July 9, 2003
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in this issue
-- Debunking 7 Common Myths about Personality Tests
-- Five Tips To Help You Get Organized And Boost Productivity
-- Rule #1 of good employee behavior - Show up for work!
-- Have you ever been asked to compromise your integrity?
-- What is DISC?
-- Testing and Assessments: An Employer's Guide to Best Practices - Request Your F-REE Copy Today
-- Employee evaluations made easy!
-- Test Your Interviewing IQ

Greetings:

The Total View is written by Ira Wolfe, president of Success Performance Solutions and is distributed with permission by The Chrysalis Corporation.

Debunking 7 Common Myths about Personality Tests
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1. Did I pass? It never fails A candidate or employee completes our series of assessments. Inevitably the next words we hear are, "did I pass" or "are you going to tell me I should be looking for another job." And here's my favorite: " I guess you're going to tell me I'm crazy."

As employee personality assessments (or surveys or profiles) in the workplace grow in popularity, so do the myths. Just as in the above example, the myth is that employees pass or fail or are sane or "nuts". That's incorrect and far from the truth.

That might be true if workplace personality assessments were tests. They are not. Properly selected employee evaluation instruments should be considered surveys, profiles or assessments. They do not differentiate between good and bad personalities, just personalities that can perform specific jobs better, work on teams better, and fit organizations better. Because an individual isn't skilled, prefers to work alone, or has different values than those that drive the organization doesn't make him or her a bad person. Different personalities are just different personalities, no more and no less.

2. Employment assessments are psychological tests. The personality assessments we recommend and those that meet EEOC guidelines do not differentiate between normal or abnormal (clinical pathology) behavior. Workplace assessments or surveys only assess normal personality and help differentiate between different styles, values, traits and abilities of normal people.

Psychological tests on the other hand help professionals diagnose clinical disorders and pathological behavior. Although these pathologic behaviors may have an impact or bearing on how well someone can perform a job, using them might place an employer in harm's way. Psychological assessments (those developed to diagnose abnormal conditions) are considered medical tests. To use a medical test you must be able to prove necessity and ensure such a test does not violate the rights of candidates and employees protected under the American Disability Act as well as EEOC.

As a head's up, you will find that few positions qualify for using a psychological test. Just like you can't ask a female candidate if she's planning on starting a family in the future, you can't hire or fire in most situations based on mental health or mental illness.

The bottom line is that although knowing the mental health of a candidate before he/she is hired or an employee is promoted might seem judicious, current guidelines and laws protect the candidate, not the employer, from needing to disclose this.

Personality assessments, on the other hand, that assess normal work behaviors and traits are not only legal but recommended by the Department of Labor. (See "Testing and Assessments" in a later section in this week's newsletter.)

3. You can't judge a test by its cover.

Don't be fooled by claims of validity.

Any tool, technique or instrument including the interview must be valid. Validity means that the test accurately tests what you're testing. That might seem like a mouthful but it's pretty simple really. But just because a test is valid doesn't mean it's legal to use. To meet EEOC guidelines, any assessment you use must be valid AND job specific to be legal.

For example, suppose you have severe chest pain and are rushed to the emergency room. But instead of checking your heart with an EKG, the nurses and doctors test your blood sugar. If your results are normal (and you are still alive) that doesn't mean you are okay. The blood sugar test may be a good one and the results are accurate but you still could be having a heart attack. Right test, wrong reason.

The same thing happens in business everyday. The Internet is now clogged with hundreds and hundreds of inexpensive, easy to administer and quick to score personality "tests". The validity of many of these assessments is questionable and the reliability (will the results hold up over time) is doubtful.

To learn more about selecting the most accurate and reliable DISC instruments and other assessments, click here. Please be sure to write "contact me about DISC" - or other assessments - in the comment box.

4. An experienced candidate can fake the assessment. Absolutely. But a well constructed assessment has a fakability scale. If a candidate or employee attempts to "fake good" or "fake bad", the fakability scale will flag the report. The fakability scale is often called social desirability, good impression or just validity.

A word of caution. A low validity score does not always indicate that the test-taker intentionally lied but it does warn you that the results may not be fully reliable in which case additional probing might be needed.

5. Testing candidates and employees takes a lot of time. Anything worth doing takes some time. But in this case most of the time is that of the candidate or employee. With the introduction of the Internet and very sophisticated processing software, scoring assessments is easy and basically an administrative function. Often times, they are completed in real time. Retrieving the reports takes minutes if not seconds and with time being a resource few managers have in abundance, third party employee and candidate evaluation through personality assessment is a major time-saver.

Instead of scheduling an hour or two or more to interview the candidate, the manager can arrive at the interview with a comprehensive folio on how he/she will approach the job and then focus the interview on finding out if the candidate is qualified for the job instead of small talk.

Many assessment tools including TotalView, SELECT and CBI (see below) include recommended interview questions as well.

Properly selected assessments also are saving companies a lot of money by avoiding unnecessary travel expenses for candidates who are clearly unqualified for the job. And possibly the biggest advantage is they cut out hours of wasted interview and entertainment time scheduled for unqualified and poor fit candidates.

6. We're too small a company to use personality assessments. Does that mean that it costs less for a small employer to hire the wrong employee? Of course not. The Internet has also leveled the playing field. What used to be affordable to only the Fortune 500 is now available to every employer on the planet - or at least those with Internet access.

Regardless of the size of your business, the cost of hiring the wrong employee ranges from as low as one-half the annual salary for an entry-level, low-skilled employee to fourteen times annual salary for a senior level executive. The smaller the company, the more critical the role that each employee plays in bringing success or causing failure. Pre-employment screening tests cost as little as $10 to $12 while the range for selection packages run from $75 to $750. The cost of making sure the candidate fits your team and the organization and is capable of doing the job is a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of lost opportunity or a painful, involuntary termination.

7. Employment assessments are for selection only. Not all assessments are created equal.

If you divide the rest of the world of testing up into two big piles, you have employment tests that screen out high-risk candidates and those that select-in or job match candidates.

Screening surveys, such as Counter-Productive Index (see below for more information) and SELECT Associate System, are strictly pre- employment tests. They are targeted at entry-level, hourly employees and are to be used only with new hires. Select-in instruments like Managing for Success(r)(DISC and Values) and TotalView(tm) Assessment Systems are multi- purpose systems. They can be used for new hires, internal candidates or coaching and development. More and more Managing for Success and TotalView are being used to manage the performance and guide the development of existing employees, especially supervisors, managers and salespeople.

TotalView, for instance, has the option for five reports, all included in one fee per candidate. In addition to the Selection and Working Characteristics reports, it includes an Individual, Coaching, and Succession Planning report. Managing for Success also has several versions including Employee-Manager, Executive, Sales, Customer Service, Team Building and Interviewing Insights as well as Personal Interests, Attitudes and Values (values that drive behaviors).

Have a question about using personality assessments in the workplace? Click Here and ask away.

Five Tips To Help You Get Organized And Boost Productivity
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