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POLL: Personality Tests should be used to evaluate candidates in the hiring process (Pick YES or NO)
Should personality tests be part of a prospective employee's hiring process? Should companies use this as a metric by which to evaluate candidates? Or is this too subjective, too monolithic?
So Yes or No? Do you Agree or Disagree with this statement?
Thanks!
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17 Answers
For those of you who are skeptical about their use, let me just cite one example in my research (which includes 13,000+ applications and then using algorithms to find correlations).
I gave the same profile tool to 1,340 entrepreneurs--in other words, they were active owners of small businesses in which role they were forced to take risk and be somewhat dominant in decision making.
WITHOUT A SINGLE EXCEPTION, they all scored in the upper half of the "dominant/risk-taking" scale. Again, without a single exception. In science, you don't need a sample size that large, but even using one that large there was not a single exception.
So what do I do with that information? I use it to evaluate the suitability of making an owner out of a key internal employee of the firm. If they don't score in the upper half (of this particular tool, which is geared towards business), I tell my client not to waste their money by hiring me to make it happen.
Yes, personality profiles can are often are abused. But there are uses for them.
Yes. Personalities are critical components for many jobs. The challenge before us is to learn as much as we can about a person's personality during the interview process. This challenge cannot be over-stated.
For anyone who does not agree personality is important; How would you like a person on your team that did everything themselves and did not work well with others? How would you handle a PM that has difficulty getting engineers to complete tasks? These are just two items dictated by personality.
Charisma, honesty, integrity, work ethic, etc. are all important.
References will be helpful. References not provided by job candidates would be better (i.e.; request contact information for the two previous managers at the last two companies worked). You will need to call more than one reference. The more references you contact, the more reliable your assessment will be.
Disagree - too subjective...
I absolutely believe that they should be used, as long as you are utilizing the correct tool. The only one that the DOL (Department of Labor) recognizes as a credible screening tool is PI (Predictive Index), but the presentation of the results is so not user friendly that I don't use them at all. I use DiSC PPSS, which is the expanded version (28 instead of 24 questions), and it's all about normal reactions in a workplace setting--which often differs from a personal setting.
I've administered 13,000 of them, following them up with a 25-question qualitative survey and a 20-30 minute interview. They have been very reliable predictors in SOME positions. In most positions, there is no pattern and so it shouldn't be used that way.
But even if you aren't looking for a specific pattern in the profile, to match a specific position, there's still tremendous value in the exercise, particularly in two areas: how they will manage people and how they want to be managed.
It has been a while since I got my degree in psychology, but I doubt that much has changed since then. Personality tests have always been designed, usually by academic researchers on grant money, to identify problems that don't quite reach a level of seriousness to allow clinical diagnosis. While their use has been broadened (I think wrongheadedly) since their heyday in the 60s, the fact remains that they do not and cannot tell you much about normal people (I was in a standarization group for the MMPI, taking the test multiple times, each time attempting to fool the test.) Moreover, no test has proven itself capable of accurately predicting behavior, especially in ambiguous business and employee situations.
I have also seen a number of instances where use of a test has subtly replaced rigorous interviews and human assessments, with predictable and sad results.
I wouldn't use them.
Your attributes personally affects your performance professionally. Who you are on the inside will eventually affect everything around you on the outside. When you peel a banana, it is not what is on the outside that makes it a tastier fruit but what you experience on the inside once the peel is off. My answer? Yes.
I compltely disagree with the thought that Personality test should be used to evaluate the candidates during the hiring process.Personality of person mostly depends on the environment in which he is living.Moreover neglecting the the person on the basis of personality might be dangerous as it would crush the talent and briliancy of the person.Every person should be given a chance prior to analyse him completely.Mere "show-off" and making curvy designs and remaining a cavity from inside is of no use and is rather injustice for the simple living people.
Our personal experience is that there has been as many meaningful and correct reports as there has been total out to lunch ones ..
If anyone has found ones that are better than 80% (as all the marketing hype indicates) in reality .. we certainly would like to hear about it..
Don Beam
www.halltel.com
From the perspective of hiring Call Center Agents – the answer is YES.
In a Study on “The Comparative Validities of a Variety of Predictors of Hourly Wage Jobs in Reducing Turnover in New Hires” the following Results were uncovered:
Interview -- 14% Predictive Ability
Reference Checking -- 26% Predictive Ability
Job Preview -- 44% Predictive Ability
Skills Testing -- 53% Predictive Ability
Personality/Job-Fit Assessment -- 80% Predictive Ability
Interviews are a subjective and potentially biased process. This Study demonstrated that regardless of an Interviewer’s Skill – or a Candidate’s ability to present well – an Offer of Employment based on a strong interview alone only had a 14% chance of predicting the long-term effectiveness of a Job Candidate for a Call Center Agent position.
