Use of Personality Measures to Make Personnel Decisions



Use of Personality Measures to Make Personnel Decisions

Introduction

For any business organization, the most valued asset is its human resource. The Human Resource Department in general and the recruitment department, in particular, have a very important role to play when it comes to induction of quality pool of resources. For this reason, many employers make use of various personality tests to assess the fit between a person and the job. The personality tests have been criticized widely for their validity and applicability across various industries. The paper discusses whether the personality tests make up an important tool in the assessment of ideal fit between the candidate and the job and whether or not employee performance is closely tied with personality of a given employee.

Personality

There are two ways of defining personality. On one hand, personality may be regarded as the behavior of a person or the individual traits and factors that make a person who they are. Personality is a combination of the temperament of a person and his interpersonal strategies. Hence, the social behavior and mood of this person will be very different from the social behavior of any other person.

On the other hand, personality is defined as the interpersonal characteristics of a person. These characteristics are distinctive in that it is different for every person. More than a person himself, it is the people around the person in question who are in a better position to describe the unique characteristics of the person (Johnson & Wood, 1988). Hence, this definition of personality has a reputation perspective to it. The personality of a person is also linked with the reputation and the perception that others have of them.

Personality assessment

Personality assessment or personality measurement refers to any test or procedure through which weights are assigned to different personality characteristics. These can be both positive and negative. The results of the test are used for estimation on the personality of the person. The results derived from these tests are then verified during the interview and other stages in the recruitment process (Guion & Gottier, 1965).

Personality and performance

Psychological researchers found out that real world performance is closely linked with personality of a person. For instance, if a person is hard working and perfectionist, he will always deliver the best in whatever he takes up. In addition, a person who is essentially lethargic will always will not very high motivations and might not be a high performer and achiever (Hogan & Hogan, 1996). However, not everybody is in the favor of using personality test results as a measure of probability of employee performance on job. This debate is rooted in the validity and applicability of the personality tests. There are certain jobs that do not require an elaborate personality assessment and then there are those that are based purely on personality.

There are certain job descriptions that require a very deep understanding on the personality of the person. For instance, the job of motivational speaker ...