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Psychometric Testing and Personality Profiles.
December 4, 2017
Personality profiles are widely used for recruitment and staff selection decisions. What is the best one to use and what is the science say about them?
Scientific American, Mind (July / August, 2013) reported the following:
The goal of a recruiter—whether a human resources professional or a line manager—is to find the person who best fits the requirements and culture of a given role or job.
Typically, a recruiter crafts an advertisement for the position, posts it to the company website and some job boards, collects applications (résumés, cover letters and references), then selects suitable candidates for interview.
This process is rather flawed, as it ignores some of the core findings of industrial and organisational psychology on how to best screen candidates. Take IQ, for example. IQ has been shown to be the most consistent predictor of performance across a variety of jobs because it indicates a candidate’s ability to learn and thus reflects how quickly a person can be trained.
Another powerful predictor of career success; the personality test, has gained a somewhat stronger foothold in employee selection. Hundreds of independent research studies have demonstrated that these tests are better indicators of future career success than letters of recommendation, interviews and educational credentials.
The personality profiles that have been shown to forecast performance are based on the “five-factor model,” a well-supported and thoroughly researched framework for understanding how our personalities differ. According to it, we can be analysed along five continuous, non-overlapping dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness and emotional stability. Conscientiousness and, to a lesser extent, high emotional stability are the most consistent predictors of success across jobs and criteria. (Although the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is the best-known personality test, very few peer-reviewed studies have demonstrated that its results accurately predict a job candidate’s performance.)
Fermion specialises in the use of the five-factor model of personality for recruitment. Contact us for more information.