"For example, selecting your next executive, who will have a great deal of responsibility over the company and its people, is a High Impact hiring decision. In other words, the risks and consequences of a bad hiring decision are severe, which necessitates a greater investment into a quality assessment program. However, hiring someone to clean your warehouse is a relatively Low Impact hiring decision, as the consequences of selecting a poor employee are relatively limited" (Haywood 2009). Haywood's blithe assertion not only flies in the face of participatory management approaches, but is blatantly unsubstantiated by any evidence in his article. It is possible to argue, for example, that a lower-level technician capable of swiftly fixing an error in a user's Blackberry service is just as, if not more important, than an upper-level manager. After all, if an executive loses a million-dollar deal because his or her connection is not working and he or she was unable to read his or her mail for hours that individual is likely to reconsider his or her use of that particular type of technology, no matter who is CEO of the company. The person who cleans the rooms at a luxury hotel must be conscientious to maintain the hotel's reputation for quality.

There is a great deal of temptation to believe Haywood's contentions: wouldn't it be nice to be able to find one's employees easily, simply by finding the right test to screen them? However even Haywood must the caveat that assessments must be valid and finding assessments that provide reliable assessments, especially of intangible attributes like motivation and enthusiasm can be challenging. Assessments...

Smaller companies have more time to carefully review applicant's recommendations and to do a thorough background check. Allowing employees to sign on for a temporary period, after which their work is given a full evaluation, is likely to be a superior test of character than a standardized assessment. Of course, for some skills, assessing technical competence is required, but this must be done in conjunction with validating the future employee's certification, schooling, and other credentials.
No standardized assessment is foolproof, in terms of evaluating the human character. True, some tests, such as the MMPI do have certain questions designed to alert the assessor that the taker is attempting to seem overly 'normal.' But the ability of the test to do so is debatable, even amongst psychologists -- moreover, not all behavioral-type assessments are as intensively tested as the MMPI. HR staff is seldom made up of individuals with the necessary psychological qualifications to interpret the results of instruments such as the MMPI, and doing more individualized, rather than more standardized assessments, may be better apt to create a good organizational 'fit.'

Work Cited

Haywood, Chad. "How to choose the right assessments for your next hiring project."

Fast Company. June 24, 2009. January 18, 2009.

http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/chad-hayward/effective-recruitment-and-selection