Psychometric Tests

We had a lot of feedback when we asked last week for your ideas about the value of psychometric tests in recruitment and HR. We started the debate in BOSS in August with a column by our regular management debunker, Harry Onsman. You can read a selection of those letters at our Snap Poll Feedback page, but here's one from Paul A Whitelaw, Senior Lecturer in Hospitality Operations, School of Hospitality, Tourism and Marketing, Faculty of Business and Law, Victoria University, Melbourne:

I read Harry Onsman's article on Personality Tests with some bemusement and disquiet and am taking you up on your offer to write to you.

Whilst envious of his good fortune, I also appreciate Harry's constraints in writing for BOSS; limited space, need for a punchy title, keep it bright and breezy, yet get the key message across and so on. As such, I shall let the academics and pedants critique his article. However, there are some aspects that warrant a response.

Firstly, when it comes to personality and psychological measures, the preferred terminology is "inventory", test implies pass or fail, when we all know full well that there is no such thing as a failed personality. Further, Harry seems to be trying to have two bob each way. He starts off suggesting that personality assessments or inventories are acceptable for some jobs (read predictable or even mundane) because you can use an individual's personality type to predict this type of behaviour.

However, he seems to suggest that management positions are short, varied and fragmented and often interpersonal and therefore beyond personality. But there has been more than 80 years of research into personality which clearly identifies that some people have a natural personality preference for stable, repetitive type work, while others have a natural personality preference for short, varied and fragmented and often interpersonal work. There has been a lot of research into personality and job and career selection, much more than what Harry implies.

The general consensus is that in some situations (specific jobs and management positions), personality can offer a reasonable prognosis of job performance. However, the most common acknowledgement among researchers is that personality shapes our work style, rather than determines exactly how we perform - there is ambition after all (which is another personality trait). Just look at the diversity, yet commonality amongst your list of 25 top leaders. (Published in BOSS in August).

Perhaps the real issue here is misuse of these instruments on a number of fronts. Citing bad practice and abuse by others is not a valid argument against the instruments. To the best of my knowlege, the serious instruments (and I include the Myers-Briggs in that group) were developed to help the person doing the assessment, not to help the employer select a potential employee. In fact, the use of such instruments to employ people is clearly inappropriate and unethical. As such, issues about fakeability are somewhat spurious.

If successful employment is about getting the right person into the right job (to the mutual benefit of the employee and employer) then the use of such instruments is clearly counter productive because they encourage people to fake it. Trying to fake your personality is the equivalent of lying about a particular job skill - eventually the pressure of work and your lack of competence in the skill will catch you out. Faking a personality inventory is like deceiving your tailor; you may impress him with your faked athletic physique, but the suit made to those specifications won't fit you. You may be interested to note that we are seeing the emergence of performance based, unfakable instruments in recent years.