Reliability of Personality Tests in Employment Selection Process

Personality tests are questionnaires or surveys designed to determine one’s personality, many organizations use these kind of tests to know more about their employees’ potentials. 

Big Five or Five Factor Model of Personality is often used in assessing personality, those five factors are Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. (McClarty, 2006)

Extraversion – Becoming energetic by interacting with others, can say being social
Agreeableness – having the traits that are agreeable such as modesty, humility, trustworthiness, etc
Conscientiousness – Self-controlled and acting in a socially accepted manner, can say disciplined
Neuroticism – Having negative traits such as fear, unconfident and pessimistic
Openness to Experience – readiness to enjoy new challenges, to take risk and to be creative. (Ackerman, 2017)

Since these tests are mostly related to emotions and characteristics, sometimes it will be hard to assume whether the answerer has chosen the real answer, we can see below scatter plot which shows how reliable are the results of a test. 

Source: https://www.criteriacorp.com/images/dg_scatter_plot_large.png

“There is a clear trend in the data where higher scores on the test correlate with higher sales figures. However, Employee #2 and Employee #19 are clear outliers. Employee #2 performed poorly on the test, but very well on the job. Conversely, Employee #19 performed well on the test, but poorly on the job.” (Implementing, n.d.)

How can we make the participants of a personality test less lying? 

 

Some people tend to lie as they lie in their day to day life, so when they are strictly instructed about the consequences of lying in a test, they would refrain from lying. (Johnson, 2011)

Some people are good at faking personality tests, when it is a self-reporting question, they already know what trait is expected from the selectors. In such case, selectors can tell them that they will consider their social insights to avoid them faking the answers. (Johnson, 2011)

Sometimes answers are depended on the mood of the answerers, but there will be a consistent pattern in one’s behaviour so when the personality test items are based consistent patterns, answers will be more accurate. (Johnson, 2011)

References

Ackerman, C., 2017. Big Five Personality Traits: The OCEAN Model Explained. [Online]
Available at: https://positivepsychologyprogram.com/big-five-personality-theory/
[Accessed 11 May 2019].

Implementing, B. P. f., n.d. Best Practices for Implementing Pre-Employment Testing. [Online]
Available at: https://www.criteriacorp.com/resources/definitive_guide_best_practices_for_preemployment_testing.php
[Accessed 11 May 2019].

Johnson, J. A., 2011. Frequently Asked Questions About Personality Testing. [Online]
Available at: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cui-bono/201109/frequently-asked-questions-about-personality-testing
[Accessed 11 May 2019].

McClarty, K. L., 2006. A Feasibility Study of a Computerized Adaptive Test of the International Personality Item Pool NEO. ResearchGate, pp. 1-7.