The Dos and Don’ts of Personality Testing

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Personality tests can give you insight into how someone might behave and help you figure out whether they are naturally inclined for the specifics of a given role. However, there is debate around personality tests, both their validity and ethical boundaries. In a survey of 8000 people, 44% felt that personality tests were an invasion of privacy.

So if you do use personality testing, you have to do it correctly. Anything less and you could end up losing a valuable, quality candidate because they didn’t want to run through your mouse lab. Or, as has happened for some companies, you could end up in court.

This article does not provide legal advice on personality testing. Laws in your jurisdiction may differ from the advice presented here. Please check with your legal counsel before doing any personality testing.
Key Takeaways:

• Personality tests are highly subjective and generally are not scientific. Always keep in mind that personality test results can give you context and background information, but not hard data.

• There are a variety of personality tests available, with some being far less useful than others, so make sure that the test you use will actually help you in the hiring process.

• A personality test should never be required to interview for or start a position, and doing so can sometimes even get you into legal trouble. If candidates or employees refuse to take a personality test, that is their right.

Dos of Personality Testing

• Remember that most personality testing is subjective. First, the respondents’ answers are subjective by definition. Second, the way the answers are classified and broken down into groups is subjective. And third, the predictions of how their personality type will affect performance in your organization are subjective. Always take the results of a test with a grain or boulder of salt and use it as a single input rather than data for a definitive decision.

• Ensure current employees can opt out of sharing the results. Using the results of a personality test, even one such as the Myers-Briggs test, to make decisions regarding work career paths is unethical. If you’re providing your employees the opportunity to do personality tests, they also need to have the opportunity to keep those results confidential.

• Be clear about confidentiality. You must disclose who will have access to the results and for what purpose the results will be used.

• Account for differences. A respondent from a minority or ethnic group may score lower on a management selection test than Caucasian respondents because of different ways of approaching leadership and authority in different cultures. Or a man and a woman might test very differently depending on the questions. Seek guidance to ensure that the data you generate will be truly valid rather than horribly skewed.

• Administer proven tests. It is important that you are administering tests that, er, work! Plenty of them out there claim to be amazing but you really need to check the results of past hires to confirm that the test is useful to you. Always get an independent opinion that is not making money from your decision.

• Administer tests that clearly relate to the role. It could be a violation of the discrimination act to ask candidates to complete irrelevant tests. In a court case, Griggs vs. Duke Power Co, the court found that the results the tests revealed were not required for the job and the candidates successfully sued the company.

• Pay attention to a candidate’s response. A candidate doesn’t even necessarily have to take a test to reveal aspects of their personality. If a candidate refuses to take a test in an uncooperative, feisty, or rude manner, that tells you plenty about them – and you didn’t even have to pay for it! If, on the other hand, they question the validity of the test and provide reasons for not wanting to take it in a constructive manner, that tells you they have some decent soft skills and the guts to speak up about something they don’t agree with. On the other hand, if you’re looking for someone feisty and borderline rude to kick off an aggressive sales campaign, maybe hire the person who got upset about it…?

Don’ts of Personality Testing

• Make it compulsory for employees to submit to & share the results of a personality test. You may want to make this part of your hiring process if the fit and validity of the test are right, but you can’t make current employees take a test or cough up their results.

• Use the results of a personality test to judge future work performance. Personality tests should be used to assist employees to work better together and grow themselves. They should not be used to determine whether someone is capable of performing their job in the next few months.

• Assume that all your applicants will tell the truth One study suggested that about a third of all applicants faked answers on a personality test when it related to a new job. Those with higher cognitive abilities and previous experience with tests will be able to tell which answers an employer wants to hear.

• Be lazy about choosing a test. Some can work very well and are good predictors of job performance. Others are just trying to cash in on the craze that is personality testing.

• Assume that one test will apply to all roles. The verdict on personality testing is that in some situations it works relatively well. The results are highly dependent on choosing the right personality test for the right situation. So don’t blindly assume that the test that rocked for your sales role will work for a developer.

• Go with the cheapest tool. Since the popularity of testing has exploded, a number of businesses have come on the scene providing low-cost personality testing. Unfortunately, not all of these are reputable. Be wary of getting what you pay for.

Should I Use Personality Testing?

There are pros and cons to using personality testing for careers. Whether or not personality testing is a good idea depends on your specific workplace and employees.

Having personality information about employees can help you match the best employee to each task, as well as assemble teams by grouping employees based on their work styles to maximize team cohesion and productivity. And if you know that two employees have personality types that don’t work well together, you can avoid assigning them to the same tasks or teams and potentially avoid friction.

On the other hand, personality testing is not 100% accurate, and people’s personalities can’t always be distilled into predefined results and categories, so you should never rely on the test results alone to make decisions. Employees and applicants may also find the tests themselves tedious and might even view being asked to take one with negative connotations.

Final Thoughts

Here’s the bottom line: If you are using personality tests, make sure they are just one part of a range of tools and techniques you use to learn about candidates. And don’t forget to check with your legal counsel before you start!

Author

Jenn Steele

Jen Steele is a dynamic, results-driven leader with over two decades of experience in the technology and marketing industries. As the CEO of KissMetrics, Jen is responsible for driving the company's strategic direction, growth, and overall success.