Value Proposition canvas- Customer needs and pains
Use Of Personality Tests In HRM
1. Spotting diamonds in the rough:
Mining for top performers with psychological
assessments
Ilona Jerabek, PhD
PsychTests AIM Inc.
2. Table of contents
• Introduction
• Hiring pitfalls
• Types of assessments and tests
• When to use tests
• Selecting the right assessments
• Evaluating results/reports and analyzing gaps
• Summary and take-home message
• Quick overview of PsychTests’ services
3. How to recognize talent
Selection process
• Screening process – review
of résumés
• Interview
• References and background
checks
• Assessment
• Work sampling
5. Screening pitfalls
Résumé References
• Candidate’s side • Candidate’s side
– Cookie cutter – Choosing only people who will give
– Omissions good reference
– Spinning – Can cheat … fake references
– “Embellishment” – May not have contact info (turnover)
• Recruiter’s side • Reference
– Funky résumés or those with things – Many provide only confirmation of
in common with recruiter get to the employment
top of the pile – Fear of being sued if they share
– Screening out people who don’t something negative
meet requirements exactly but who
are close (especially when done by
• Recruiter
software) – Not asking the right questions
– Not reading between the lines
6. Interview pitfalls – The candidate
• Candidates well-trained in • Good candidates
interviewing skills inexperienced in
– Rehearsed responses interviewing process
– Spinning – Disadvantaged – have to think
– Outright cheating about answers on the spot
– Can miss diamonds in the rough
So you have to
Read between the lines
• Cultural differences
Probe deeper
– Humbleness
Ask unusual questions
– Language issues
Ask situational questions
– Acceptability of spinning
– Appropriateness of sharing and
talkativeness in this situation
– Respect for hierarchy/authority
7. Interview pitfalls – Interviewer bias
• First impression • Primacy and recency effects:
– It takes seven seconds to make a – The interviews we remember
first impression most are the first and the last of
– 50% of it is based on the person’s the group
appearance – We tend to remember the
– First opinions are formed in the beginning and the end of
first 12 minutes of an interview individual interviews
• Halo effect • Rationalization
– strength (or weakness) in one – Especially of negative aspects
area is generalized to other areas if we like the candidate
• Similarity bias • Self-fulfilling prophecy
– Looking for someone similar – Based on first impression,
to self interviewer subconsciously asks
leading questions, resulting in
confirmation of said first
impression
8. Consequences of hiring errors
On company level On individual level
• High turnover • Low job satisfaction
• Low engagement • Low motivation
• Poor morale • Presenteeism
• Lower productivity • Absenteeism
• Lower quality of work • Social loafing
• Lower overall efficiency • Low initiative
• Poor customer service • Negativity
• Opportunity cost • Poor work ethics
• “Us vs. Them” attitude • High likelihood of leaving
9. But if you get it right …
People who perform well have:
• Increased self-awareness
• Improved morale
• Increased retention
• Increased engagement
• Enhanced productivity
• Better job satisfaction
. . . profits surge!
10. Solution?
• Hire the right person the first time around
– Hire those who match the job, team and company
– Manage the gap between personality and “job persona”
• Facilitate onboarding
– Facilitate integration into new team and work environment
– Train to improve areas that need to be developed
– Tailor job functions/tasks to new hire’s strengths and preferences
– Prevent future performance issues – address potential problems before they start
• Increase retention of top talent
– Career development
– Personal development
– Keep them challenged & interested
– Identify leadership potential
11. If you can’t measure it, you can’t
control it
“Assess and conquer”
• Define the job
• Assess the incumbent
• Assess the candidate
• Perform gap analysis
• Assess and manage
performance
• Assess and manage
promotions
• Retain your best people
12. Assess the job:
Define the framework
• Task analysis
– Task description
– Shadowing
• Job analysis
• Job description
• Personality profile of the
ideal candidate
• Key characteristics and
attitudes
• Behavioral benchmarks for
the position
• Reach consensus among the
stakeholders
13. Assess the incumbent:
Create a blueprint
• Strengths
– What traits and attitudes
contribute to good
performance?
– What are the downsides?
• Challenges
– What are the traits and
attitudes that hinder
performance?
– What do you wish you
could change in the
incumbent?
