The Influences of Choosing the Right Personality Test on Jobs and the Future Development

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