Capilano University, Spring 2012, April 20th, Final Report BADM 202-01 Capilano University, Spring 2012, April 20th, Final Report BADM 202-01 Ming Lin & Thibaud Martin Ming Lin & Thibaud Martin The Influences of Choosing the Right Personality Test on Jobs and the Future Development
The Influences of Choosing the Right Personality Test on Jobs and the Future Development

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 1 The current issues caused by inappropriate personality test 2 The Ways to Develop a Valid Personality Test 3 The Influences of a Valid Personality Test on the Future HR Management 5 The Problems and Obstacles 7 Conclusion 9

Executive Summary
The influence of the appropriate personality test on the human resources management is that it can help enterprises to choose the suitable job, work, and team for individuals and make the right career choice and adjustment, based on the result of the test. These will ultimately help companies achieve a well-organized function and higher productivity through the rational development of staff capacities and skills.
Personality assessment can help employers to cluster employees into a serial teams, which the team members in each group have similar personality, interests, values, abilities, and needs. By doing so, employees enable to contribute their maximum capacity and knowledge to the company. Also, there is a relationship among personality, motivation, and productivity. Team members are usually motivated while working with others who have the similar personality and this motivation will enhance the overall performance.
However, the personality test is not yet mature so that the degrees of reliability and validity are lower than other tests like intelligence tests. This is because it has problems on inconsistencies of basic personality concept, dynamic personality test, questions in the tests, interpretation of test result, and camouflage and social desirability response. Also, some people criticize the test because of the possibility of invasion of personal privacy. Moreover, lots of companies don’t do it, most of the time because of the time that the personality test requires. Nonetheless, as we will see after, personality tests are very useful, and can lead a company to increase its productivity, and reduce its costs, mainly due to the fact that personality test can reduce employee turnover.

The current issues caused by inappropriate personality test Lots of organizations don’t really see how relevant can be a personality test for their workforce’s quality. Indeed, as Henryk Krajewski and Richard Goffin highlight in their article, many organizations don’t use it properly or don’t appreciate the real benefit of such a test. Moreover, inappropriate personality test has negative effects on an organization. Employees might not be enough productive and not have the right capabilities for the job. It can also increase the employee turnover, leading to higher costs for an organization. Most of the time, employers don’t take enough time to do good personality test. The first cause of this is that doing a good and profitable personality test and evaluating it needs a lot of time, and employers are afraid of this amount of work. The next element is that employers choose “to use tests based on what the marketing material tells them”. As we said previously, personality tests are done in order to be beneficial for an organization. Indeed, a wide majority of recruitments are external, which means outside of an organization that is recruiting. The disadvantage of recruiting outside is that managers or employers don’t know the interviewee(s) that is in front of them, conversely to internal recruitment were obviously they already know the person because he is an employee of their organization. That’s why a right personality test, well prepared, can lead an employer to employ the right person for the job. Even if doing such a test can be long, very long, it’s a relevant tool for an organization both for workforce’s quality and saving money. Indeed, having the wrong person for a job costs a lot more money and time, such as to lay off the person or to respect employee legislation, than the right person, and “research shows the result — a successful employee — will pay for the time and effort 10 times over”. Thus, we went over two main issues caused by inappropriate personality test: time and money. They are also two key elements for an organization. Let’s go deeper to understand why these two points can decrease the efficiency of an organization.
Time is very important for an organization (most of the time concerning companies), the quicker, the better. Indeed, the influence of time on companies is due in order to satisfy customers. This means to have the best employee as possible, and the first step is obviously the recruitment with a personality test. Of course it takes time to do a test when we recruit someone. However, we should see this on the long-term and not short-term because the benefit is really huge. Moreover, employers or managers usually forget that employees are the basement of an organization, and the stronger, the better, which means having the correct employee with the correct skills and abilities for the job specifications. Job specification is the “Statement of the needed knowledge, skills, and abilities of the person who is to perform the position. The different duties and responsibilities performed by only one employee”.
