Only a test, but your career may be at stake

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Victoria Nguyen has taken personality tests in women’s magazines, but she never took them seriously. Things changed this past summer when she applied for a job as an administrative manager of a New Jersey-based public relations firm and was asked to take a personality test.

“They told me there was a three-part process for hiring,” she says. “First was the interview, then the personality test and the third step would be meeting everyone else at the company.”

It was the first time Nguyen had ever taken such a test for a job position, but she took it in stride, answering all the questions honestly and fully. She was asked how she would deal with different situations, including what she would do if given a project and had no idea how to begin.

“I would ask for help, but I am also the type of person that learns things better on my own,"  she explains.

Her answers must have been right. She got the job.

Some of what clinched it for her, according to her new boss Jeanne Achille, chief executive of The Devon Group in Shrewsbury, N.J., was her high scores in logical thought, problem solving and conscientiousness.

It’s not enough today for a manager to just interview a job candidate. More and more companies are turning to personality tests to find out if you’re the right person for the job. The goal is to figure out what you’re really about. Will you be a team player?  Will you crumble under pressure? Will you steal from the petty cash drawer?

In an age of corporate belt tightening, companies of all shapes and sizes are doing everything they can to make the best hire because it costs them big bucks to train new employees who end up not working out.

Employers figure such tests, often created by psychologists or Ph.D.s, can tell them more about you than meets the eye. Jack Mayer, professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, says exams that are well researched and have a solid reputation for evaluating potential employees can provide a window into “the general operations of an individual’s nature, their mental and behavioral patterns — motivation, emotion and integrity.”

These types of tests have been around for decades, but in the past few years they’ve experienced a growth spurt. About 35 to 40 percent of employers personality tests today, up from barely more than 10 percent just five years ago, says Steve Miranda, chief human resource and strategic planning officer for the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va. He expects the number to continue to rise past 50 percent in the next few years, in part because the tests are so much easier to administer and score using online technology rather than paper and pencil.

But there are major pitfalls, everything from loss of privacy to possible discrimination.

Some personality tests have come under legal fire on the theory they may discriminate against certain applicants based on their disabilities or religious beliefs. Massachusetts has banned so-called "honesty exams," while California and Rhode Island have laws suggesting personality tests should not be the primary basis for hiring, says Joseph Schmitt, a Minneapolis-based labor attorney.

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