Few tests work in all situations. If you are considering using psychological tests, how should you choose? Get references from others in your industry, a state psychologists' association, or a local university's professor of industrial psychology. Then contact publishers and ask to see their validation studies, which are like trial runs. The trial group should resemble your work force in job duties and in demographics.
Also ask the publisher if the test has ever been challenged in court and how it fared, and ask what the publisher will do to help if someone challenges your use of the test. Conscientious publishers will provide you with technical assistance and will send a staff psychologist to testify, if necessary, at no charge.
Remember, tests are often wrong about an individual. For effective hiring, make testing only one part of an overall assessment that includes interviews and reference checks.
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Interviews
Publishers of personality tests talk persuasively about how much more accurate their tests are than interviews. And a good test probably does work better -- more accurately for you, more fairly for the employee -- than a bad interview. But a good interviewer can get richer information. It takes time to develop interviewing skills, though, and many managers prefer to invest their money in a quick solution.
Managers also like the reassuring formula a personality test provides. A bad interview seems like purposeless small talk, but a test imposes structure on the process. Ed Ryan has an answer for that. His consulting firm, MPR, based in Chicago, teaches clients to set benchmarks for each job in the same way that some personality-assessment tests do. If you're hiring a receptionist, he says, ask yourself who's the best receptionist you've ever come across. What made that receptionist so good? Categorize those qualities into certain overall behavioral traits -- sense of responsibility, attentive to detail, good at relating to people.
Ryan then teaches clients to conduct "pattern" interviews to identify those traits in applicants, using such questions as, How do you feel when someone questions your statements? and, How important is it what other people think of you? Those are similar to the questions personality tests ask, but Ryan believes they work better in interviews. Testing forces the subject to choose between true and false or among multiple choices. If you ask the same questions in an interview, you can get subjective responses that, Ryan claims, tell you much more.
The Registry, based in Newton, Mass., which provides software engineers and other personnel to large corporations, uses the sort of pattern interviewing Ryan describes. The Registry combines its interviews with other techniques designed to test qualities it looks for in salespeople and recruiters.
An applicant for a job at the Registry meets with the hiring manager, who describes the position and reviews the applicant's background. If the applicant is promising, the manager will call in a recruiter or salesperson to describe the job firsthand. Next, the candidate interviews with the team he or she hopes to join, to determine personal fit. Each interviewer makes notes on an interview guide, which spells out questions to ask -- for instance, "Why are you successful?" -- and the type of responses to listen for -- ones that reveal "a process or methodology; logical, repeatable steps."
Job candidates also interview over the phone with the directors of training and development in the Registry's Washington, D.C., office, and with one or two training managers in other branches. Those phone interviews test applicants' persistence, a trait particularly valued by the company. The managers are hard to reach and often won't return calls. "We'll tell candidates, 'Now interview with Meredith Cohen in our corporate office,' " CEO Drew Conway says. "It may take five calls to reach Meredith. Do they just leave a message? We want them to find her and get her on the phone. The ability to identify and track down the right person is a part of our day-to-day job."
Before making a final decision, the Registry administers a personality test, which was designed by an industry insider, so Conway believes it accurately identifies the qualities that make success more likely. He doesn't believe the profile will tell him which candidates will be successful -- indeed, one of his best salespeople performed badly on the test. Rather, he thinks it indicates how naturally the qualities needed for sales and recruitment come to a candidate.
As valuable as that information is, it can't make Conway's decision for him. "Lots of companies use the profiles as an excuse not to go through the interview process. But to do good work, you have to invest the time and energy."
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT
"Whenever Thomas Edison was about to hire a new employee, he would invite the applicant over for a bowl of soup. If the person salted his soup before tasting it, Edison would not offer him the job. He did not hire people who had too many assumptions built into their everyday life. Edison wanted people who consistently challenged assumptions."
-- From Thinkertoys, by Michael Michalko, Ten Speed Press, 1991
THE PAPER-BAG TEST
Amy's Ice Creams, in Austin, wants counter help with imagination. Scoopers joke with customers and perform for them. Amy's screens for that elusive aptitude by handing applicants a plain paper bag and asking them to improvise. One applicant wrote his qualifications on the bag, then made it the basket of a model hot-air balloon and floated it in the doorway. The bag test started one day in 1985 when the store ran out of standard applications and asked an applicant to jot down his personal information on a bag. He elaborated, and Amy's never has gone back to the old form.
PSYCHOLOGICAL CHEAT NOTES
Publishers insist that tests are hard to fool, but well-read applicants may know a few tricks. The Organization Man, by William Hollingsworth Whyte (Simon & Schuster, 1956), a classic of organizational ethics, includes an appendix titled "How to Cheat on Personality Tests."