Money is fundamental for an organization, and this doesn’t only mean earning money by selling products or service but also by decreasing expenses. Undoubtedly, a quality workforce allows companies to decrease their costs. In the same way as time, employer shouldn’t have a short-term vision but a long-term. Indeed, the result of a good personality test is available after a certain period of time, long enough to see if the employee is productive or not.
As a conclusion for this first part, we have highlighted two main issues, time and money that can have a negative impact on an organization due to an inappropriate personality test. Taking the time to create a right personality test is relevant, and it has to be seen as a tool for the long-term. However, a personality test should be linked to the job performance, we will explain this point in the following part.
The Ways to Develop a Valid Personality Test They are many ways to develop a valid personality test, and obviously it’s up to the employer to choose the best one for its company. However, there are also many kind of test that already exists on the market, such as the MBTI (Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator), which has been used by 89 firms of the Fortune 100 firms into their “selection and promotion process”. Nonetheless, as we said previously, a personality test should be linked to what is needed for the job specifications. Firstly, a person who wants to do a valid personality test should look at what are the right things to do. He has to focus on the job requirements, what are the specifications for the job, what are the abilities needed, the skills, and knowledge. These points are really important on the first hand for the test, and on the other hand to avoid any kind of discrimination against the applicant for job. Finding the right personality for the job is relevant because the “future” employee will enjoy doing it, and thus he will be more productive. Motowidlo was the first to present, in 1997, a theory explaining the association between personality traits and job performance. In addition, Campbell indicated that “the proximal determinants of performance are knowledge, skill and motivation, and that they completely mediate the association between individual differences and performance”. The knowledge is simply what a person knows, and during a personality test, to evaluate what a person can accomplish in the work in the best way possible. Usually, employers do achievement tests, which is a measure of what a person knows or can do right now. It’s very important for an employer to be sure the employee will perform in the job. Then, from the employer's perspective, “the skill of knowing how to learn is cost-effective because it can mitigate the cost of retraining efforts”. Indeed, an employee with lots of skills will need less training, also he will perform quickly in the job that he needs to do. Finally comes the motivation. The motivation can be seen as, with an employer point of view, how engaged is the employee in doing the job. It’s probably the point the most important that need to be tested during a personality test. However, developing a personality test, even if it is good, is very unpredictable. Indeed, as its name says, it test the personality, and this cannot be seen as a knowledge or skill because many factors can influence the person during a personality test, much more than an achievement tests. As it is said in this report, during a personality test, “employees who possess certain traits will carry out actions consistent with their traits, some of their trait-consistent actions will be considered more effective in some situations than others by supervisors, and correlations between personality test scores and performance evaluations will vary by situation”. Thus, employers should look at what occurs during a test such as the type of situation appearing at the time of the test, the degree of trait expression happening in the situation, and the employee’s performance while doing the personality test. In addition, such situation will vary regarding to which job is concerned. This difference has been named the situational specificity hypothesis (SSH) by Guion, Tett and Burnett. The situational specificity hypothesis has two components. On the first hand, it predicts that it will differ across jobs because jobs have distinctive requirements and demands. On the other hand, the theory tells that variation in the test between candidates will vary less than across jobs. To conclude on this part, personality test needs time, efforts, and is specific to each job. It exists some way to evaluate the reliability, and validity of personality test such as the Mental Measurements Yearbook (MMY). But this is more for test such as the MBTI that we have highlighted before. Employers should evaluate their test before submitting it to candidates to see if it is reliable, and obviously, linked to the job.
The Influences of a Valid Personality Test on the Future HR Management
Since most of companies haven’t applied personality assessment in a job interview, and some companies haven’t made the test in appropriate way, these companies cannot be able to gain the benefit or full benefit harassment from the assessment. Undeniably, employee behavior, which is affected by their personalities, has huge influence on customers’ awareness for the company; therefore, while developing the overall customer service and company operation, managers should consider the impact of employee behavior. Based on the above reasons, personality assessment in job interview can effectively help managers to select and evaluate the potential employees. The benefits of a valid personality test have been shown in these sections: job matching, team building, future managers selecting, and employee career planning.
