Should IT-Employers Use Personality Tests for Jobs?

Hiring TipsDeveloper Recruiting

When used correctly, personality tests can help to identify the best candidates for a role.

"The continuous argument between the personality psychologist and the social psychologist suggests that there is utility in both approaches," said Heather M., chief psychology officer at Paradox, a conversational recruiting software company.

Properly administered personality tests can help eliminate bias in the job consideration process.

Personality Tests: Both Sides of the Debate

People who know her professionally would be surprised to learn that Julie Kae is actually quite introverted. "I'm confident I would get my job if a personality test were administered," said Kae, vice president of sustainability and diversity, equity and inclusion at Qlik and executive director of Qlik.org, which focuses on global sustainability through technology.

Kae said that public speaking is a skill that can be learned and practiced, and that everyone has the ability to improve in this area. The personality test is a great way to find out if a candidate is right for the job.

“Left-handed people are often more creative and intuitive than right-handed people. So if you want to find out what someone is really good at, you should test their left hand!” "By not taking the time to learn about somebody's skills, you could be dismissing them from an opportunity your company would love to have them in."

Qlik's five-person interview process is thorough and ensures that the best candidates are hired for open roles.

"We're trying to make sure that we hire the best possible candidates, and the personality test is one way to help us do that."

However, some proponents of administering personality tests argue that these assessments are some of the most accurate tools that can be used in the job recruitment process.

“Since everybody who takes a personality assessment gets asked the exact same questions, it's easy to get an accurate score. The structure and consistency of the assessment process makes it reliable and trustworthy.

Other factors, such as GPA, entrance exam scores, and school attendance, are commonly used to decide if a job candidate should move forward, especially for entry-level jobs. However, these factors are much more biased, says Matthew Spencer, CEO and co-founder of Suited, an AI-powered, assessment-driven recruiting network for finance and law firms.

Spencer co-founded Suited to address the talent marketplace's challenges that he observed while working as chief human capital officer at investment bank Houlihan Lokey. The available assessments didn't seem appropriate for the company. Suited's artificial intelligence identifies over 10,000 potential statistical correlations between candidate traits and job performance. Spencer believes that personality testing is considerably less biased than resume reviews.

"Resumes mainly focus on past experiences and accomplishments, which may not be indicative of one's potential."

"The primary reason for this is to acknowledge that the current system is dysfunctional, that there is a lot of systemic bias inherent in resumes," Spencer said. "Resumes focus on the past. We have found that they are generally more accurate indicators of past privilege than what we are really trying to achieve, which is future potential. If we rely on criteria that have all these systemic biases, it is no wonder that we keep having diversity issues and continuing challenges in terms of achieving real fairness in the hiring process."

Reducing Bias in Recruitment

Even big-name companies often say their tests shouldn’t be used in recruitment because they don’t indicate how successful someone will be in a certain type of job; they are better for team building and leadership development.

Katy Roby Peters, global head of marketing at digital learning company Valamis, does not believe that using personality tests for job recruitment is an accurate way to measure someone's ability to do the job.

"I find it really intrusive because it is someone who is trying to group you into a category of who you are," Peters said. "The definition of personality is that it is your individualism, your individual way of thinking and what you believe. Therefore, the very nature of personality tests goes against personality."

"Personality is best defined as an individual's unique way of thinking and what they believe."

It is difficult to create a perfectly unbiased personality test, but it is possible to reduce bias by using assessments created by data scientists and designed specifically for your company's needs.

"It is important to be thoughtful about the assessment you are developing," said Spencer. "It should be job relevant and free of bias."

In addition, tests must be given in a uniform manner. According to Lewis, if you have different applications of personality tests for internal versus external job candidates, you should document the reasoning behind those differences and still be consistent in administering the tests within each of those two groups.

"Having reasonable accommodations for people is important," Lewis said. "Doing this allows you to be inclusive and source talent from a variety of diverse pools."

According to Joe Mullings, chairman and CEO of The Mullings Group, a talent acquisition firm specializing in medical and health technology and life sciences, candidates should be told why a test is being administered and how it will be used.

"Our testing is meant to be a guideline rather than a pass-fail," Mullings said. "We also recommend that the person being interviewed respectfully explain why we use that as a guideline...to make sure that our organization is a good fit for them, not that they are a good fit for our organization."

Examples of personality tests:

The Big Five is one of the most commonly used personality assessment tools, which was developed in the 1980s through studying language across cultures. The five widely recognized personality traits are typically referred to by the acronym OCEAN, which stands for openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and neuroticism.

"It is important to note that not all personality assessments are created equal. It is essential to find a tool that is both accurate across different languages and cultures."

The Big Five Personality Assessment from Traitify uses an image-based test in order to generate a profile of an individual's work-related behavior that is based on five traits.

Heather said that not all personality assessments are created equal and that they are based on different ideas. She continued by saying that you want a tool that is consistent across languages and cultures.

