Are workplace personality tests fair? (article)

[ceecee]

I'm beginning to believe that the real reason for these tests are to weed out the people who won't actually go all the way through and finish them. Some are incredibly long, even for entry level, low paying jobs. It's almost like the questions themselves don't matter as much as the willingness of the candidate to stick with it to completion.

 

[Coriolis]

I generally hate the idea of this kind of thing. I can't stand the idea of basing hiring decisions based on someone's personality. It feels like it borders on unethical. I'm more of a fan of making these decisions based on evidence of behaviors associated with success in the particular job being applied for, intelligence level (for some jobs) and previous experience. Communications skills are important too.

I agree with the above. People of every type are capable of doing every job, though they will go about it in different ways and bring different talents to the table. Better to have employees take the test after being hired and working for awhile, to help in mentoring them and understanding how they will fit in to the workgroup. I took MBTI at work, but it was long after I was hired, and was also voluntary. The goal was to help our workgroup understand our collective strengths and weaknesses, and how to work together better. To that end, it was useful.

 

[ygolo]

I'd have a really hard time faking the extroversion, agreeableness, calmness, openness to external experiences (but not internal) and conscientiousness that would be needed to "pass" these things.

This wouldn't be hard because I didn't know what the "right" answers were, but because so many of the right answers would be lies.

 

[Mal12345]

The onlin application for Target has a really long personality test with a lot of redundant questions. Me and my ISFP friend have both gotten rejected by them multiple times, both plenty qualified. But whenever I go there the employees seem... not all that bright. Makes me wonder what exactly they're looking for on that test.

Redundant questions are designed to root out the liars.

 

[chickpea]

Redundant questions are designed to root out the liars.

yeah i figured as much. i tried to stay consistent as an ESFJ or whatever i was pretending to be, but probably slipped a couple times.

 

[skylights]

My experience with them is that they're awful. The ones I have had to take thus far have been at-home online questionnaires, and I have typically gathered my favorite good-common-sense SJs to help me give the "best" answers. Sometimes we will vote. Mostly we will make fun of the ridiculous questions. They seem like a colossal waste of time on everyone's part. I could see having specific aptitude tests like [MENTION=8936]highlander[/MENTION] mentioned for certain jobs, but these sorts of assessments are kind of embarrassing to psychology.