Currently, some personality tests are developed based on the form of MBTI (Myers-Briggs Type Indicator); in the MBTI, types of personality have been separated into four scales and eight preferences, which are extraverts (E) versus introverts (I), sensors (S) versus intuitive (N), thinkers (T) versus feelers (F), and judgers (J) versus perceivers (P). Compared with other personality tests, MBTI has the higher relative reliability and validity. Different job positions have different requirements for individuals with different personality characteristics. Personality characteristics compatible with certain occupations will show better career adaptability, and help to improve employee performance. Therefore, during the research and practice in human resource management, the use of the personality test for evaluation and personnel selection has contributed to achieve the best match of the occupation. For example, ISTJ type people usually prefer organizing facts and concepts; therefore, they are more suitable to work in legal firm. The ESTJ people tend to organize their surrounding physical or psychological environment, like people, objects, or tasks; therefore, they are more suitable to work at financial or industrial management department. Once a person realizes his potential and advantages, it’s easy for him to find motivation and job. In contrary, if a person selects a job position, which is not compatible with his personality characteristics, it will not only lead to a decline in the job performance, but also be unable to fully play his advantage. Therefore, in the point of view of enterprises employment, an appropriate personality test can help to select those individuals with key personality traits, to increase the degree of individual and job match, and then to improve employee productivity. Second, an appropriate assessment has contributed to the structure of team members and team-building. During the selection and configuration, managers not only pay attention on whether the individual’s personality characteristics are consistent with the requirements of the job positions, but also consider a combination of personality characteristics of the different members in a team, which will directly affect the overall job performance of the organization. In the communication among people with different types of MBTI personality, people with similar or closer personality can easily achieve relaxed efficient communication, and resonate with each other. In contrast, people with different types of personality tend to go through a longer period of adjustment to adapt to each other. The reason is people with the similar personality usually have same or similar interests, thoughts, behavior, feeling, and values. While putting these people into a team and assigning an appropriate task, managers can find out the overall team performance has been enhanced, and conflicts between team members have been reduced. However, even though it takes longer for people with different type of personality to adapt to each other, there are still some advantages of gathering these people into a team, because they can complement to the weakness of personality of each other. This will also improve the work efficiency. Third, a personal test result can be the reference for the selection and training of executives. The personality assessment like the MBTI can help managers to understand the staff’s current personality traits and predict their future job performance and management style; therefore, the test is also often used in the pre-assessment of employees’ ability and style, and the evaluation tool of selecting and training of future senior executives. Compared with low-level managers, the senior managers tend to have outstanding performance on thinking and judgment. In the method of the information access, low-level managers are more inclined to feeling. With the rise of management level and the gradual transaction to the intuition, higher level managers tend to obtain information in the intuitive way. Also, middle- or senior-managers usually have extraverted, sensory, judged personalities. Therefore, an appropriate personality test provides a reference for the enterprise in selection and training of senior executives. Fourth, a valid test can help employees to develop a career planning. The personality test like MBTI has been used widely in career exploration, career planning, and occupational guidance application. The inconsistency of personality type and occupational cognition is one of the reasons of the difficulty in career choices. People couldn’t find a suitable job until they really understand their personality type. Through the test, both managers and employees can get the information of the testees’ cognitive style, lifestyle, way of thinking, and self-perception. Then, people will be able to find a suitable job based on their personality type.