The Mullings Group uses Gallup's CliftonStrengths and Wonderlic's assessments when evaluating job candidates in order to identify their strengths and weaknesses.

"The Wonderlic test provides baseline information on cognitive intelligence, in addition to the data that Clifton can give us on a person's current state," Mullings said.

Mullings said that these assessments are not "decisive factors," and the company is willing to provide coaching to people in areas where they are deficient if they join the team.

At CoinFlip, job candidates are evaluated with assessments from Criteria to help the company better understand employee personality, emotional intelligence, risk aversion and word processing skills.

"There is a lot of controversy surrounding these assessments and how they are used to determine who is hired and who is not hired," said Kris Dayrit, president and co-founder of CoinFlip. "We just want to make sure that they are a good fit for not only the team but for the company. With that being said, nothing should exclude them from being a possible candidate. We want to look at the situation as a whole."

ProQuo AI is a brand management platform that assesses 16 different drivers that make up people’s relationships with brands. ProQuoAI has started applying these drivers internally to evaluate its job candidates' qualifications.

"The interesting thing about that, and why we're able to apply it not only to brands but across our business, is because it's built from a theory of social exchange," said Brooke Dobson, head of partnerships and president of the Americas at ProQuo AI. "It can also be used to understand relationships between people within our organization, relationships between us and our clients, us and the people that we're interviewing. You can apply that relationship framework."

The purpose of the assessment is to help the company identify any missing competencies based on what the company needs at a given time.

"It is important that we are not only finding carbon copies of the people who are already in our business, but also helping us to build a culture that is diverse in terms of background, personality traits, and experience," she said.

How highly should these tests be valued?

Personality assessment companies generally agree that these tests should not be the primary factor in deciding whether or not to hire a candidate.

According to Heather, this information should be used to improve the process, by prioritizing people and asking better questions during interviews. It should not be used to simply choose the best scoring candidates.

ProQuo AI has stated that 16 drivers account for a majority of the weight in its final hiring decisions.

The assessments at CoinFlip serve as data points for consideration, says Dayrit. "This assessment gives people a better understanding of how they think and work with others,” Dayrit said. “It’s not the end of the world if they don’t do well on it. Some people just don’t do well on tests, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be successful in other ways.”

"The weight of these assessments often depends on whether a candidate is internal or external," said Lewis. "The tests tend to have more weight with external candidates since the company will know less about them compared to internal candidates."

BEST PRACTICES FOR ADMINISTERING PERSONALITY TESTS

Personality tests can provide a lot of information about a person in a short amount of time, as Lewis said. "When you don't know anything about the person, personality testing is probably most effective," he said. It is important for those who will be evaluating the assessments to understand how the assessments should be used and the processes behind them.

"Making sure your hiring managers are trained on proper use is the biggest challenge. They need to know that it shouldn't be used alone to make a decision. It's just one piece of information that should be considered along with other factors," He ather M.said.

It is crucial that the company you work with for these tests has strong reliability and validity statistics and provides a manual. Furthermore, the assessment should allow you to follow candidates over time and make adjustments if you’re seeing any concerning patterns about who is ultimately being hired.

Assessments will also be built to show how consistently candidates are answering questions to prevent anyone from trying to “trick” the tests, Lewis said.

Furthermore, to ensure that candidates provide authentic responses rather than guessing what they think the company desires to hear, Mullings recommends explaining how the assessments will be utilized and the importance of obtaining accurate results.

Should You Use Personality Tests for Job Recruitment?

By administering personality tests to job candidates, employers can gain access to data that would otherwise be unavailable, allowing them to make more informed hiring decisions.

Heather stated that it is important to learn things about how a person will behave in certain situations and how that person likes to receive feedback. According to Peters, it is essential to be mindful of any personal biases that may distort the evaluation of job candidates.

"People need to be more aware of the implications of their bias in the recruitment process," she said. "A personality test could identify good candidates and reduce bias, providing more opportunities for those who are different."

She also pointed out that, since Valamis is an international company, personality tests aren't particularly helpful with understanding the cultural differences between employees applying from different parts of the world.

"When hiring for a global team, it is important to consider how culture affects personality," said Peters. "Our headquarters is in Finland. The culture there shapes personality in a very different way than in the U.S., including emotional responses like facial expressions. I don't think a personality test would be able to address cultural differences."

The use of personality assessments to hire people who are similar to others at the company should be avoided.

"Creating a cohesive workplace by finding shared likes and adding a variety of personalities will bring more value," said Dayrit. "It is not only about putting everyone who is the same together. It is about creating a diverse workplace where people can communicate, talk, and really work together."

Conduct research on the most appropriate personality tests for your company's needs and develop a plan on how to use them effectively, in partnership with data scientists who can ensure that the information you collect is accurate and unbiased.