Personality testing has a long and deep history in hiring. In our last article, we discussed the gradual evolution of personality testing over the last several decades. In that same article, we addressed some of the debate and controversy that have surrounded personality testing since its popular inception more than half-a-century ago.
We also pointed out that in spite of their potential for diagnostic value, personality assessments may carry certain inherent risks of bias, discrimination, and inaccuracy. These risks should not be considered a cause to disregard the value and insight that personality assessments do have to offer, but to ensure that we’re using these instruments effectively and ethically.
Fred Oswald–director of the Organization and Workforce Laboratory at Rice University–observes in a recent article from the American Psychological Association (APA), “testing is not perfect, but perfect should not be the enemy of the good in terms of using tools that can help make good decisions, both for the organization and for the job applicant who obviously seeks to find employment that’s fitting for them, not merely get an invitation to join the organization, but actually succeed in it.”
We couldn’t agree more. But in order to achieve these outcomes, a number of responsibilities fall directly on the hiring firm. If you make the decision to utilize personality assessments as part of the hiring process, you are also making the decision to take on a number of ethical obligations as well. And, as the discussion below will show, ethical use of personality assessments and effective use of personality assessments are actually one and the same.
Adhering to EEOC Uniform Guidelines
Our goal here is to provide you with an overview of the ethical considerations that must enter into the use of personality testing in the hiring process. However, before you can add personality assessment into your hiring workflow, you must first ensure that your hiring process is already built on a solid ethical foundation.
Businesses with 15 employees or more are legally beholden to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s (EEOC) Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures. (Companies with fewer than 15 employees are still legally liable in cases of hiring discrimination, and may therefore be well-served by also understanding and adhering to these guidelines).
So regardless of whether you plan to incorporate personality assessments into your hiring process, you should take steps to ensure that your hiring process is already conducted in compliance with all relevant laws, guidelines, and procedures. If you do plan to incorporate personality assessments into the process, compliance with EEOC guidelines will take on added importance. Consider these guidelines a backstop against unethical use of personality assessments.
Key Ethical Considerations When Using Personality Assessments for Hiring
With that said, let’s take a closer look at some of the additional ethical considerations that must come with the user of personality assessments in hiring.
Informed Consent
Informed consent is a founding principle of scientific ethics. This principle requires that participation in any form of testing or measurement is both transparent and voluntary. Be sure that applicants have a complete understanding of what your personality assessment aims to measure, that you disclose how the resultant findings will be used in the hiring process, and that applicants understand that their participation is elective.
This means that participants cannot be disqualified from employment for declining to take your personality assessment, and have a right to be aware that participation is optional (even if non-participation might prevent hiring managers from gaining a full picture of a given candidate’s fitness for a given role).
Fairness and Non-Discrimination
Your obligations under the EEOC guidelines require that your hiring process be fair, equal and free from biases that could result in discrimination against certain groups of candidates based on age, gender, race, disability, sexual orientation, or other protected demographic characteristics. This obligation extends to any instruments that you use to assess the fitness of candidates for hiring.
As you select the right personality assessment instrument for your organization, be attentive to potential issues of cultural bias in the line of questioning. Likewise, be sure that there aren’t leading or loaded questions that might create unintentional advantages or disadvantages for certain test-taking groups. In short, be sure your personality assessment provides objective measures of the individual traits that it claims to assess.
Privacy and Confidentiality
The hiring process typically requires you to gather private and potentially sensitive information about applicants. You are obligated at all times to ensure the confidentiality of this information and to protect the privacy of your applicants and their data.
The personality testing stage in the hiring process is no different. When you administer personality assessments, the resulting scores and reporting constitute private data about your applicants. You have a duty to secure this data in accordance with existing regulations for protection against theft, loss, or misuse.
This means that access to this information must be limited only to authorized personnel, and that the resulting information is only used for the purposes explicitly stated to the applicant at the time of consent.
Organizational relevance
Be sure that the test you choose to incorporate into your hiring workflow actually measures for the traits that it claims to. Personality assessments that use too narrow a framework for measuring workplace personalities risks “over-categorization”–that is, forcing a diverse set of applicants into tidy but unrealistic classifications.
The result is a method of screening that lacks nuance, and risks imposing false parameters around who is actually qualified for a given role. In addition to inaccurately narrowing the scope that you use to evaluate candidates who might be a good fit for your organization, this approach can lead to unequal hiring decisions.
