Pre-employment screening have been a popular way to select new employees, but background checks and basic assessments do not tell the whole story. As part of your screenings, there are other psychological tests you may want consider, especially for jobs in direct contact with customers, human resources and managerial positions.
Implicit Association Testing
An implicit association test (IAT) is used to help uncover biases against certain groups that even the participant may not realize. Since the participant must react quickly, they have little opportunity to think through their selection and will answer with an automated response. Most people who take the test will have some amount of bias, but applicants with high scores can be concerning.
You may want to hire applicants who score low on the IAT because they may be less likely to covertly discriminate against customers or other employees. Making hiring decisions based on IAT results can also be important in supervisory roles, where the applicant would have to evaluate other employees, or if they would make hiring decisions. You want to be confident in your employee's ability to objectively evaluate others.
Personality Testing
When conducting personality testing, you want to include tests which look for antisocial and narcissistic features. Unfortunately, these characteristics can be associated with hostile work environments, especially when the person is in a supervisory or managerial role. A person with antisocial and/or narcissistic characteristics may intimidate their subordinates or take advantage of them.
Antisocial and narcissistic traits can also make you leery about the safety of your company and its assets. Since the disregard for social norms is a hallmark trait of people with antisocial features and the sense of entitlement is associated with narcissism, you may feel uncomfortable hiring the person to handle large sums of money or be responsible for company investments.
Rorschach Ink Blot Test
The Rorschach Test is used as a way for participants to project their underlying thoughts and feelings by describing what they see in a series of ink blots. A person who overwhelmingly sees negative images in a neutral ink blot may not be the ideal person for certain professions. When benign or neutral stimuli are frequently interpreted as negative, it can make constructive criticism difficult and even strain workplace relationships.
Although there is no perfect method of choosing your next employee, better pre-employment screening can help. In-depth psychological evaluations can help you determine which applicants have certain characteristics that can make the environment uncomfortable for other employees or customers.
For more information on psych evaluation, contact a company like Rainbow Pediatrics.
