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In 2009, personality testing is $500 million industry which has
been expanding by about 10% per year. There are currently well
over 2,500 personality questionnaires on the market and each year
dozens of new companies appear with new products. Some of these
products are broad-spectrum tests designed to classify basic
personality types, some are designed to test candidates for
suitability for a particular job and some are designed to test for
particular traits – for example, honesty and integrity.
Many of the well established companies who provide tests do
operate to the highest ethical and professional standards.
However, in 2009 this market should be seen for what it is. One
with low barriers to entry and that is very poorly regulated.
Anyone can set up a company to develop and sells these tests and
can make whatever claims they feel like, secure in the knowledge
that they are very unlikely to be challenged.
Some of the companies that produce personality tests are very
secretive about their methodologies and do not make public crucial
information about how their tests were developed or how well they
work, claiming that this information is ''proprietary."
For some personality tests, ''almost no evidence at all is
available beyond assurances that evidence exists," reported a task
force appointed by the American Psychological Association.
Cheating or Faking is Easy
Despite the claims of test producers, it is very easy to cheat.
Certainly, most tests contain some so-called impression control
questions, designed to catch out candidates who are trying to give
an overly good impression. This is one of the areas where the
claims of the test producers and common sense are at odds. After
all how difficult can it be with a little practice, to spot these
questions when most tests consist of less than 150 questions in
total.
This is supported by a study conducted by the American
Psychological Association which found that over 80% of job
applicants actually hired after taking a widely used personality
test had intentionally manipulated their answers to make
themselves look better. Critics of personality tests would argue
that they present people with an unpleasant choice: Lie a little,
or lose a career opportunity to someone who's willing to do so.
How much you choose to try and influence the resulting personality
profile is something only you can decide. Common sense would
suggest that you should not attempt to influence the results too
much as they will probably be seen to conflict with your past
achievements and with how you are perceived at the interview. The best approach is probably to take the time to understand how these tests try to measure your personality and then to make sure that you don't allow any aspects of your personality to be perceived as inappropriate for the job.
Are HR Departments Skeptical Enough?
The following is not meant to disparage the many dedicated and
professional people who work in HR. It is simply an attempt to
understand why so many HR people buy into the accuracy of
personality questionnaires on the basis of such poor evidence. One
reason may be that HR personnel tend to see their role as lacking
much scientific or technical credibility at a time when these
things are perceived to be increasingly important. This is
insecurity is made worse by the following factors:
Firstly, almost all CEO's and senior board members have a
background in finance, technology or marketing. It is unusual to
find someone who has risen to this level from within human
resources. This means that HR rarely has powerful advocates at the
top level within organizations.
Secondly, most of the jobs in HR, or personnel departments as they
were known until the mid 1980s, are at the administrative level.
Few HR staff have university degrees compared with IT for example,
where very few staff are not university graduates.
Thirdly, despite platitudes like ‘people are our most important
asset’, companies invariably see HR as a cost center rather than a
profit center.
These factors mean that HR has traditionally been the first
department to feel the effects of cost-cutting when times get
tough. Jobs within HR are almost always the first to go. This is
partly because the company is no longer recruiting, but also
crucially because HR people are, probably unfairly, seen as
relatively easy to replace. Unsurprisingly, many HR people have
been keen to latch onto something that gives a scientific or
technical aspect to the HR function. Personality questionnaires do
this very well as they are seen to give the notoriously subjective
selection process some objective and scientific credibility.
Even the most purely motivated HR people probably don’t have a
background in psychology, which means that very few are qualified
to make objective judgments about how personality questionnaires
should be used. Most will be relying on the salesmen employed by
the companies who produce the tests to tell them.
Even
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