14. Assess the candidate:
Fit the pattern
• Screen out candidates with the
wrong attitudes or poor work
ethics
• Find people with the right
profile for the position
– Skills
– Personality
– Attitudes and values
– Work environment preferences
• Accurately predict successful
performance
• Recognize true team players
15. Many pieces in a puzzle
• ‘Hire for attitudes, train for
skills’ vs. ‘Hit the road
running’
• Cannot possibly assess
everything => identify the
information that is essential
to success on the job
16. Types of tests
Skills and knowledge Psychological
• Technical competency • Personality assessments
– Theoretical knowledge – Objective
– Practical skills – Projective
– Experience • Aptitude, IQ and achievement
– Level of expertise tests
• Psychological competencies – Mechanical reasoning
– Leadership skills – Analytical reasoning
– Management skills • Attitudes assessments
– Emotional intelligence
• Rarely used in HR setting
– Coping skills
– Neuropsychological tests
– Assertiveness
– Direct observation tests
– Communication ability
– Soft skills
17.
18. Personality tests
• Personality traits
– Is this person a person a good fit into a company’s atmosphere and image (e.g. extrovert
vs. introvert, straight-laced vs. laidback, independent-minded vs. compliant, etc.)?
– Which specific traits are a must for a position (e.g. integrity, self-control, empathy)?
– What makes this person unique? Some quirks are adorable, some may cause problems.
• Values – What is important to this person?
• Beliefs – What views of the world, others, and self does this person hold?
• Attitudes – What kind of a work ethic can you expect? Is s/he assertive,
proactive, risk-taker, procrastinator?
• Motivators – What drives this person?
• Emotions – What makes this person tick? What stresses this person out?
• Behavior – If put in a specific situation, how will this person respond?
What makes this person behave this way?
19. When to use assessments:
Pre-hire
• Prescreen before interview to identify candidates who
are clearly a bad fit
– narrow down candidate pool to those who meet minimum
requirements (lenient cut-off points)
• Assess candidates who make the first cut for job fit (skills,
personality, attitudes)
– narrow down candidate pool to those with best potential (use
benchmarks to assess match)
• Interview top candidates with test results in mind
– Probe deeper to validate test results
– Evaluate trade-offs
– Evaluate culture fit
20. When to use assessments:
Onboarding
• Focus on-the-job training and coaching on areas that
need development
• Use insight from tests to manage employees effectively
• Tailor job functions to the new hire's strengths and
preferences
• Facilitate integration into existing teams
• Prevent future performance issues by addressing
potential problems before they start
21. When to use assessments:
Career development
• Use assessments as a learning and personal development
tool
• Optimize training process
– Identify training needs (individual and groups)
– Offer custom-tailored learning opportunities
– Determine the effectiveness of your training process
– Monitor individual progress
• Assess who is ready for a promotion, more responsibility
or learning opportunities
• Groom young employees for future leadership positions
22. When to use assessments:
Engagement & Talent retention
• Optimize motivation
– Understand what motivates individual employees and manage
accordingly
– Ensure right job fit
– Help them grow
– Keep them challenged and interested
• Problem prevention
– Develop leadership and management skills of those in charge
– Monitor trends company-wide
– Identify budding problems before they escalate (e.g. stress
levels)
24. What assessments CAN do
• Cut costs and save time by • Improve objectivity of selection
– improving the size and quality of process
candidate pool by assessing large – Paint a more complete picture of a
number of candidates during pre- person’s skills and personality than
screening process what is offered in a résumé or
– narrowing down the candidate pool references
and enabling HR staff to focus on – Provide objective, standardized
good fit candidates assessment, free of individual
• Assess traits and skills that are interviewer biases
relevant to a job (job-specific or – Give a chance to real diamonds in the
rough … great candidates who are
custom-designed competency humble or untrained in interviewing
and personality tests) skills
• Identify a person’s strengths and – Use existing top-performing
areas that will need employees as benchmarks to whom
you compare potential candidates
development/training
25. What assessments CANNOT do
• Replace human judgment • Prevent test-taker from “gaming”
• Make the hiring decisions instead the test
of you BUT there are ways to minimize
• Predict performance with 100% cheating and social desirability
accuracy bias
– Validity scales (impression
• Guarantee candidate’s future management, acquiescence, social
success desirability index)
• Assess all factors that might – Situational/behavioral questions
possibly play a role in an rather than adjectives or short
phrases
individual’s performance
– Well-designed questionnaire
• Guarantee accuracy for everybody (avoiding leading questions,
(some particular circumstances in ambiguity, double-barrelled
one’s life might skew results) questions)
