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The article talks about the importance of general mental ability ie inteligence and its positive correlation to occupational success. The article supports what I have pointed for quite some time that personality concerns except for concientiousness as pointed out in the article has an overinflated emphasis compared to inteligence and competence.
In short it is important to not be a rude sociopath but otherwise competence is more important than personality.
I don't think that any I/O Psychologist would disagree. Unfortunately, as I'm sure you are well aware there are strong racial differences when it comes to GMA and again as you know there are laws regarding disparate and/or adverse impact on protected classes. For this reason almost all organizations shy away from using GMA assessments. It's an unfortunate issue that I deal with on a daily basis. You are right, I have said multiple times I am not a fan of the use of personality as a selection technique and I know many others in my field that feel the same way.Unfortunately those type of assessments are marketed as the answer because they don't have any disparate/adverse impact and they do have some (although I would argue limited) utility when it comes to very large applicant pools (tens of thousands).
There are also cases when GMA becomes less predictive due to range restriction. If for example, I am selecting a doctor for residence as my neurosurgeon. What do you think will be more predictive of success at that point? GMA, or other attributes? Simple statistics will tell you if there is very little to no variation in a set of numbers (Var1; GMA in this sense) it can't have any relationship with any other set of numbers (Var2; Job Performance in this sense). However, these doctors are likely to have very real differences regarding JP, so it has to come from somewhere. Often times this is a number of factors, motivation to succeed, bedside manner, collaboration, etc.). These are often times things that the assessments you mention attempt to capture (although whether they do or do not in high-stakes testing situations is another argument all together and I wouldn't completely disagree with you).
But overall I do agree with you that many times those personality tests are marketed by companies that are selling a product and the utility they have (especially in jobs with rather small applicant pools; 30-50 applicants per job) is extremely limited. That is an issue of organizations not understanding the science and testing vendors "selling their product" by "beefing" up their research behind the product(s). That is why many of the bigger organizations are hiring I/O PhDs like myself to act as buffers between these vendors and weed out the BS.
So these assessments should only be for people without experience? How would you propose they set up the system to do that? Do you think that would have any potential legal ramifications?
If anything the people with experience should do better, most of the retail specific assessments I have seen have been largely situational judgment, where they give you a common retail situation (ie you are dealing with a customer and another customer comes up and interrupts you and says they are in a hurry, what would you do?) IMO someone trained in retail with years of retail experience should be more likely to choose the most appropriate response than someone without any experience.
Those stupid personality tests they use for low-level jobs shouldn't be used for anybody. I'm referring to the kinds of tests that ask the same questions 10 different ways, usually about stealing. Who in their right mind would admit to thinking stealing is all right?
Let me just give my perspective. I just hired a junior software developer for a small company in NYC (I own a very small piece of the company). I wanted someone with a B.S. in computer science, a little relevant experience with Java, and good soft skills (organized, punctual, good communication skills, works well with others). The job paid $70K with full benefits and equity potential, so it is a good position for a recent graduate.
I received about 300 resumes. Over 100 lived nowhere near NYC and did not express that they were moving soon, so I rejected them.
Among the remaining resumes, about 160+ were sloppy, poorly worded, had errors, or the applicants were clearly were not fluent in English. I rejected them.
There were about 30 left. I looked carefully through them, word by word, and tried to find things wrong with them. That left me with about 10.
I emailed all 10 for a phone interview. 3 responded. I interviewed them, then passed them all to the software dev. mgr. for a two hour in-person interview and assessment. He also did a code review. He said that one was excellent, one was good, and one was poor. I rejected the poor candidate and got references for the excellent one. The references were great. We then hired him.
I guess this a long way of saying that I believe that many candidates do lack the necessary professionalism and detail-orientation because they send out shoddy resumes with errors, and that says a lot about that person. I hired all candidates for another software company for six years (hired over 100 people from general admin to head of development) and it was amazing how hard it was to find good people at all positions (and we paid above average and had strong opportunities and benefits). Very few people have it all: smart, hard working, work well with others, reliable.
Perhaps they would have been happy to move to NYC if you had hired them.
Not for much longer. HR experts will be outsourced like everyone else. After all, those stupid computer tests are already doing much of the work for them.
Not for much longer. HR experts will be outsourced like everyone else. After all, those stupid computer tests are already doing much of the work for them.
maybe at small companies and for simple HR practices like payroll, screening, etc. We are a long way off from complex HR practices being outsourced. I'd love to see some guy on a phone from India make legal recommendations when it comes to hiring decisions in the US, or Brazil, or the UK (in global companies)....I'm sure that would result in some awesome business outcomes.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NewJerseyMemories
Those stupid personality tests they use for low-level jobs shouldn't be used for anybody. I'm referring to the kinds of tests that ask the same questions 10 different ways, usually about stealing. Who in their right mind would admit to thinking stealing is all right?
again, I'm not sure what tests you are referring to. I've worked with several companies to develop these type of assessments and I haven't seen a simple personality type assessment like that in over 10 years. Most organizations use a combination of SJT (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_judgement_test) and bio data (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biodata) with some personality (although very little and this portion typically has little weight).
maybe at small companies and for simple HR practices like payroll, screening, etc. We are a long way off from complex HR practices being outsourced. I'd love to see some guy on a phone from India make legal recommendations when it comes to hiring decisions in the US, or Brazil, or the UK (in global companies)....I'm sure that would result in some awesome business outcomes.
Yes, it would be interesting. I was thinking of India when I wrote that.
those psychological questions are not like this. You will see a lot of people who tried to answer what they think the employers want got very low score.
1. I work under a great deal of tension T/F
2. I have diarrhea once a month or more T/F
3. I had never worked under any tension. T/F
Question 1 and 3 are the same. it just asked differently. If you see people have both T or both F on 1 and 3, they are mostly likely going to fail the test.
They will ask the same questions many time, but just worded differently.
they are like this, i have seen the specific question i mentioned personally several times. a few times a long time ago at retail jobs, at the test i took for my current job (working for one of the largest employers in my state), and the test i took as part of a civil service exam about 3 years ago.
yes, they also have the repeating questions in different ways thing, but it doesn't take a genius to figure out that you have to give consistent answers to those.
by the way, you could legitimately answer false to both questions in your example. just because you don't work under a great deal of tension doesn't mean you have never worked under any tension.
Basically I and everyone I know failed the first couple until they decoded what the correct answers are. Once you realize they are looking for extreme extroverts, who work well under pressure, are honest, optimistic, trusting, and conscientious and answer appropriately you have no problems. It does nothing to reduce the amount of sociopaths hired.
What about questions that can be interpreted multiple ways?
"You are a thrill seeker. SD/D/N/A/SA"
Depends on the meaning of thrill seeker. Dare Devil? The guy who pushes customers to get a reaction? People who ride roller coasters instead of the swings? Or people who happen to find taking on extra time and responsibilities at work thrilling? Who knows!
What about questions that can be interpreted multiple ways?
"You are a thrill seeker. SD/D/N/A/SA"
Depends on the meaning of thrill seeker. Dare Devil? The guy who pushes customers to get a reaction? People who ride roller coasters instead of the swings? Or people who happen to find taking on extra time and responsibilities at work thrilling? Who knows!
I haven't seen those type of items used in years. All items I see today are framed in a work context, which would make that particular item irrelevant. I don't care what you do outside of work unless of course you are a major league athlete and I have invested millions of dollars in you , then I do care if you go sky diving!
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I was thinking of India when I wrote that.
, then I do care if you go sky diving!
