Reference number: 387281
Salary: £55,403 - £66,400
National = £55,403 - £61,939 London = £61,005 - £66,400
A Civil Service Pension with an employer contribution of 28.97%
Contract type: Permanent
Working pattern: Flexible working, Full-time, Job share, Part-time
Location
Bristol, South West England, BS2 0PS : Glasgow, Scotland, G2 8HS : Manchester, North West England, M2 3AA : Newcastle upon Tyne, North East England, NE98 1ZZ : City of Westminster, London (region), SW1A 2HQ : York, Yorkshire and the Humber, YO1 7PX
About the job
Job summary
The Government People Group exists to work with departments, professions, and functions to build a modern, effective Civil Service.
We support the government workforce with the right skills and capability. We are working with leaders to get the right people in the right jobs, with the right skills and continuous learning to excel in their roles.
We provide leadership, and in turn, create leaders with exceptional line management capability across departments, influencing partners in the wider public sector and beyond. This involves getting our retention and reward strategy right, to nurture specific skills, and create pride and resilience in our workforce.
Our role is also to provide system leadership across central government in pulling together back-office services. Collectively, we help support the Cabinet Office’s priority to drive efficiencies, and reforms that will make government work better, to ultimately provide a better service to the public.
Job description
This is an exciting time to join our Occupational Psychology Services (OPS) team - part of the Recruitment Directorate in Government People Group in Cabinet Office - as we seek to update and expand our services.
Our Vision
To embed best practice occupational psychology insights and solutions to support the future of the Civil Service, through delivery of high-quality psychometric tests and assessments.
Our Priorities
- To be at the leading edge of assessment and selection techniques and digital developments.
- To develop our services through evidence-based research and analysis.
- To ensure diversity and inclusion is embedded in all our activities.
- To provide a seamless and flexible customer experience.
- To meet business requirements with efficient, effective and value for money solutions.
- To provide a great and evolving candidate journey.
Our Service
Acting as an internal consultancy to all of the Civil Service, we collaborate with government departments, functions and professions to develop and deliver high quality, customer-focused assessment products and solutions grounded in occupational psychology and psychometrics. Our services aim to help identify and develop the best people from all backgrounds, including the Civil Service’s prestigious talent programmes.
We also place ourselves at the forefront of assessment innovation and are actively creating a growing range of evidence-based psychological assessment tools.
You will be joining a high performing multi-disciplinary team of occupational psychologists, psychometricians and digital experts who use evidence-based practice to put the client and user at the heart of what they do. We are a team that embraces innovation to deliver better results, improved efficiency and added value, with a strong commitment to diversity and inclusion.
If you are passionate about applying psychology and psychometrics in the workplace to really add value across a wide and varied agenda, then we really want to hear from you!
The Lead Psychometrician will lead on the psychometric development, testing and system integration of a suite of online tests used for recruitment in the Civil Service and the psychometric aspects of integration with our main candidate management systems. They will develop new content, carry out subject matter expert reviews and content trialing and lead the assembly and implementation of test products with our departmental customers – using a combination of surveys, item trialing, workshops and one to one user research. They will research and analyse new innovations and products, carrying out in-depth statistical evaluations.
The Lead Psychometrician will act as a subject matter expert and represent the service line professionally with a wide range of customers and stakeholders. They will manage the day-to-day availability and integrity of the test player and analytical function to ensure delivery is according to agreed standards.
The Lead Psychometrician will work very closely with a multi-disciplinary digital team operating an agile project management approach, so will work in an agile way in the design of test integrations, the user interface and test assembly, staging and implementation. Occasional travel within the UK will be a requirement of the role.
The Lead Psychometrician will be a member of a wider team of professional psychologists and will be expected to contribute to the development of professional practice and work collaboratively with colleagues on a wider portfolio of activities when the need arises.
Key responsibilities include:
Psychometric analysis
- Design and conduct psychometric and statistical analysis using CTT and IRT methods.
- Conduct advanced statistical and psychometric forensic analyses to enhance test security measures.
- Lead the development of new psychometric tests and research in the recruitment and assessment space.
Product Management and Development
- Manage the design, trialling and delivery of content and assembly of tests and assessments.
- Manage test availability, integrity and performance against agreed service standards.
- Manage item banks to ensure they meet psychometric/statistical needs.
- Develop and implement specifications and standardised procedures in test design and form assembly to support the publication process.
Leadership
- Oversee the integrity of tests and assessments to provide accurate item and candidate performance data to support test construction work.
- Act as a subject matter expert for recruitment tests and assessments.
- Lead the psychometric implementation of accessibility standards.
- Advise on delivery of user research, job analysis, online surveys and customer needs engagement initiatives.
- Present and communicate analytical/research findings and proposals to customers, stakeholders and others, orally and in writing.
