Even so, many recruiters and job applicants are sceptical of personality tests. Recruiters often believe that their personal judgement is a sufficient basis for making selection decisions. They sometimes feel reined in by the standardised and mechanical nature of personality tests, preferring informal methods such as employment interviews.
Unfortunately interviews have their own limitations. They are often biased by faking and irrelevant first impressions. The firmness of an applicant’s handshake, the aesthetic qualities of her shoes or a transient sign of anxiety can influence the interviewer’s impressions despite having no bearing on the applicant’s suitability for the job. The predictive validity of interviews is also questionable. Two personnel psychologists summarised decades of research findings when they recently wrote that “an unstructured interview is almost entirely useless as a prediction tool”.
Rather than distrusting personality tests, job-seekers should recognise their advantages. Unlike an interviewer, a personality test will not ask you questions that it does not ask other applicants. It will not judge you on how you look, the clothes you wear or where you went to school. Its scores will not be distorted by unconscious biases based on your gender or cultural background. Its findings will not rest on blind intuition or the subjective chemistry of rapport. The mechanical, impersonal nature of personality tests is part of what makes them fair and valid.
Personality is only one factor among many that predict workplace success or failure. Work experience and education, cognitive abilities and skills, aptitudes and attitudes all play a part. However, personality matters and tests that assess it can improve selection decisions.
Nick Haslam does not work for, consult to, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has no relevant affiliations.
This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.
