With the technology to conduct more nuanced tests, some companies say they can provide more useful detail about how people think in dynamic situations. Marcus Butt/Getty Images/Ikon Images hide caption

With the technology to conduct more nuanced tests, some companies say they can provide more useful detail about how people think in dynamic situations.

The job interview hasn't changed much over the years. There are the resumes, the face-to-face meetings, the callbacks and the agonizing wait, as employers decide based on a hunch about who's best suited for the job.

Some companies are selling the idea that new behavioral science techniques can give employers more insight into hiring.

For most of her life, Frida Polli assumed she'd be an academic. She got her Ph.D, toiled in a research lab and started a post-doctorate program before she realized she'd been wrong.

Polli didn't want to study neuropsychology she wanted to use it in business.

"People have always wanted to find a way to assess someone's cognitive and emotional traits in an objective way that might give them a sense of: What is this person really ideally suited for?" she says.

So Polli co-founded Pymetrics, which uses brain games to measure things like attention to detail and risk tolerance factors that she says can help determine a good job fit. Polli says her own results were accurate.

"It told me that I was a little bit impulsive which I'm definitely impulsive. And entrepreneurship was my top match, so I was pretty happy about that. It was a relief because, you know, otherwise I'd have to consider a different job," she says.

Tests for intelligence and personality traits have been around for a century. But with big data and the technology to conduct more nuanced tests, some firms say they can provide more useful detail about people's innate abilities. They say a better gauge of personality traits can help increase productivity and reduce turnover.

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Recruiting Better Talent With Brain Games And Big Data