Psychological Testing Helps Match Worker To The Job
2003-07-01 email this article to a friend.
I’ll admit it. For most of my professional life, I have viewed psychological assessments with a jaundice eye. Psycho-babble. Bureaucratic busy work. Impersonal and ineffective. I’ve thought it all -- and said it all. What I realize now, is that not all pre-employment profiles are created equal. While many are of limited and questionable application, high quality, fully integrated psychological testing can be a big enhancement to your hiring process, and an investment with a 20 or 30-fold payback.
The common rap on personality assessments is that they tend to produce generic results that don’t relate to your company and your job. In truth, many of the more popular surveys we’re familiar with have those limitations. They might be fun to take, generating a lot of interesting-looking charts and data sheets. They may even be helpful in a career counseling setting, to provide general direction and a starting point for discussion.
But from the employer’s point of view, the information that comes from these kinds of profiles and inventories doesn’t tell them what they need to know. They can churn over the data and the boiler-plate analyses all day long, but they still won’t have a reliable indicator of whom to interview and whom to hire. Why? Partly because the theories behind many of these tests are somewhat questionable, rendering their accuracy suspect. Moreover, the results employers receive do not directly connect to their company’s unique needs, internal culture and personality. What is needed is a personality profile on not only the job candidate, but also on the job – and a system that will bring those two elements together.
Thankfully, that kind of system does exist. The psychological assessment program we now use at my agency for example Professional Dyametric Programs - PDP, not only creates an array of sophisticated, relevant reports on the individual (at a 94% accuracy rate), but it integrates these with a customized “job modeling” function that profiles the exact behavioral traits, work styles and personality requirements of the position being filled. It then creates a matching report on each candidate, ranking them and identifying their match percentage in 7 critical areas. The program even generates suggested interview questions fitted to each applicant. The results we’ve seen from this process have been very impressive.
The key to effective psychological testing is to find a system that is both accurate and designed to address each employer’s specific needs. It must be able to profile the position and well as the candidate, and create relevant, user-friendly reports, integrating all data and making specific rather than generalized recommendations. Furthermore, the program must also be capable of capturing the data, and after the person is hired, transforming it into a useful management tool that will improve communications, team-building, job satisfaction, performance and retention. Equipped with these insights, managers can manage more creatively and proactively.
Psychological assessments provide two major enhancements to the hiring process. First, they save you time. Prescreening through a reliable assessment system reduces the candidates to a manageable number. You only interview those who are ranked above a certain pre-determined level in the program’s matching report. Furthermore, the interview itself can be much more efficient, because you have already identified each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses (relative to your opening), the areas of concern that need to be probed, and so forth. Your interview time can concentrate on the key areas that need to be covered with each applicant.
According to David Baker, President of Apex Capital, pre-employment testing “expedites our interview process tremendously, by assisting us in cutting to the chase… The candidate profile and interview guide gives our managers the help they need to conduct a probing and revealing interview, while requiring less preparation time.”
Secondly, psychological testing provides insights that cannot be uncovered in any other way, and allows you to look at applicants in a new light -- not as “good” or “bad”, but in terms of their natural fit to the position you are filling. You soon realize that no matter how much you “like” a particular candidate or find yourself relating to him or her on a personal level, if they are a poor fit to the job model, you must not hire them (unless you are prepared to fundamentally alter the job description.)
I tested this in my own business, with two former employees. We’ll call them Bill and Bob. Both of these men interviewed equally well, had equally strong references and were equally enthusiastic about working for me. Both genuinely felt that they could do a great job, and both of them were highly dedicated and worked extremely hard. Bill was one of the most productive employees I’ve ever had. Bob, despite all of his sincere efforts, was not productive. I was perplexed and out of answers. Then I ran psychological assessments on each person, and matched them to the job model. Guess what? Bill’s job match was over a 90%. Bob’s was approximately 15%.
Clearly, no matter how hard Bob tried, he was not going to succeed in the position for which he was hired. He was a great person and a loyal worker, but he was profoundly mismatched to the role I was expecting him to fill. Why could I not have seen this before hiring him? With 23 years of professional experience, I’m fairly confident of my interviewing skills. Yet how could the two of us misjudged things so badly? The answer was lack of information. Our assessment test highlighted for both of us personality and trait intensity factors that no interview could have revealed. The process -- although belated -- was as helpful to him as it was to me. Never again will I hire anyone without the assistance of this program.
Some employers are concerned that the use of psychological assessments in the hiring process will expose their company to potential lawsuits. Fear not. In fact, the exact opposite is true. While we know that employers can be sued at any time for almost any reason, the inclusion of pre-employment personality profiles into the selection process introduces as added element of fairness and non-discrimination to your candidate evaluations. Tests are blind. They rank all applicants on precisely the same factors.
Indeed, the greatest risks of litigation occur when you’ve hired the wrong person and problems inevitably develop. The best defense against potential lawsuits is a productive workforce with high levels of employee satisfaction. That never happens by trying to change the person and “fit” them to the job. Basic personality factors do not change, and forcing an employee into unnatural roles only generates stress and frustration. Make sure the fit is right before you hire. Psychological testing, using the right system with qualified assistance, will give you the edge you need to make wise those hiring decisions.
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