The Use of Personality Testing in Recruitment and Selection

Personality testing began in the 19^th century and was accelerated during World War I to measure military personnel behavior.  In the 1920’s, procedure-projective testing was introduced whereby subjects projected his or her emotional associations onto some kind of stimulus; the most well known of these tests being the Rorschach Inkblot test.  During the 1930’s and 1940’s, situational testing was developed in which a subject was placed in a simulated, lifelike situation to collect information about how the person behaved.

Today, organizations are using personality testing in their recruitment and selection process.  There are two types of testing; Objective and Projective.  Objective-Normative testing measures specific qualities or scales and Objective-Ipsative requires the subject to choose between two responses that measure for different qualities or scales.

Examples of Normative testing include Cattell's 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire, Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory and The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator.  Objective-Normative testing has been criticized because potential employees may provide answers they deem to be more socially acceptable. Nomative-Ipsative tests address this problem by providing two answers that have equal social appeal but that score on different scales.  Examples include Gordon Personal Profile and Gordon Personal Inventory and Edwards Personal Preference Schedule.

Overall, psychological testing is criticized for a number of reasons including the potential for invasion of privacy, the inability to measure how situational factors can influence how a subject would perform in a test setting versus actual job setting, the tendency for stress to affect scores, the tendency to overlook or fail to measure an individual's motivation, and the impact of testing on handicapped employees. One way to mitigate

some of these issues is to combine testing with other screening techniques.  

Employee Development – Talent Management Systems

In my company, we have implemented a talent management system.  This system allows the organization to develop common processes around goal and performance management.

The organization has adopted the SMART goal setting process.  Employees can capture their goals, track milestone activity throughout the year, and participate in the performance review process. 

Why use the SMART goal setting process?  Let’s consider each of element of the acronym SMART; Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely. 

Specific goals have a greater chance to be accomplished than general goals.  For example, rather than setting a goal of “improve my sales,” a better goal is “improve my sales by 10%.”  By stating a specific goal, it then becomes easier to measure and track. 

We must also determine if this goal is attainable.  If sales demand is expected to go down, a 10% increase may not be achievable and you will not meet your goal.

The goal must be realistic.  Are the goals consistent with other company or departmental goals?  Do you have the tools to help you achieve the goal; is there any reason why the goal may not be achievable?

Lastly, we must be able to achieve the goal in a timely manner.  Without a time frame, there is no urgency in working toward the goal and there is a greater chance of not achieving the goal.  For example, rather than a goal of “improve my sales,” a timely goal is “improve my 1^st quarter sales by 10%.”

Using the SMART goal setting process motivates people.  It provides the employee with clear goals to achieve and helps them measure their progress. By actively involving employees in the goal setting and subsequent review process, they have input into their development within the organization.

The Value of Internal Recruitment

The recruitment and selection process for many jobs follow the same general practices including identification of a position, identification of the requirements for that position, the posting of the job, the review of resumes and the subsequent interviewing and selection of candidates.  However for some industries, the recruitment and selection of positions that require specialized experience presents even more challenges.

In my company, HR staff is challenged with finding Clinical Research Associates (CRAs) with specialized Oncology experience.  The pool of experienced Oncology CRAs who meet requirements is small and is not expected to grow at a pace to meet demand.  There is also significant turnover due to workload, travel, growth opportunities and career change. 

Rather than spending extended amounts of time searching for experienced Oncology CRAs, the organization is considering recruiting internal, as well as external, experienced CRAs through the normal recruitment and selection process and then providing specialized training to augment their skills.  This approach allows the organization to take control of the candidate pipeline and to train well experienced, knowledgeable CRAs with other therapeutic area experience who are motivated and willing to learn Oncology.

The benefits include having CRAs fully functional immediately vs. the 3 month ramp up period that occurs even with experienced hires that must learn the organization and its processes.  The approach creates long-term competitive advantage, creates career growth and educational opportunities and potentially strong job satisfaction for these employees.  It potentially decreases costs while at the same time increases the quality of the organization’s Oncology studies, increases profits and strengthens the organization’s image as a leader in Oncology studies.

Social Media at Work - Using MS Communicator for Collaboration and Training

For some organizations, the implementation of social media has already had a major impact on how HR Services are delivered while for others; the use of social media tools is just beginning.  The book discusses opportunities as well as challenges that organizations face when implementing the use of social media tools.

Social media tools include Blogs, Wikis, Social Networking sites, Discussion Forums, Microblogging, Podcasts, and Web Conferencing.  The benefits of using social media tools include collaboration, efficiency, and cost effectiveness especially for global organizations or those organizations that have a scattered workforce. 

I work for a global clinical research organization. During the economic downturn, training was one area where we needed to cut costs primarily with the elimination of travel.  The end result was a reduction or elimination of traditional classroom training and, more importantly, the element of human interaction. We were forced to find other methods for effective delivery of training. 

The organization already had innovative tools for reaching a global audience including shadowing technology that allowed students to attend training in global classrooms and gave instructors the ability to view/share their desktops.  But for employees in offices without training rooms and for home based users, we needed another option. 

Web conferencing is the social media tool implemented in my organization as an alternate method for reaching our global audience both for collaboration between teams and for training purposes.  On page 56 in the book, the authors discuss the benefits of using web conferencing including polling capabilities, shared control and chat capabilities, and whiteboard functionality that allows break out groups and simulates in-classroom breakout groups.

While Live Meeting web conferencing can be used effectively under certain circumstances, we found that the lack of hands on experience as well as the continued lack of human interaction between employees required us to find an even more effective tool. 

In late 2010, Microsoft Communicator was deployed and provided instant messaging (IM), multi-party audio, video and desktop sharing.  Employees can connect from any location with Internet connectivity using a Virtual Private Networks (VPN) or through web based remote desktop applications.  Just yesterday, the phones lines were down in our San Antonio office.  I was able to call the employee using the MS Communicator audio capabilities and complete the course.  This tool has helped us bring the human element back into meetings and/or training.

MS Communicator allows us to meet and/or deliver training to any global employee whether in a traditional office, their home office or in a hotel room.   It has streamlined the connectivity process and changed the way that we can effectively deliver training.

Link to more information on MS Communicator capabilities:  http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Case_Study_Detail.aspx?CaseStudyID=4000003561