Personality assessments, which have their roots in psychology, have been used to effectively evaluate behavioral traits in various contexts, including, but not limited to, the workplace. In any case, they can help foster healthy interpersonal interactions, personal growth, and psychiatric evaluations by psychiatric health specialists. Many of the psychometric tests that have gained prominence throughout the years are still in use or are readily available on the internet. The tests help employers assess employers on several fronts, especially when trusting them with sensitive, competitive, and highly influential positions in the public or private sector. The advantages and disadvantages of the test are discussed in the following sections. In this regard, I support the application of personality assessment in the job market.
Although there are several assessment approaches applicable in the market today, the aim is to produce the same results: understanding the candidate’s abilities. First, employers can establish much information from and about the candidates quickly and effectively (Tett & Simonet, 2021). The tests help speed up the recruitment process while reducing costs and producing the ideal results for the candidates. Secondly, recruiters can identify the preferred communication style or approach of a given candidate. Since all candidates are different, the tests help unearth their specialty in various domains, including communication style. Thirdly, personality assessment tests help institutions and interviewers pay attention to the interviewing process, allowing them to learn and understand the incoming candidates. Although it is possible to compose the right set of questions for an interview, conventional tests do not match up to the standards of a personality test.
Another important advantage of personality assessment tests is that they allow institutions to implement changes in their teams to make them more competitive, cohesive, and effective. The recruiters can conceptualize the shift in a team after bringing on board a candidate based on their character. This is common in cases where employers want to recruit a shadow of an existing employee for easy and quick mentorship. The tests also help recruiters establish whether their candidates can fit in their working environments (Hickman et al., 2022). By understanding a candidate’s behavior, recruiters can tell whether they fit in their institution’s working conditions, culture, and style. Lastly, the tests enable institutions to project how a candidate will respond to their leadership style, allowing them to pick the best and most adaptive ones.
On the contrary, personality assessment tests have some severe disadvantages, which must be addressed in the recruitment processes. First, if unreliable tests are carried out, it results in incorrect profiling, which could be devastating for the company. For instance, a test might conclude that a candidate is an introvert who opts to work alone when they perform best in teams; all other considerations might be inappropriate. Secondly, personality assessment requires frequent tests. Such tests can turn out to be time-consuming for successful candidates or unnecessarily expensive for the institution (Hickman et al., 2022). Repeated tests imply that the organization stalls productive and profitable activities to focus on employee character.
Personality tests are not designed to assess or reflect a candidate’s emotions, especially when carrying them out. Due to the volatility of human emotions, a candidate will have different emotions at work, which might indicate a major shift in their personality. The recruitment teams can also make biased divisions, especially based on the personality of previous candidates. It might be misleading to recruit a candidate with a particular personality because their predecessors had the same trait and performed well. Such decisions can lead to the hiring of the wrong candidate.
In conclusion, personality assessment tests are of great importance in the workplace. Interviewers can learn and understand their candidates within a short time. The assessments are far more effective than questions composed in conventional interviews. However, the tests also preset some disadvantages, such as incorrect profiling, undetected emotions, or bias. The pros outweigh the cons, and hence, I endorse personality assessment tests in the workplace.
References
Tett, R. P., & Simonet, D. V. (2021). Applicant faking on personality tests: Good or bad and why should we care? Personnel Assessment and Decisions, 7(1), 2. Web.
Hickman, L., Bosch, N., Ng, V., Saef, R., Tay, L., & Woo, S. E. (2022). Automated video interview personality assessments: Reliability, validity, and generalizability investigations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 107(8), 1323. Web.