 | The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject.(March 2011) |
Employment testing is the practice of administering written, oral, or other tests as a means of determining the suitability or desirability of a job applicant. The premise is that if scores on a test correlate with job performance, then it is economically useful for the employer to select employees based on scores from that test.
The United States Supreme Court has decided several cases clarifying the place of employment testing in the context of discrimination law. In particular, these cases have addressed the discriminatory use of tests when promoting employees by requiring tests beyond the education required for the job. A central finding in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. was that the employer must demonstrate (or be prepared to demonstrate) that its selection process is related to the job being filled. [1]
Different types of assessments may be used for employment testing, including personality tests, intelligence tests, work samples, and assessment centers. Some correlate better with job performance than with others; employers may use more than one.
Performance-based assessment testing is a process to find out if applicants can do the job for which they are applying. It is done through tests, which are directly administered and judged by hiring managers who will be supervising the potential hire.
The tests are peer-to-peer and reflect real business tasks that candidates have to perform, should they be selected for the role. The tests are open ended, time bound, business related questions which applicants need to submit their responses for in order to prove their abilities.
Some employers [2] [3] select staff using personality tests.
Researchers have tested the commonly-used Big Five personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism). Conscientiousness positively correlates with job performance for all occupations, as found by meta analyses; [4] [5] [6] an analysis of 36 studies [7] found the same for conscientiousness but also for neuroticism.
However, other factors of personality can correlate with non-traditional aspects of job performance, such as leadership and effectiveness in a team environment. [8] The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is also used.
The Great Eight is a proposed model of competencies. [9] An analysis of 29 studies [10] found personality tests that suggest an employee had a particular 'great eight' competency were positively correlated with their actual performance in that competency.
The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) is a highly validated psychopathology test that is generally used in a clinical psychology setting and may reveal potential mental health disorders. [11] However, this can be considered by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as the employer having knowledge of a medical condition prior to an offer of employment. This is an illegal basis for a hiring decision in the United States. Employers considering personality tests should focus on tests designed for job purposes and do not provide any information regarding an applicant's mental health or stability.
Notable situations in which the MMPI may be used are in final selection for police officers, fire fighters, and other security and emergency personnel, especially when the employees are required to carry weapons. An assessment of mental stability and fitness can be reasonably related and necessary in the performance of the job.
Employment integrity testing is used to determine an applicant's honesty and integrity. A large meta-analysis found relatively strong correlations between integrity tests and job performance. [6]
Candidates may lie on personality tests in order to improve their chances of being selected, as found an analysis of 33 studies; [12] though it is argued that assessors should see lying in this case as a good thing for being socially adaptive. [13]
Tests of cognitive ability can assess general intelligence and correlate very highly with overall job performance. [14] Individuals with higher levels of cognitive ability tend to perform better on their jobs. This is especially true for jobs that are particularly intellectually demanding.
A large meta-analysis of a range of different tests found its strongest positive correlations to job performance from tests of general mental ability. [6]
A study of 12 companies found scores for mathematics were associated with improved employee retention after 12 months, but not for scores of other measures including locating information, observing, reading, etc. [15]
Employers administer job-knowledge tests when applicants must already possess a body of knowledge before being hired. [16] Job-knowledge tests are particularly useful when applicants must have specialized or technical knowledge that can only be acquired through extensive experience or training. Job-knowledge tests are commonly used in fields such as computer programming, law, financial management, and electrical or mechanical maintenance.
Licensing exams and certification programs are also types of job-knowledge tests. Passing such exams indicates competence in the exam's subject area. Tests must be representative of the tested field, otherwise, litigation can be brought against the test-giver.
Situational judgment tests are commonly used as employee-selection and employee-screening tools and have been developed to predict employment success. [17] These tests present realistic hypothetical scenarios in a multiple-choice format. Applicants are asked to state what they would do in a difficult job-related situation. [18]
Situational judgment tests measure the suitability of job applicants by assessing attributes such as problem solving, service orientation, and striving for achievement. [19]
Much of the research done on such tests is correlational. Psychology research typically sets a relatively low threshold when deciding if a correlation is strong or weak. Many follow a precedent of 50% being a strong correlation - though results are rarely even that high [20] - when outside of psychology a strong correlation is often said to be above 80%. [21] Correlational work brings other issues. It may indicate employees with strong test scores perform better on their job but not how much better. Also correlation does not imply causation.