- Keep up to date with and knowledge share the latest innovations in psychometrics, modern testing methods and in particular recruitment testing.
- Line management of one or two Psychometric Analysts may be required.
Person specification
In order to be successful in this role you will:
- Be degree educated in a numerate discipline with strong statistics/psychometrics background. You are likely to have a Masters in either Educational Measurement & Statistics, Quantitative Research Methods, Industrial/Organisational/Occupational Psychology, Psychometrics, or highly related discipline with a significant component of measurement theory in it.
- Be well versed in psychometric methods, modern statistical and psychometric theories, measurement principles, test design, analysis and validation, item bias, standard setting and have expertise in test development and psychometric methods using CTT and IRT methods.
- Have knowledge of SPSS and other statistical analysis packages (e.g., R or Mplus), survey packages, MS Office/Google Docs are required.
- Have good knowledge of group differences analysis, such as Differential Item Function (DIF) and adverse impact analysis.
- Experience in use of modern measurement models. For example, cognitive diagnostic models (CDM) or linear-on-the-fly models (LOFT).
- Be experienced with managing large-scale research and testing programs, either of norm trialing, volume recruitment testing, certification and/or licensure applications.
- Be a member of a professional body that regulates or promotes measurement standards, such as the BPS Divisions or statistical professions, or willing to work towards membership, and you may be a Registered Test User with the BPS.
- Basic understanding of WCAG 2.0 standards in relation to user interfaces and test design
- Have significant experience working in product delivery environments where high stakes assessment is carried out using computer-based testing.
- Have experience of working in a large, complex organisation with many approval controls, moving parts and stakeholders.
- Have excellent oral/written and interpersonal communications, leadership and management skills for multi-functional projects and operations.
- Have the ability to combine theory-based, academic and empirical experiences of developing new research / technical reports.
- Have the ability to work with various stakeholders, committees and governing boards, vendors, consultants, and business partners of different backgrounds.
- Have the ability to focus on technical details while maintaining high level perspectives
- Enjoy working in a team environment, be intellectually curious, conscientious, and motivated to work to continually improve the quality and validity of programme deliverables.
- Have project management skills to effectively manage multiple project assignments, timelines, deliverables, and milestones in accordance with Government Digital Services standards.
- You’ll be reporting directly to the Head of Online Tests and Assessments. You will work with a variety of clients, departments and professions across government. You will need to be able to demonstrate flexibility, the ability to deliver at pace and be someone who your team can really rely on.
- You’ll need to demonstrate real passion for applying psychometric expertise and evidence-based practice. Finally, we are a forward-looking team and so you will need to be too. You’ll embrace change and be eager to learn from it to develop and strengthen your role.
Do you see yourself as a talented individual that can achieve all this, progressing yourself and our team to the next level?
Additional information:
A minimum 60% of your working time should be spent at your principal workplace. Although requirements to attend other locations for official business will also count towards this level of attendance.
We would also like to draw your attention to the following LinkedIn event to be held on Google Meet where you will have the opportunity to meet some of the members of the team and ask questions with regards to the role and the application process. Please note that this session will not be recorded and if you are unable to attend on the date and time specified, you can direct your questions to Gaye Ildeniz at gaye.ildeniz@cabinetoffice.gov.uk
Lead Psychometrician LinkedIn Event Thursday, 20 February · 5:00 – 6:00pm
Time zone: Europe/London
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/zhd-fopd-nhe
Or dial: (GB) +44 20 3937 1648 PIN: 324 961 019#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/zhd-fopd-nhe? pin=8330697331413
Qualifications
Degree educated in a numerate discipline with strong statistics/psychometrics background. You are likely to have a Masters in either Educational Measurement & Statistics, Quantitative Research Methods, Industrial/Organisational/Occupational Psychology, Psychometrics, or highly related discipline with a significant component of measurement theory in it.
Behaviours
We'll assess you against these behaviours during the selection process:
- Communicating and Influencing.
- Working Together.
Technical skills
We'll assess you against these technical skills during the selection process:
- Managing development of assessment content.
- Conducting research and evaluation.
- Working with complex statistics.
- Developing own knowledge.
- Innovating in an applied environment.
- Evidencing and ensuring fairness and validity of assessments.
Benefits
Alongside your salary of £55,403, Cabinet Office contributes £16,050 towards you being a member of the Civil Service Defined Benefit Pension scheme. Find out what benefits a Civil Service Pension provides.
- Learning and development tailored to your role.
- An environment with flexible working options.
- A culture encouraging inclusion and diversity.
- A Civil Service Pension which provides an attractive pension, benefits for dependants and average employer contributions of 27%.
- A minimum of 25 days of paid annual leave, increasing by one day per year up to a maximum of 30.
