Should You Test Potential Hires?

Pre-employment cognitive, skills and personality assessments can be valuable additions to your arsenal of hiring tools.  Not only do they assist you in finding the most appropriate candidate, but they also help you avoid the biases inherent in in-person interviewing, and better predict on-the-job success and whether a person will assimilate well into your organization.  However, there are a few “rules of the road” you’ll want to follow as you navigate this territory.

Use Tests Appropriately

First, assessments should be used as directed and in their entirety.  You should also make sure you use them consistently rather than selectively, meaning that all candidates who apply for the same job take the same test.

Second, pre-employment tests are subject to anti-discrimination regulations, and the federal agencies responsible for overseeing these regulations are increasingly interested in examining skills and personality assessments.

In order to be legally defensible, assessments must be designed for the hiring process, and all questions contained within them must have predictive validity, which means that they must accurately measure the traits they seek to measure and accurately predict behavior in the position in question.

One Size Does Not Fit All

The test vendor should also conduct either a validity study specific to your organization to justify the test’s use in this organization and for these specific jobs, or a transportability study to show that the jobs in question are sufficiently similar to jobs that have been included in other validity studies.

With respect to developing valid assessments, David Hyatt, an organizational consultant with the Center for Creative Leadership, suggests these tips:

• Be sure that a representative sample is used to validate the assessment. All groups should be represented in validation studies in order to truly understand the real-world consequences of using the tools.

• Ensure that assessments are culturally sensitive. Some words convey different meanings within different cultures. Be sure to remove all language barriers and culturally insensitive content areas. Cultural differences can impact the use of assessments in the hiring process. For example, some cultures (e.g., China, Japan) emphasize group outcomes while others tend to emphasize individual outcomes (e.g., United States, Europe).

• Personality is more closely related to the motivational aspects of work than to the technical aspects. Personality-based assessments are better for getting at what a person “will do” as opposed to what he or she “can do.”  Skills-based assessments are better suited to this latter purpose.

• Personality assessments are more predictive of performance in jobs where employees have a great amount of control as opposed to jobs where an employee has little or no control.

For questions or concerns on test validity, you can also check out The U.S. Department of Labor’s Uniform Guide on Employee Selection Procedures.

Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

If you’re thinking of rolling out pre-employment cognitive, skills and personality testing, you shouldn’t attempt to go it alone.  Talk to other human resources or hiring managers in other companies, or get advice from a third-party company or consulting psychologist specializing in these types of tests.  While outsourcing may require a significant upfront investment and a consulting psychologist can cost to $2000 per candidate, experts suggest that assessments are an aspect of hiring that you should either do well or not at all.  If you take shortcuts, you could end up worse off than when you started.

This post was originally published on Intuit's Quickbase blog.

Comments

[Mary Appleton]

Good post Alexandra, with some interesting points.

We've noticed that psychometric testing has become more popular particularly in the selection of senior executives. In light of the recent economic difficulties, we've seen organisations reassessing their talent pool and, as a result, want to change the dynamic of senior management.

Psychometric tests can provide a good insight into an individual’s motivation, leadership style and other criteria key to an executive leader of an organisation. The tests allow hiring managers to predict the probability of future performance rather than relying on intuition, to identify areas for development.

While psychometric tests are useful, I think it's important to use them as part of a wider assessment programme including capability tests and interviews, which gives candidates chance to demonstrate their commercial acumen, strengths and weaknesses in a variety of ways.

[Jenna Johnson]

We offer training for these at my company assesment tests. I believe they are important in finding the right candidates for a job.

[PM Hut]

Hi Alexandra,

I think that testing potential hires is a great idea, it does involve some overhead though, especially if you're testing each and every individual alone.

What we used to do is to give a project to the individual, and then ask the candidate to explain to us his project (this will be another test to see if s/he did the project himself/herself or not)

[heather]

I seem to go well with Alexandria for this article. Pre employment assessments should be used Respectfully and tailored for the position you are hiring for. Many companiers use the one-size-fits-all approach... which sets them up for lawsuits.

[John]

Hi Alexandra,

I agree you should test potential hires as it can reveal who the most talented people are.

I think that numerical reasoning questions like the ones here http://www.practiceaptitudetests.com/numerical-reasoning-tests/ can, however, be practice so this can disguise who the most able candidates are.

Do you think the abstract reasoning questions employers use are a better measure for finding the best candidates?

Thanks

John

[Mika uses everify]

There are exceptions when you try to make sure you use assessments consistently rather than selectively... for instance, where a certain group of employees are exempt from taking of tests.

A trucking company that I used to work for a exempted the union employees from taking assessments that the remainder of the employees had to pass. Both types of employees performed that the exact same job.

I know that I'm splitting hairs here, but the role of human resources is never a 100% black and white go by the book department. Thanks for giving me my 2¢ on this topic Alexandria.

[Mariana]

We are all familiar with the pernlsaoity test but if you are unfamiliar with Howard Garnder's theory of multiple intelligences you can read more about them . Gardner's philosophy is frequently referenced in educational theory when determining how students best learn new information.I was not at all surprised by my MB test. I am extroverted and social, I gather my information from observing (sensing) not self-reflection (intuitive), I trust reason and logic over feelings and I make decisions based on facts not personal perception.According to this test, I am an ESTJ or the Overseer which is defined as: responsible, logical, norm-following hard workers. Their efforts are carried out in a practical, structured manner. ESTJs trust facts and experiences more than theories. They are decisive, loyal, tradition observing individuals. They enjoy being the person in charge . Me? A desire to be in charge practical decisive likes structure who would have thought!No surprises here. I had to laugh that the career recommendations were: writer, researcher, teacher, editor and manager all of which are tasks in my current job.The MI test was more of a surprise. I did not think I was such a naturalist but then again it goes along with my perchance for gathering information from observation. And only a 10% in music, yes, that's true too I can't even whistle.