Researchers have raised concerns that potential candidates may see a given testing method as a negative reflection on the company. This may dissuade them from applying, depriving the company of good candidates, and they may tell others of their negative experience, hurting the company's reputation. [22]
Industrial and organizational psychology "focuses the lens of psychological science on a key aspect of human life, namely, their work lives. In general, the goals of I-O psychology are to better understand and optimize the effectiveness, health, and well-being of both individuals and organizations." It is an applied discipline within psychology and is an international profession. I-O psychology is also known as occupational psychology in the United Kingdom, organisational psychology in Australia and New Zealand, and work and organizational (WO) psychology throughout Europe and Brazil. Industrial, work, and organizational (IWO) psychology is the broader, more global term for the science and profession.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to perceive, use, understand, manage, and handle emotions. People with high emotional intelligence can recognize their own emotions and those of others, use emotional information to guide thinking and behavior, discern between different feelings and label them appropriately, and adjust emotions to adapt to environments.
Work design is an area of research and practice within industrial and organizational psychology, and is concerned with the "content and organization of one's work tasks, activities, relationships, and responsibilities" (p. 662). Research has demonstrated that work design has important implications for individual employees, teams, organisations, and society.
Job satisfaction, employee satisfaction or work satisfaction is a measure of workers' contentment with their job, whether they like the job or individual aspects or facets of jobs, such as nature of work or supervision. Job satisfaction can be measured in cognitive (evaluative), affective, and behavioral components. Researchers have also noted that job satisfaction measures vary in the extent to which they measure feelings about the job. or cognitions about the job.
The g factor is a construct developed in psychometric investigations of cognitive abilities and human intelligence. It is a variable that summarizes positive correlations among different cognitive tasks, reflecting the fact that an individual's performance on one type of cognitive task tends to be comparable to that person's performance on other kinds of cognitive tasks. The g factor typically accounts for 40 to 50 percent of the between-individual performance differences on a given cognitive test, and composite scores based on many tests are frequently regarded as estimates of individuals' standing on the g factor. The terms IQ, general intelligence, general cognitive ability, general mental ability, and simply intelligence are often used interchangeably to refer to this common core shared by cognitive tests. However, the g factor itself is a mathematical construct indicating the level of observed correlation between cognitive tasks. The measured value of this construct depends on the cognitive tasks that are used, and little is known about the underlying causes of the observed correlations.
A personality test is a method of assessing human personality constructs. Most personality assessment instruments are in fact introspective self-report questionnaire measures or reports from life records (L-data) such as rating scales. Attempts to construct actual performance tests of personality have been very limited even though Raymond Cattell with his colleague Frank Warburton compiled a list of over 2000 separate objective tests that could be used in constructing objective personality tests. One exception however, was the Objective-Analytic Test Battery, a performance test designed to quantitatively measure 10 factor-analytically discerned personality trait dimensions. A major problem with both L-data and Q-data methods is that because of item transparency, rating scales and self-report questionnaires are highly susceptible to motivational and response distortion ranging all the way from lack of adequate self-insight to downright dissimulation depending on the reason/motivation for the assessment being undertaken.
Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly. They tend to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; they display planned rather than spontaneous behavior; and they are generally dependable. Conscientiousness manifests in characteristic behaviors such as being neat, systematic, careful, thorough, and deliberate.
Personnel selection is the methodical process used to hire individuals. Although the term can apply to all aspects of the process the most common meaning focuses on the selection of workers. In this respect, selected prospects are separated from rejected applicants with the intention of choosing the person who will be the most successful and make the most valuable contributions to the organization. Its effect on the group is discerned when the selected accomplish their desired impact to the group, through achievement or tenure. The procedure of selection takes after strategy to gather data around a person so as to figure out whether that individual ought to be utilized. The strategies used must be in compliance with the various laws in respect to work force selection.
A job interview is an interview consisting of a conversation between a job applicant and a representative of an employer which is conducted to assess whether the applicant should be hired. Interviews are one of the most common methods of employee selection. Interviews vary in the extent to which the questions are structured, from an unstructured and informal conversation to a structured interview in which an applicant is asked a predetermined list of questions in a specified order; structured interviews are usually more accurate predictors of which applicants will make suitable employees, according to research studies.