The Problems and Obstacles
The benefits of a valid appropriate personality assessment in job interview have been demonstrated in the above section. However, compared with other ability tests, the personality test is more difficult and has more problems. The problems and challenges can be summarized in the following points: inconsistencies of basic personality concept, the difficult of the overall dynamic personality test, low degree of reliability and validity, questions in the tests, interpretation of test result, camouflage (fake) and social desirability response, and privacy. Personality is too abstract and complicated to be defined. Even though scholars have been trying to define all personality types, it is still so difficult to define, structure, and classify all personality types. Different scholars have different views on what qualities personality should contain. Since there is no a common standard, the contents of the test are inconsistent. As the result, it’s so difficult to compare the different test result. This may lead to the completely different characteristics on a person’s personality. One of the most challenges of personality test is the test that cannot properly describe the dynamic nature of personality. The so-called “dynamic” refers to the personality may change during the change of time and the person’s experience. As time changes, a person may experience something that affects his personality; it could be a positive or negative effect. For example, a person who used to be ongoing becomes introverted after he has suffered from a family disaster; this might happen after a long period of his personality test. As the result, due to change of the personality, the result and interpretation may be not appropriate and objective. Research indicates that between 39% and 76% of those tested fall into different types with the result of the tests taking a couple weeks and a year ago. Unlike academic researches and sciences like physic or chemistry, although psychical sciences have been developing rapidly within four decades, the personality test is still too abstract and difficult to be defined; as the result, the degree of reliability is relatively lower than other fields of science. This is because, as mentioned earlier, the test is affected by the situation and personal mentality, which is much harder than other ability tests. Also, it’s difficult to determine the appropriate criteria in the test. The criteria used in the test mostly depend on the understanding and knowledge of the psychologists, psychiatrists, or teachers. Therefore, the related validity is low as the result of the low reliability. Personality traits in the test are often not explicitly defined or difficult to clearly be defined, thus, the range of questions is difficult to define as well. As the result, the nuances of the contents or wording in the questions and, as mentioned earlier, the individual differences of people’s understanding may lead to huge difference in testees’ response. There are no right or wrong answers in the personality test. Everyone has a unique personality, thus, it is doubtful to use to same standards to determine whether different behavior and personality is appropriate or not. For example, managers couldn’t define person A with extroverted personality is right, and person B with introverted personality is wrong. In addition, using a norm (standard) to evaluate human behavior may be rewarded herb behavior and limited development of personal characteristics. Furthermore, some people are not answering the questions according to their actual situation, but according to the opinion or values of society and the attitude that other people may prefer. Therefore, the test results are unreliable. Usually, it is difficult to find out the actual personality type of a person. If the person deceptively answers the questions, and it leads to the fake result, it may become a disaster for the team or the company, because they may put the wrong people together to work for a task. This may reduce the overall team performance and productivity. In Canada and the U.S., people are concerned about privacy. Some people may criticize that some personality tests has violated personal privacy. Therefore, how to not only play a role in evaluation, but also protect the personal privacy in the practical application of individual’s admission, selection, and promotion has become a problem that must be solved.
Conclusion
Each employee has a unique personality, which significantly influences the ability to handle the work, productivity, job satisfaction, and career choices, while human resources, as is the blood of the enterprise. Personality test is useful in recruiting, selection, controlling, and training, while used to analyze and evaluate a person. Also, it helps to place employees to right positions that they can fully play a role of their knowledge and skills to improve the overall operation and performance of the job specifications. Personality test is also relevant for an organization in both increasing its productivity and reducing costs, as we have seen in our first part. There is not really a standard form for personality test, even if, as the image if the MBTI, there is but it’s embracing different jobs, but we have seen in our second part why it’s better to have a personality test linked to the job. The contents of a variety of personality tests are very inconsistent; thus, the results cannot be compared. In order to improve the reliability and validity of personality tests, improving test technology is essential, such as making the test questions as clear as possible, adjusting the questions related to social desirability in order to reduce the phenomenon of choosing socially desirable responses rather than truthfully answer, and so on. Finally, the employer should test the personality test to see if it is in appropriateness with the job that need to be performed.

Work Cited