The Character-Revealing Handwriting Analysis

A CEO explains how he turned to graphology to predict how new hires will work out, and details some of the results.

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Tom Payette used to think what you're thinking. Now he swears that graphology is the best predictor of how a new hire will work out

How high do you cross your t's? Does your handwriting slant to the left or to the right? Tom Payette wants to know.

Payette's interest in graphology -- the study of handwriting -- is more than passing. For the past 11 years the chief executive of Tom Payette Buick Inc., a $25-million Buick, Jaguar, and Suzuki dealership in Louisville, has used handwriting analysis as a hiring tool. "I would never be without it," he says. He claims the technique has significantly reduced his employee-turnover rate. At 36%, his annual sales-force turnover is nearly half the industry average.

Payette didn't always feel that way. "Like most people, I thought handwriting analysis was a bunch of hocus-pocus," he recalls. Then one day 12 years ago he got a call from Iris Hatfield, president of HuVista International, a 27-year-old Louisville graphology business with more than 300 clients nationwide. Out of curiosity more than anything else, Payette submitted his penmanship for Hatfield's analysis. "I was surprised she pegged me," he recalls, "but I still wasn't convinced. I didn't see anything that I felt was particularly original."

His opinion didn't change until a year later, when Hatfield asked to do a follow-up analysis, explaining that as people change, so does their handwriting. After reviewing Payette's penmanship, she made an observation that astonished him. "I see you've got your sarcasm under control," she said. He had been working on toning down an approach he'd thought was humorous but employees had found offensive. He didn't expect such a subtle behavioral change to be picked up by a stranger like Hatfield, let alone for it to be apparent in his handwriting.

In Europe, graphology is used widely in business to detect personality traits as varied as ego drive and risk aversion. In corporate America, though, it's not an easy sell, despite growing recognition of the costs of high turnover (50% of the newly hired don't last six months in the jobs they were hired for), and even though many CEOs are becoming smarter about hiring. It's been 15 years since the Library of Congress changed graphology's classification from "occult" to "behavioral sciences," yet the practice still is dogged by the belief that it's a fairground fancy. Also, it's often viewed as a threat by human-resources directors, who are often loath to cede control over the hiring process to an outsider. According to Roger Rubin, president of the 300-member National Society for Graphology, handwriting analysis is adopted only "when an important person in the company has experience in having it done."

Tom Payette Buick is one of about 6,000 U.S. companies, including temporary-staffing giant Olsten Corp., that admit to using the technique. (Many others use it but don't admit to it.) He typically applies it as a second or third screen for the most promising candidates, after reviewing rÉsumÉs and holding initial interviews. "I may develop a gut feeling about someone, but handwriting analysis gives me a standard by which to measure the person," observes Payette. It also enables him to spot undesirable qualities -- what he calls "obstacles to success," such as sensitivity to criticism.

Payette also uses handwriting analysis to assess how well an employee might be suited for a promotion or a move. He has had Hatfield devise "success profiles" for his company's management, sales, clerical, and technical jobs, basing each on a composite of the handwriting characteristics of the top performers in each job category.

The auto dealer sends handwriting samples to HuVista, and for $45 gets back a "Quick-Screen Analysis" -- one page on the writer's key traits, with a letter grade. If Payette questions something in the summary, he'll occasionally buy the full 12-page, $250 report on the candidate.

The analyses haven't been right every time, Payette concedes. But he believes strongly enough in the benefits of graphology to spend $400 a month with HuVista, and he's convinced the practice has cemented his company's reputation as a skilled hirer.

What Tom Payette sends to graphologist Iris Hatfield, and how she views his candidate's handwriting:
We provide these three questions as examples, but any open-ended question will do.

Sometimes a person's handwriting varies at the start of writing something, so we ask for a full page in order to do an accurate analysis. Fooling the analyst would be very difficult; having the sample written on an unlined sheet of paper and having it be something spontaneous as opposed to copied help ensure that the writing is original and not too structured.

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