Biodata is the shortened form for biographical data.
Affective events theory (AET) is an industrial and organizational psychology model developed by organizational psychologists Howard M. Weiss and Russell Cropanzano to explain how emotions and moods influence job performance and job satisfaction. The model explains the linkages between employees' internal influences and their reactions to incidents that occur in their work environment that affect their performance, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. The theory proposes that affective work behaviors are explained by employee mood and emotions, while cognitive-based behaviors are the best predictors of job satisfaction. The theory proposes that positive-inducing as well as negative-inducing emotional incidents at work are distinguishable and have a significant psychological impact upon workers' job satisfaction. This results in lasting internal and external affective reactions exhibited through job performance, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment.
A situational judgement test (SJT), or situational stress test (SStT) or inventory (SSI) is a type of psychological test which presents the test-taker with realistic, hypothetical scenarios and ask them to identify the most appropriate response or to rank the responses in the order they feel is most effective. SJTs can be presented to test-takers through a variety of modalities, such as booklets, films, or audio recordings. SJTs represent a distinct psychometric approach from the common knowledge-based multiple choice item. They are often used in industrial-organizational psychology applications such as personnel selection. Situational judgement tests tend to determine behavioral tendencies, assessing how an individual will behave in a certain situation, and knowledge instruction, which evaluates the effectiveness of possible responses. Situational judgement tests could also reinforce the status quo with an organization.
The distinction between typical and maximum performance is one way to classify job performance in industrial/organizational psychology. Typical performance is how an employee performs on a regular basis, while maximum performance is how one performs when exerting as much effort as possible.
Job performance assesses whether a person performs a job well. Job performance, studied academically as part of industrial and organizational psychology, also forms a part of human resources management. Performance is an important criterion for organizational outcomes and success. John P. Campbell describes job performance as an individual-level variable, or something a single person does. This differentiates it from more encompassing constructs such as organizational performance or national performance, which are higher-level variables.
Counterproductive work behavior (CWB) is employee's behavior that goes against the legitimate interests of an organization. This behavior can harm the organization, other people within it, and other people and organizations outside it, including employers, other employees, suppliers, clients, patients and citizens. It has been proposed that a person-by-environment interaction (the relationship between a person's psychological and physical capacities and the demands placed on those capacities by the person's social and physical environment.) can be utilized to explain a variety of counterproductive behaviors. For instance, an employee who is high on trait anger is more likely to respond to a stressful incident at work with CWB.
Personnel psychology is a subfield of industrial and organizational (I-O) psychology. Personnel psychology is the area of I-O psychology that primarily deals with the recruitment, selection and evaluation of personnel, and with other job aspects such as morale, job satisfaction, and relationships between managers and workers in the workplace. It is the field of study that concentrates on the selection and evaluation of employees; this area of psychology deals with job analysis and defines and measures job performance, performance appraisal, employment testing, employment interviews, personnel selection and employee training, and human factors and ergonomics.
A pre-hire assessment is a test or questionnaire that candidates complete as part of the job application process. The use of a valid and expert assessment is an effective way to determine which applicants are the most qualified for a specific job based on their strengths and preferences. Employers typically use the results to determine how well each candidate's strengths and preferences match the job requirements.
Selection, training, cohesion and psychosocial adaptation influence performance and, as such, are relevant factors to consider while preparing for costly, long-duration spaceflight missions in which the performance objectives will be demanding, endurance will be tested and success will be critical.
Abusive supervision is most commonly studied in the context of the workplace, although it can arise in other areas such as in the household and at school. "Abusive supervision has been investigated as an antecedent to negative subordinate workplace outcome." "Workplace violence has combination of situational and personal factors". The study that was conducted looked at the link between abusive supervision and different workplace events.
Trait activation theory is based on a specific model of job performance, and can be considered an elaborated or extended view of personality-job fit. Specifically, it is how an individual expresses their traits when exposed to situational cues related to those traits. These situational cues may stem from organization, social, and/or task cues. These cues can activate personality traits that are related to job tasks and organizational expectations that the organization values. These cues may also elicit trait-related behaviors that are not directly related to job performance.