26. How do I judge the quality of a test?
• Statistics – Reliability and Validity
– Test must be created based on APA (American Psychological Association) standards
– Overall “Cronbach’s Alpha” (statistical test of reliability) should be 0.70 or higher
– Determine if any studies have been done on the test
• What population has this test been used on? (Age, Gender , Ethnicity, Education,
Job field)
• Sample must be at least 500 or more people
• The larger the test (i.e. the more scales) the larger the sample should be
– What have the studies conducted on the test revealed?
• If the test is job specific - e.g. sales - determine how people with sales experience
compare to the rest of the population – they should score better
• Determine if test is biased toward a certain population i.e. if one population is
scoring significantly better than the rest – this should not be the case
• Evaluate adverse impact on protected groups – score differences of 10% or more
are unacceptable and the use of the test can be legally challenged
27. Other important questions to ask a
test creator or distributor
• Are the test items and test results job-relevant?
– If not, the use of test can be legally challenged
• What research and which theories were used to create this test?
• Has the test been revised? What were the revisions, and when was the
last revision?
– Revisions are necessary – new scientific research may reveal new information, social and
economical changes affect norms or context of test items, language changes
• How often are statistical analyses run on this test?
– If significant revisions have been made to the test (new questions, new scales), new data
must be collected and analyzed
• Is this test suitable for my test population?
– Lower level vs. higher-level managers
– Cold sales vs. warm
– Customer service reps in retail vs. call centers
28. Test Structure – Questions & Reports
Overall tips
• Ask for a sample of the questions or get a demo
• Ask for a sample report
• Assess the length of the test
– Realistically, the entire personality cannot be assessed in 10 minutes
– On the other hand, a 3-hr test would be impractical
• Determine whether the test is assessing all the traits and skills that you
need
• Determine what benchmarks are available, and whether you can create
custom benchmarks
• Verify whether suggested interview questions based on test results are
available
29. Test items
• Should be relevant to what the test is supposed to assess (face validity)
• Should not include questions about sex life, romantic life – personal life
questions can be used, but cannot be too personal and need to be
justified (e.g. emotional intelligence)
• Must be clear and easy to read, and appropriate in terms of reading level
required
• NOTE: For sake of clarity, some questions need to be direct (e.g. I am
punctual), but may point to the right answer
– “Faking good” on a test can be prevented to a large degree BUT
– Tests in which a lot is at stake (e.g. pre-employment test) should include a scale that
determines whether a person answered in a socially-desirable way – a Faking or
Impression Management scale
30. Test report
• Verify whether the report offers sufficient information for you to make a
clear decision about a person’s potential
• Ideally, test report should include
– Clear, easy-to-understand graphs with scores
– Definitions of each trait or skill assessed
– Interpretations of a person’s score
• What does a high score indicate?
• What does a low score indicate?
• How does this impact performance?
– Highlights areas that need improvement
– Tips on how to improve on weaknesses
• Unless you have access to a psychologist or a trained HR professional,
make sure the report is written in layperson terms
32. Perform gap analysis
• Measure the difference • Determine the actions that
between the candidate and support these required
the requirements of the changes/behaviors
position
• Identify significant gaps – • Predict the energy
changes in behavior and requirements to make these
playing a role of the “job changes and the resulting
persona” are required to frustrations
close the gap
33. Manage the gap
Organize Adapt
• Assign tasks according to • Adjust management style to what
personal preferences whenever works for individual employees
possible or let employees • Adapt communication and
volunteer for assignments information transfer to suit an
• Team up people with individual’s learning style or
complementary skills, personality intelligence type
and preferred team roles • Customize training process to give
• Ensure support and availability of employees the skills and tools
tools/materials that can help to they need to succeed
bridge the gap
34. Find your diamond in the rough
• Know what you want
• Assess personality, attitudes
and skills of candidates using
psychological tests
• Probe deeper using interview
questions based on test results
• Keep your eyes open and
avoid personal biases
• Evaluate tradeoffs
• Keep polishing your diamond