In fact, this challenge is one of the driving imperatives behind a new instrument currently in development at Success Portraits. We’ve created a new Team Building reporting tool that tailors scoring and evaluation to specific personality traits with direct relevance to predefined O*NET “Work Styles”.
O*NET Work Styles is a framework created by the U.S. Department of Labor that outlines the key personal attributes and work styles crucial for success in various occupations. By leveraging this massive database, Success Portraits is developing the capability to provide a more nuanced look at how each trait—whether it’s dependability, self-control, or adaptability—affects team dynamics, decision-making, and overall productivity.
So for instance, if you are evaluating candidates for a sales manager role, you will be able to use this tool to identify correlations between Success Portraits Personality Test (SPPT) scores and O*NET work styles with relevance to the sales manager position. The consequent scoring and reporting can offer valuable insights that, along with an array of other valid and ethical assessment methods, can help employers identify candidates that might be a good fit for a given organizational culture and role.
While our O*NET team building tool is still a work in progress, our goal is to create an assessment tool that is flexible, nuanced, and capable of evaluating applicants without forcing them into narrow personality types. In this regard, a more nuanced assessment tool is at once a more ethical and effective tool.
Compliment With Other Assessment Tools
No matter how effective or reliable your personality assessment tools are, it is never ethical to use personality testing as the sole determinant for your hiring decisions. From a practical standpoint, over-reliance on personality tests can cause you to overlook other vital factors like skills, experience, and personal achievements. The result may be the dismissal of a candidate who is otherwise more qualified for the job in favor of a candidate who is perceived to match a desired personality type.
This type of oversight can create bias toward certain perceived personality types to the exclusion of other vital features. Be sure that any assessment you incorporate into your hiring process is only a part of the package of information you use to make your final hiring decisions. This will result in a fairer, more equal employment process as well as a more effective strategy for evaluating candidate qualifications.
Transparency and Feedback
As noted earlier, ethical use of personality assessments should include total transparency about what the test measures, how the information is factored into employment decisions, and who will have access to the resulting evaluations. This should include a consistent set of procedures for incorporating scores and personality reports into the hiring process.
Feedback is also an important part of achieving transparency. Offering feedback on the test results, when appropriate, can help build trust and create loyalty with new hires, as well as protect against legal action from those who are not hired or promoted.
Psychological Effects
Another vital ethical consideration is the potential for your testing instrument to have psychological effects on your applicants. If applicants find your line of questioning irrelevant or even intrusive, the process of personality assessment can cause stress, anxiety, and frustration. It’s important to choose an assessment tool that produces a relevant and appropriate line of questioning.
It is equally important to be aware of the potential psychological effects that can accompany the results of your assessment. Any reporting system that makes an applicant feel labeled or pigeonholed should be considered problematic. The same is true of any mode of feedback that leads to feelings of discouragement or inadequacy. The goal of your feedback should be limited strictly to messaging that helps candidates understand the implications of their measured traits in the context of a given role.
Legal Compliance
We initiated this discussion with acknowledgement of the foundational importance of EEOC guidelines. But there are a variety of other employment laws and anti-discrimination regulations that you’ll need to factor into your assessment selection. For instance, the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) requires the use of personality tests that do not discriminate against individuals with certain disabilities. If a personality test asks about a candidate’s ability to perform essential job functions using biased language or implications, it may risk undermining the protections extended by the ADA.
Be sure that any personality assessment tools used in the hiring process have been cross-checked by your legal department to ensure compliance with anti-discrimination, privacy, and labor regulations.
Balancing the benefits with responsible use of assessments
As a hiring firm, your responsibility is to fairness, equality, and freedom from bias or discrimination. Any personality assessment tool you utilize must be equal to these responsibilities.
We designed the Success Portraits Personality Test (SPPT) with these considerations in mind. Created by Clemson University industrial-organizational (or I-O) psychology professors Fred Switzer and Jo Jorgensen, the SPPT is designed both to score test-takers on their individual traits and to reveal how these traits manifest as predictors of success in real-life situations.
Personality assessments, such as the SPPT, can provide valuable insights into workplace competencies. However, in alignment with the ethical considerations outlined above, the SPPT is not meant to serve as the sole source for employment decisions. To reiterate a key point made here, personality tests are meant to be used as a supplemental tool, alongside other objective measures of qualifications, skills, and experience.
Learn more about the design behind the SPPT and find out how this unique assessment tool can strengthen your hiring process while preserving your commitment to ethical employment.