Question

Mia attended a seminar about personality testing for applicants. She wants you to implement one for the front bakery customer service reps. Do you think this is a good idea? Why, or why not?

Answer 1

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Mia attended a seminar about personality testing for applicants. She wants you to implement one for the front bakery customer service reps. Do you think this is a good idea? Why, or why not?

Recommendations

After initial evaluation methods have been completed, extensive evaluation methods are employed that require more than the initial evaluation and are often used for a more objective judgment about the job applicant. The important indicator of selection for use is the personality test.

Tests of personality identify behavioral characteristics and not emotional or cognitive characteristics in general. While researchers have drawn more optimistic conclusions about these studies, personality tests for predicting job success are becoming more common. Several researchers concluded that significant evidence exists that a wide range of occupations are important to predicting success both in general cognitive capacity and particular personality traits, such as awareness.

These tests are becoming more widely accepted due to the widespread acceptance of the Big Five factors. These five traits relate to an individual’s personality. The Big Five factors are used to describe a candidate’s behavioral traits and can also capture most of their personality as well. The Big Five factors are conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, agreeableness, and openness.

For example a personality test could be given in the form of a Personal Characteristics Inventory to a candidate interested in one of Mia’s Muffins customer service positions. A Personal Characteristics Inventory is a self-report measure of the Big Five factors and asks candidates to report their agreement or disagreement to 150 questions .This test should be conducted online and be kept to 30 minutes or less so that the candidate does not grow impatient. There are several advantages and disadvantages to the Big Five factors assessed in personality tests.

Conscientiousness – advantages include better overall job performers, higher levels of job satisfaction, more likely to emerge as leaders, fewer deviant work behaviors and higher retention. Disadvantages include adaptability. Examples of this is always being prepared, attention to detail or being exacting in ones work.

Emotional Stability – advantages are better overall job performers, higher levels of satisfaction, more effective leaders and higher retention. Disadvantages are less able to identify threats and more likely to engage in high risk behavior. An example is a candidate that is relaxed often, seldom feel blue, or have frequent mood swings.

Extraversion – advantages include performing better in sales, likely to emerge as leaders, and high levels of job satisfaction. Disadvantages include higher absenteeism and more accidents. Examples include being quiet around strangers, taking charge, and skilled in handling social situations.

Agreeableness – advantages include more valued as team members, a helping behavior, and fewer deviant work behaviors. Disadvantages include lower career success, less able to cope with conflict, and are more lenient. Examples include candidates with a soft heart, insulting people, have a good word for everyone.

Openness – advantages include higher creativity, more effective leaders, and more adaptable. Disadvantages include less committed to an employer, more deviant behaviors and more accidents. Examples include a vivid imagination, a passion to think up new ways of doing things, and avoiding complex individuals.

The validity of this type of personality test have correlations for any individual trait with job performance that are typically low (around r=.23). It is important to look at all of the traits simultaneously as this will result in higher correlations to job performance in a customer service position. It is important that these multiple correlations between the various Big Five traits should be assessed against criteria like job performance.

I would make sure that the test with the Big Five is improved by contextualizing the measures as well. The questions should be developed to ask about specific behaviors in the workplace or how the candidate behaves at work only. This will help strengthen the validity of the Big Five test and add some context to when specific behavioral traits might occur in the workplace at Mia’s Muffins.

With personality tests, there is the concern of a candidate “faking” their answers by answering them dishonestly. However, it is unclear if faking undermines personality validity. One way to counteract “faking” is to warn applicants that their answers will be verified. Studies have shown that these types of warnings can reduce faking by as much as 30% without undermining validities.

I would recommend this type of personality test for the customer service positions at Mia’s Muffins. I would recommend that it be a short worded 150 question Personal Characteristics Inventory and should not last more than 30 minutes. Mia’s customer service reps need to be able to assess customer needs, deal with any potential problems that arise, and interact with customers in such a way that those customers leave highly satisfied with Mia’s Muffins.

I would make sure that the test with the Big Five is improved by contextualizing the measures. The questions should be developed to ask about specific behaviors in the workplace or how the candidate behaves at work only. This will help strengthen the validity of the Big Five test and add some context to when specific behavioral traits might occur.

In conclusion, there are several disadvantages and advantages of a personality test with the Big Five traits. I believe that a personality test would be beneficial for Mia’s Muffins customer service rep positions. I will conclude with a quote written in an article about personality assessments in an organization. The article concludes “What is remarkable about self-report personality measures, beyond their criterion-related validity for overall job performance and its facets, is that they are also useful in understanding, explaining, and predicting significant work attitudes and organizational behaviors.

Any theory of organizational behaviors that ignores personality variables would be 1020 PERSONNEL PSYCHOLOGY incomplete. Any selection decision that does not take the key personality characteristics of job applicants into account would be deficient”. For a position like the customer service rep position at Mia’s Muffins, a well written contextualized personality test will suffice coupled with a structured interview.