Slashdot Mirror
Personality Testing For Employment
Thelasko writes "While I was in college, I had the opportunity to take an elective course in Industrial Psychology. One section of the course covered hiring practices and the validity of 'personality testing' to screen applicants (Google link for non-subscribers). The Wall Street Journal has a long article discoursing on how such tests are used in today's economy. While personality tests may be designed to uncover underlying personality traits such as honesty, critics claim that the tests instead reward cheaters." The article talks mostly about the tests' use in winnowing candidates for retail positions — deciding whom to interview. Anybody encountered them in an IT or more technical context?
If I went for a job at google I would expect them to have my profile already. You have been visiting the following web sites...
http://michaelsmith.id.au
I too took Industrial Psychology, and some other psychology courses as well. I remember that two of the courses covered the subject of "personality testing", and nearly all the material and cases we covered criticized the use of personality testing for any kind of serious use, as being notoriously unreliable.
For example, my professors (and our course material) taught me that some corporations still use one or another form of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), or tests derived from it, for personality testing prospective employees and so on. In the words of one professor: "This test and similar tests were thoroughly discredited over 20 years ago. It is astounding that anybody would still give them credence."
But apparently some still do.
Some personality tests are easy to figure out, which indeed rewards cheaters. Others use various levels of trickery to try to combat cheating (multiple, modified forms of the same question scattered throughout the test, for example), which rewards the more intelligent cheaters. And so on. Often the tests are biased culturally, and some of them still in use are so old that their wording, assumptions, and scoring are questionable today.
In short, I would look at personality tests for pre-employment screening the same way I look at drug testing and standard polygraphs: If you are an "innocent" person, you should NEVER volunteer to do these things. They do absolutely nothing to help your situation, and all you can do is lose. Statistically, they are also biased toward false positives more than false negatives, and the odds are not in your favor. And finally, I thoroughly despise the "guilty until proven innocent" attitude that is firmly set by the use of these tests when there is no prior suspicion of wrongdoing or problems. It sends the wrong message to employees, and their families, and their children.
Apparently not being a blithe, extroverted yes-man on some arbitrary test now means you can't get a job.
I was recently hired for a new job, and of my new bosses, while they've uniformly expressed pleasure in my technical abilities, they all say the reason for hiring me was my personality. One mentioned specifically that their job involves keeping clients happy, and who would you rather bring to meet the client: the arrogant jackass who's got a lot of technical experience, or the personable guy who is willing to learn anything he doesn't know and happy to admit that he doesn't know everything.
Your mileage may vary, but I just jumped $30k in salary during a recession.
Did any of them hear of "faking it"?
It's quite possible to "fake it".
it's also quite possible to have an adaptive and modular personality with a "core" that is "you".
I fall into this final category.
My mother thinks i'm one person, my friends think im another, my boss thinks i'm another.
Back in school, the motto was: if it's for a grade I can and will do whatever is necessary. This included phys ed. I'm by no means an athelete but I outperformed the jocks on the track when there was a grade attached to it.
Provide a great enough point of interest (compensation, subject material, a cause to work for, or please please please all 3) and I will adopt whatever demeanor and expertise are necessary to get the job done.
All the personality test does is weed out people like me.
It can measure the core, or whatever I THINK they might want, but without them telling me what they're looking for I can't adapt myself to their environment.
"we're going on a trip, we want a vehicle"
via which medium? microgravity? the ocean? land? the atmosphere?
what are you taking along?
what balance of efficiency or redundancy do you need?
do you value endurance or speed?
When faced with some automated test you can't ask these questions!
Perhaps you misunderstood the purpose of the test.
Would you want to hire someone who couldn't even figure out how to lie convincingly during an interview for a position which would involve being in constant contact with the public?
A big part of dealing with customers is figuring out the "correct" answers. Basically, that the customer's concern is important to you, that the more expensive product really is a better choice, and that you really are going to be right back after checking the reserve stock section which really is located right near the break room.
If a simple test can filter out the applicants who are too honest or too clueless for a career in retail sales, why not use it?
'jobs today have a higher technical requirement than back in the day, so while i don't agree that just turning up is enough to get the job'
Your average person turning up has a higher technical capability today than back in the day as well. Almost every position is trainable in any case. Personality checks, credit checks, drug tests, etc are all worthless garbage on the hiring front but what is worse is this obsession with trying to find the already perfectly qualified candidate.
I'm a technician. I work in the field, on a daily basis I encounter systems and software and must master them quickly enough to resolve problems encountered by people who work with those systems all day everyday for a living and make them think I knew more about it than them all along. I have been doing so successfully for years. Yet, despite this, I have been turned down for positions before because I lacked experience with a particular application, perhaps backup application, etc.
When did people lose sight of the fact that working a position within a single company generally involves a skillset that a competent fast learner can master within two months? The fact that two months of training is too much to invest in an employee these days says a great deal about the direction companies are moving in.
I can see points of bias in your tests already.
The exclusion bias.
You have no idea how many people with different personalities from those you know were excluded. Perhaps people who had personalities with more facets than the test could examine, or with facets none of "kennedy's wiz kids" (who designed the test the same way they ran vietnam) have ever seen.
The inherent inaccuracy of self-confidence.
self-confidence is a relative thing.
People who are interviewing for a job generally have their fundamental ability to eat and pay rent at stake. Those are much, MUCH higher stakes than "this is a new client, let's do a good job" and as such is subject to greater risk aversity.
Analytical capability:
Various positions require various levels of analysis, and my experience is those robotic tests do not provide adequate clues as to the level of analysis which should be applied.
And its not mumbo jumbo that drives this. Its just freaking statistics.
because we all know statistics cannot be manipulated, misrepresented, improperly gathered, etc.
Employment prospects are more like a scatter plot with high variance, and these tests are like the most simplistic best-fit regression lines. They WILL exclude wide swaths of excellent candidates based on arbitrarily placed limits. This is especially true for testing services contracted from outside.
o everyone a huge favor by helping to ensure that the people we offer jobs to will do well in them and be happy
Isn't that what interviews and training programs are for? acquainting them with company policy, teaching them the procedures, filling them in on how to do their job?
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
He called an hour late again.
Remember: you're interviewing your prospective employer, too. This guy clearly failed YOUR test.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.