What types of psychometric assessments (e.g., personality inventories, cognitive assessments, and integrity tests) are best to identify applicants with the strongest job and organizational fit? Why?
The Big Five personality theory is widely considered to be one of the most cross-culturally accurate methods of assessing personality. Although trait-based personality theories still remain controversial, the Big Five traits are broad enough and represented widely enough throughout the literature on psychometric testing to have some validity as a screening device. The five traits the Big Five inventories assess are openness to experience, conscientiousness or dutifulness, extraversion versus introversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism (Cherry, 2018). For workplaces which require interaction with customers, extraversion and agreeableness are essential. Creative workplaces require openness, while detail-oriented occupations, in contrast, demand conscientiousness (Cherry, 2018). Neuroticism is largely considered a negative trait and in virtually all occupations, resiliency is required.
Using cognitive assessments like IQ tests would be problematic, given that accusations of racial bias and the validity of different IQ tests remain controversial and could result in legal trouble for an organization. Even within the academic community, there is considerable debate about how to measure cognitive ability, such as whether it is a general attribute or whether multiple intelligences exist. However,...
These tests “have been validated against very different criteria—theft, faking credentials, ‘counter-productive’ behavior, etc.—and they do tend to produce rather different results. Working on company time or taking long lunch breaks is called ‘time theft,’” (Furnham, 2015, par.9). The lack of standardization of these tests designed to measure honesty likewise makes them questionable as an instrument to screen out dishonest candidates. Of course, arguably instruments such as drug testing are a kind of integrity test and have biological validity, although they too have been challenged in the court system.
References
Cherry, K. (2018). The big five personality traits. Very Well Mind. Retrieved from:
https://www.verywellmind.com/the-big-five-personality-dimensions-2795422
Furnham, A. (2015). Can you really test someone for integrity? Fortune. Retrieved from:
http://fortune.com/2015/08/11/hiring-integrity-test/
When should interviews be used in a multi-hurdle selection process? Are structured interviews best? Why or why not? Do multiple interviewers add validity to the hiring decision? Explain.…
