Are Personality Tests Effective in Hiring?

1. Are Personality Tests Effective in Hiring? Week 3 Dyad Lauren Wells Glenice Booker-Butler

2. Personality Tests • Personality tests can reveal intangible characteristics about a person. • Personality tests are available in a wide variety of content and forms. The tests themselves are designed to determine intangible (difficult to measure) characteristics including cognitive skills, intelligence quotients, integrity tests and personality traits. • Results are used to measure a prospective employee's honesty and any propensities for negative or illegal behaviors. Many questions are posed to address how an employee might perform in specific situations such as conflict, pressure, challenge or ethical decisions. • These questions can be designed for specific jobs and tasks.

3. So… Are Personality Tests Effective in Selecting Employees to Hire?

4. Hiring based on a personality test is effective. Argument #1 – Lauren Wells

5. Why Hire Based on Personality Types • It’s difficult to hire based on a resume alone. • Aside from skills, the candidate should be a culture fit in the organization. • “Employers use personality…inventories for measuring and predicting…intangibles” (Dessler, 2009).

6. Why Hire…cont. • Certain positions require particular personality traits. • Example: Extroverts tend to be enthusiastic, talkative, assertive and gregarious. Thus, “may be better suited for higher-level positions, many of which involve a lot of collaboration and public speaking” (Ricker, 2012).

7. Why Hire…cont. • Employees who not only can perform a job’s tasks, but are a good fit for the job, reduce: • Turnover • Costs Associated with Recruiting And Increase: • Productivity • Motivation

8. Personality Tests • 80% midsize & large companies use personality assessments as a pre-employment or new-employee tool • Personality tests don’t violate the EEOC act involving race, religion, age, sex, or national origin (Dessler, 2009).

9. Personality Tests Cont. • Personality Tests help quantify skills or statements such as critical thinking. • What personality types are associated with a person who thinks critically about a problem? • 2 Popular Personality Tests Used By HR • California Psychological Inventory • Determines how an individual with interact with others. • Myers-Briggs • “assess[es] preferences and styles useful for worker development” (Johnson, 2006).

10. Example of Personality Test Application • The Job of a Janitor • Requires: • consistently able to follow a standard routine • not overly ambitious • tend to be a bit introverted • willing to help when called upon • conscientious • enjoy routine tasks  • These traits are difficult to measure through an interview alone or a skills test. Example Reference: (Warrenfeltz, 2006)

11. Conclusion • Effective when used in conjunction with an interview and resume. • HR should have several different personality types that fit the job to increase candidate pool. • Becoming an increasingly popular tool in Strategic Human Resource Management.

12. Hiring Based on a Personality Test is Not Effective in Recruiting Argument #2 Glenice Booker-Butler

13. Why Not Personality Tests • Personality Profiling • A selection technique that can provide information about potential employee’s fit. • Popular tests like DiSC profiling can help you determine which candidates likely have strong leadership, organizational or communication skills. • When not administered and interpreted correctly, these tests can steer you away from qualified candidates, or open your company up to legal difficulties.

14. Why Not…cont. • The test must be focused with the job’s skill set and not focused on questions concerning gender, age, religious beliefs or ethnicity. • Personality tests must also not cross personal boundaries or address issues that are highly invasive. • If these unwritten rules are broken by an employer, they could be held liable for discrimination.

15. Personality Tests Under Fire • Personality assessments have also come under legal fire. • In 2005 a popular assessment, the Minnesota Multiphastic Personality Inventory Test, was ruled as a violation in the Americans with Disabilities Act because the test uncovered and identified psychological conditions protected under the Act. • The DiSC test in question has been modified to be acceptable under EEOC guidelines, but the importance of avoiding discrimination in pre-employment testing cannot be over-emphasized.

16. John McSpadden, CEO of MAC & Associates • “I don’t think [companies] should use them,” he says. He believes the cheap online personality tests “are a waste of time” and the more in-depth tests are prohibitively expensive for a small company. • “Companies are making a big mistake if they are letting these tests have too much power over the hiring decision,” he cautions. • “They are truly inaccurate,” he says when it comes to applicants lying or adjusting their answers when they take the tests, McSpadden’s own results with them were surprising, to say the least. “Seventy percent of the people who did great on our testing at our firm were fired,” he says.

17. McSpadden…cont. • McSpadden argues that companies could spend the same amount of money training their hiring managers in behavioral questioning, perhaps bringing in HR consultants to teach the basics of good interviewing. • McSpadden acknowledges that the reality and demands of hiring may be different for smaller firms: “For a small business, the CEO is the lead sales guy, the janitor — he’s everything. So this [personality testing] helps him out.”

18. Personality “Tests” • Even though the word "test" implies pass or fail, there's no such thing in personality assessments. There's no right or wrong, no numerical score. Instead, these tools assess our "soft" skills -- personality types, strengths,styles and preferences.

19. Bottom Line Personality tests don't tell you everything you want to know

20. Bottom Line…cont. Suppose you gave applicants several ability tests. Would you make your employment decisions based solely on this information? Or would you want to know more about these applicants? If you're like most people, you probably want to know whether or not they would: • Come to work on time • Work cooperatively with other employees • Put in a hard day's work every day • Pay attention to their quality of work • Stay with the company for a reasonable period of time When it comes down to it, applicants are really the only source of information for legal reasons, employers usually are afraid to say anything about their ex-employees. You can't depend on previous employers

21. Summary Personality Tests

22. Summary…cont. • Knowing more about people's personal characteristics, you could make more informed hiring decisions. The Work Preferences Questionnaire (WPQ), which measures important personality traits needed for effective job performance was developed for specialty evaluations.

23. Summary…cont. • More than 2,500 types of personality tests are used today, and they generally fall into two distinct categories for employment purposes: those used for selecting and hiring new workers and those used for developing and advancing existing staffers. • Research has shown that a person's traits, interests, and motivation contribute significantly to job success.

24. Thank You!

25. References - #1 Dessler, G. (2009). A framework for human resource management. (Seventh ed.). Boston: Prentice Hall. Johnson, T. (2006, May 06). Can your personality get you hired or fired?. Retrieved from http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/TakeControlOfYourLife/story?id=1915016&page=1 Ricker, S. (2012, September 22). Best jobs for introverts and extroverts. Retrieved from http://jobs.aol.com/articles/2012/09/22/jobs-for-introvert-and-extrovert-personality-types/ Warrenfeltz, R. (2006, March). Performance programs, inc.. Retrieved from http://www.performanceprograms.com/surveys/Hiring_Practices_Improve_Quality_Reduce_Turnover.html

26. References - #2 • Dressler, G. (2009) A Framework for human resource Management, seventh ed. • Johnson, T. (2006, May 06) Can your personality get you hired or fired? • Ricker, S. (2012, September) Best jobs for introverts and extroverts. • Michelle Shuler Key • edited by: Jean Scheid • updated: 1/16/2011 Pros and Cons of Employee Selection Techniques • Herman, Susan J. (1993). Hiring Right: A Practical Guide • Toddi Gutner is an award-winning journalist, writer and editor and currently a contributing writer covering career management issues for The Wall Street Journal