Do Personality Tests Have a Place in the Hiring Process?

Do Personality Tests Have a Place in the Hiring Process?

Guanglong Feng

HRMA3352-Human Resource Management

10/10/2018

Do Personality Tests Have a Place in the Hiring Process?

Abstract: Personality test is widely used in the Hiring Process. Although personality testing can bring benefits to enterprises, it also has certain limitations. This paper first briefly introduces personality test, and then expounds the benefits and drawbacks of the personality test from two aspects, finally I point out my personal opinion.

Keywords: Personality test; Hiring process; Argument

1. Introduction

Personality tests are questionnaires designed to reveal aspects of an individual’s character[1]. Using personality tests in the hiring process is becoming more common. As many as 60 percent of workers are asked to complete personality tests as part of the hiring process. Finding employees that are a good fit to a company's culture is one of the most difficult aspects of the hiring process. It's not too surprising then that in recent years the use of personality tests as a method of screening employees has been on the rise. However, should personality tests really be used in employee selection? This question is worth thinking about.

2. Personality test

There are thousands of personality tests available, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) assessment is the most well-known of these personality tests. The assessment determines one person’s tendencies in four areas-extraversion (E) or introversion (I), sensing (S) or intuition (N), thinking (T) or feeling (F), and judging (J) or perceiving (P) [2]. According to the Myers-Briggs Foundation, it helps people better understand and appreciate their strengths. This can improve their performance and professional development at work. It can also help people appreciate and understand others. It can be used to understand and strengthen many areas of our life: relationships, career, education, spirituality, workplace, and counseling.

3. Benefits of personality tests

Personality tests allow employers to dig deeper and discover what a person's strengths, weaknesses and predilections are[3]. Specifically, the personality test has the following advantages.

(1) It helps to recruit talents in the recruitment process. Introducing personality test into the recruitment work will help to further examine the work motivation, work attitude, emotional stability, temperament, personality and other psychological qualities on the basis of the knowledge, ability and skill of the candidate. Thus ensuring the selection of outstanding talents with high knowledge, competence and psychological quality.

(2) It helps team members' configuration and team building. According to the different types of team members' preferences, reasonably matching the work team members and assigning suitable work tasks can greatly reduce team friction, reduce the possibility of organizational conflicts, and improve the overall efficiency of the team.

(3) It is conducive to increasing the rationality of job matching. Through these test results, enterprises can clearly define different types of talents, so that they can engage in the most suitable positions, thereby improving the efficiency of personnel and enterprises and increasing the efficiency of enterprises[4].

(4) It helps employees make career plans. Through the personality type test, you can learn about the employee's cognitive style, energy orientation, lifestyle and other information, and comprehensively derive the appropriate occupation type, which provides a basis for the employee's career planning.

4. Drawbacks of personality tests

Although the personality test has many of the above benefits, it also has the following disadvantages.

(1) It may screen out qualified candidates. For many jobs, there isn’t a mainstream personality that fits the job type. Personality tests may also exclude talented candidates who think outside the box.