# Workplace Surgery: Personality testing in hiring

- **Episode:** [140](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/140.md) (2024-10-29)
- **Type:** workplace-surgery
- **Tags:** personality-testing, hiring, recruitment
- **Time:** 38:22–45:29 (start 2302s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/140?t=2302](https://truthliesandwork.com/140?t=2302)

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[38:22] Al Elliott: Lovely. Great answer, love. I've got question number 2 here, and I think you're gonna like this
[38:27] Leanne Elliott: Okay
[38:28] Al Elliott: So, question number 2. I recently introduced personality assessments into our hiring process after a few bad cultural fits. They cost us time and money. The tests aren't anything intense, just standard workplace personality indicators to help understand how people might fit into our teams. The problem is we've had 3 really strong candidates pull out at this stage in the last month. One told us directly that it felt invasive and corporate for a company of our size. We're like, we're only 19. Another made it seem like we were untrusting. I get where they're coming from, but also need to protect our culture. Am I being old-fashioned here? Should I just trust my gut in interviews instead? Somewhat of an interview. of a personality assessment expert over here, Leanne. Has this got you wound up?
[39:17] Leanne Elliott: No, I just don't want to
[39:19] Al Elliott: Go on
[39:20] Leanne Elliott: Oh, you're just doing it all wrong. I'm sorry, there's no other way to say it. You're just doing it all wrong. Stop doing recruitment efforts yourself, please, for the sake of your business, its reputation, your people, your bottom line, your customers, everything. Now is the time to outsource, um, because there's some fundamental misunderstandings here in, in terms of how, um, psychological assessment at work works. And by that, I mean psychometrics and interviews. That aside—
[39:53] Al Elliott: Apart from the fact that you're doing everything wrong, let's look at some of the stuff in depth that you're doing wrong
[39:59] Leanne Elliott: In terms of the, the personality, what, what this is actually a really good example of is candidate experience. I've talked about this a couple of times on the podcast before, and it's often overlooked. It's basically like customer experience. You need to think about the journey your customers go through if they're going to engage in your business and essentially buy from your business. By recruiting an employee, you want their buy-in as well, and clearly, you've not got that in the 3 good candidates that you've lost. As part of that candidate experience, it's really important to explain what the psychometric is, what it's designed to do, what competencies it's assigned to measure or what personality traits it's measuring that will be indicated— indicative of what is required for the job. There needs to be lots of transparency and communication about why this psychometric is included in the recruitment process. Equally, ethically, you should actually always make sure that psychometrics are voluntary. And if somebody chooses not to engage with those psychometrics as part of the recruitment process, that you give them some kind of alternative Or it's part of the process that is indicative but not used to make a fundamental decision. Speaking of which, you shouldn't be using any one selection method to make a hiring decision. You should use a combination. That is even more true of personality assessments because in terms of their predictive power, in terms of future work performance, they're one of the lowest measures that we can use. You're better, much better, using a structured interview
[41:27] Al Elliott: Mm-hmm
[41:28] Leanne Elliott: A work sample test, that type of thing. So, yeah, I think I understand why these people have declined. It sounds like the process hasn't been explained to them properly. So, it does feel invasive and unnecessary, and possibly indicative of a culture they don't want to be part of, especially if they're a bit more read up on recruitment, the science behind it, and what they should be expecting at interview. So, yeah, I think we've got a process problem, which is a good A good thing, and it's always an easier problem to solve, a process problem, than necessarily a culture problem, but a process problem nonetheless, and it requires an expert. So, I'd say engage somebody like me, an occupational psychologist, to come in and audit your current process, give you some advice. A recruiter even can help you with this in a way of standardising the selection assessment criteria and ways of evaluating clients. They may even have their own Psychometrics is useful in recruitment, but it's certainly not what the majority of occupational psychologists would lead with in terms of assessing somebody's potential to perform in a job. So, I think just a bit of education is needed here. So, yeah, it sounds like everything that the candidates have said is very normal. No red flags from me. Um, in terms of, of what they're experiencing and what their reaction would be. Obviously, you want to nip this in the bud because the more candidates that talk potentially to others about that interview process and how they opted out, um, could start to affect your employer brand. So yeah, process problem that needs dealing with, but one that if you engage the right person should be fairly simple to sort out
[43:10] Al Elliott: Yeah, I think a lot of people look at recruitment and they think, well, that's the way that I was recruited and that's the way it's always been done, so that's the way it should be done. Recruitment, as Leanne said, is the most science of sciences of science you can do. Um, and the good news is that really you can probably get 85% of the way there with sort of a few sessions with someone like Leanne. Again, we're not selling Leanne's services. Go and find someone else nearby if you want to, if you want to work face to face with someone. Um, but although if you want to work with Leanne, then obviously drop us an email
[43:37] Leanne Elliott: Don't talk them out of it
[43:38] Al Elliott: Yeah, very happy to take, to bank your check. Um, but the fact is that, uh, the fact is that it's A lot of it can just be systematized, like Leanne said. So it's like a one-off few sessions, get the things in place, and then potentially go in and and get some ongoing support from someone like that. I would just say if you've grown your firm to 19 employees, there's a very good chance that you know how to sell, and if you're selling, then that's very similar to actually hiring because you're still asking someone to make a commitment to. You. It's their time. And, you know, it could be a long time, could be the next 20 years of their life. So if you think a bit more about sales along the idea of sales rather than them, they'll be lucky to get a job with me. You wouldn't go to a customer and give them a personality test and say, I want to find out whether you're going to fit in with us. You know, you're going to be, you'll be wooing your person. You'll be also at the same time going, a few red flags with that one. So I probably wouldn't take that one as a, you know, I'm might put an extra price, put the prices up for them. But I think my point is that if you know how to do sales and you know how to build relationships, then you should have the principles of hiring. And then you just need an expert like Leanne to come in and just give you all the science behind it and all the stuff you actually need to build a proper selection and recruitment process
[44:52] Leanne Elliott: And if you really can't afford it, and I'm not saying this is the best solution, but if you really can't afford to do that, probably the best thing you can do is just do a standardized interview. Same interview, same questions to every candidate, record their responses, compare an apple and an apple to try and understand from their responses the behavioural characteristics that you're looking for. Again, it's not the most ideal, but it's probably going to be better than dabbling in something that is very sophisticated and complicated and we maybe don't understand and could be doing damage. If you really need to strip it back, structured interviews, same questions, every candidate, it will It will give you some value