Adding Reference Checking to the Interview Process only increased the likelihood of predicting long-term effectiveness in a Job Candidate for a Call Center Agent position to 26%. And we all know that it’s getting harder to perform meaningful & insightful Reference Checks.
Job Previews - via software-based call simulators - or through having the Candidate just spend some time on the Production Floor shadowing Agents/Supervisors - only increases the likelihood of predicting long-term effectiveness in a Job Candidate for a Call Center Agent position to 44%.
Skills Tests such as Typing Tests, Audio Transcription Tests, Windows Literacy Tests, etc. only increase the likelihood of predicting long-term effectiveness in a Job Candidate for a Call Center Agent position to 53%. That’s just a bit better than flipping a coin!
With an 80% Predictive Ability, Personality/Job-Fit Assessments are best at forecasting future success of a Job Candidate for a Call Center Agent Position. Personality/Job-Fit Assessments weed out Job Candidates who will burn out fast – or quit - because they aren't suited for the work - and identifies the people with the Personality/Job-Fit, Soft Skills, Motivation, and Work Ethic to be top Call Center Agents.
Personality/Job-Fit Assessments allow you to select new Call Center Agents who will fit your employment needs better - and stay on the job longer - leading to an Agent Workgroup that has more experience and is more productive.
Top performing Contact Centers drive their Revenue & Performance through superior hiring tactics. We help employers gain better insight & more accurate predictions as to which applicants from a pool of Candidates would perform up to, or beyond their established standards. You can find out about a Free Trial of SPAS Call Center Agent Pre-Employment Screening Software at http://www.telesoftsystems.ca/64201.html
The answer is YES. Just remember a test is another interview of the applicant. But it is the only way I have figured out how to ask a 100 or more validated question using all of the applicants and none of the interviewers time.
YES! It's a great tool for both the employer and the prospective candidate.
It helps the employer lower their costs of hiring (since if they hire the wrong 'fit' for their company, it would mean going through the hiring process again!).
It also helps the candidate to know more about themselves. Even if they don't secure the job they learn where their strengths and weaknesses are and so can apply themselves to search for a job where they have strong aptitude.
@SandraBaptist
I like assessments for an additional reason: building diverse teams. While the primary focus is usually to find the best match for the role, there is value in using these instruments to strengthen a team by balancing and diversifying types and styles.
Yes personality test really works out and should be done to evaluate a person, but the way they are done in the corporate world should be changed..personality test should always be done when the employee in on the job and when he/she is facing real situations and problems to solve..but not as a procedure or a part of interview process..
YES - recently experienced one as candidate (!) BUT under 2 CONDITIONS:
1- results are given to the candidate after the process : it is interesting and always learning material for candidates
2- it should only be used at the end of the recruitment process, and not as a discriminating element for coming up with a short list of potential candidates retained.
I think ideally your two conditions make sense, however, in our current business environment neither is always possible. Condition 1 is fair after a person has put the energy into the process they should receive some insights on how they are being presented by the assessment. The problem is that many legal departments will not allow the assessors to share the results with people who were not selected. This is to avoid litigious people who may not agree with the assessments. It is extremely rare to win a law suit based on poor assessment practices but the expense of defending them merits the caution of the legal department. We provide feedback and a development plan for every person that is hired and will give a complimentary feedback to people who are not hired if it is OKed by the client.
Number 2 is also best practice but many positions have a lot of applications. Once you screen the resumes, a company is faced with spending hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars discriminating between candidates. Therefore they are faced with choosing candidates based solely on experience (resume) or adding an additional data point. In this case, taking the assessments may be an easy way to get that additional data point and therefore give someone an opportunity that would have been passed over if judged solely by the resume.
What does the alpha level need to be to be considered an exact science? Lets take a real life example. We have a client who uses us for call center assessments. Through the process of profiling the job, we learned that empathy was crucial because the CSRs were talking to mostly elderly people who were confused about their medical condition. We tested the best CSRs and found that 95% scored between 60-90 on our empathy scale. Imagine that someone applies for the job and scores 15%. Based on statistics, their true score is somewhere between 1 and 30 (alpha =.05). This applicant has worked in call centers their whole adult life. Their most recent experience was with a big box electronic store that was recently closed. The experience looks good but would you bring this person in for an interview if you have a stack of 100 applications for 5 positions? Your thoughts?
No question, the answer is "yes.". But, there is a qualifier - the person administering the instrument must understand the research-based psychology behind it.
Further, there are multiple levels of application of findings. One, at an elementary level, is suitability for the construct of execution in a given job role (process). Next, and perhaps more important, is match or fit with the culture of the hiring organization. The core questions is not so much to find people to fit one mold, but to understand how other styles and preferences can enrich overall group performance.
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