While interviews and résumés will probably always be the bread and butter of the recruiting world, more employers – some studies say upward of 70 per cent – turn to personality tests to prescreen candidates and uncover who's a self-starter and even who thinks it's okay to swipe $5 worth of pencils from the office stash. Not the type of information uncovered during a face-to-face interview.
“Assessment tools can help us understand what makes people tick – and what ticks them off,” says Merle Ballaigues, president of Thomas International Canada in Mississauga which offers the tests.
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No experience expected
Different than aptitude assessments that measure knowledge, personality tests, or behavioural assessment tools, are set to become even trendier in human resources circles as baby boomers retire and younger managers climb the ranks, says Andrew Case, managing director for Caliper Canada in Toronto, which has supplied and administered personality tests for more than four decades. “Traditional ways of vetting talent are becoming less useful,” he says.
The thinking goes that human resources professionals will have to rely on these behavioural tools to test young new managers because they won't have enough job experience to gauge their future performance. Without that background, the only thing left to evaluate is whether they have natural potential.
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Making it tough
Sometimes though, personality tests keep even the keenest employees from landing an interview – or even from dropping off a résumé. Alex Frankel, author of Punching In, spent the better part of two years applying for and working at front-line jobs for companies such as Enterprise Rent a Car, Best Buy Co. Inc., Whole Foods and Home Depot Inc.
Of these companies that required him to take a prescreening online personality test, only Enterprise called him for an interview. He fared much better with organizations that used a paper-based system, such as Starbucks Corp., Gap Inc. and Apple Inc.
Home Depot was the gig he really wanted. Yet after applying online and getting nowhere, Mr. Frankel went to his local outlet to talk to a real person.
“The guy there said, ‘I think you're failing the behavioural component of our test and I can't even look at your résumé on my computer. It won't forward the material to me,'“ says Mr. Frankel.
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After the fact
While large corporations use the tests to prescreen candidates to deal with their mountain of résumés, companies of all sizes turn to them to understand the employees they already have.
Take Sandstorm Design in Chicago, a small marketing and design firm. Sandy Marsico, the company's chief executive officer, says she's a fan of DiSC, a personality profiler.
D stands for dominance and I is for influence. Then there are the S and C people. S workers are steady, sympathetic and co-operative, while Cs are conscientious, concerned and correct. Under the DiSC system, people are given their two strongest letters. Ms. Marsico is an ID, which means she's driven, strong-willed and good with customers.
Once hired, every employee takes the DiSC test, shares the results and even posts their letters on sticky-notes to their computers. Ms. Marsico says labelling her employees helps them understand each other.
“I used to get frustrated with my staff when they didn't think the way I did,” she says. “But when I understood who they were, everything suddenly clicked and fell into place.”
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Keeping perspective
Knowing that personality tests are only one piece of the puzzle for successful employment is a good idea, says Ms. Ballaigues of Thomas International. In fact, it can keep you out of legal hot water. Weigh too heavily on a test – or ask the wrong kinds of questions – and it could open the door to a host of litigation nightmares.
