No pen, paper needed for employee tests
By Maria Mallory
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
October 25, 2000

Now, even the psychologist has gone high tech.

Launched by clinical psychologists Frank Merritt and David M. McCord, ComputerPsychologist.com, based in downtown Atlanta, is the Information Age alternative for corporate psychological testing.

But don't think virtual couches and computer-generated ink blots. ComputerPsychologist.com specializes in personality assessment tests used to screen job candidates.

Before the tests are given to potential employees, they are developed in-house by drawing an assessment from the current pool of workers, Merritt says. "we ask employers to identify the 10 to 15 people that you would want to clone, more or less," he says.

Once the best and brightest have been selected, the firm gives them a socially designed online test. "We give them a code to be able to come online with us, and they would be taking a personality and problem-solving questionairre," Merritt explains. "From the group of 10 to 15, we would then create a profile of what the best professionals look like."

Job candidates are then tested and compared with the in-house group.

"We provide an narrative description of the person who took the test, graphs comparing them to [the employer's] ideal profile," Merritt says.

ComputerPsychologist.com often will offer specific interview questions based on the profile, behavior the employer should look for in the applicant, questions they should ask their references and even professional development recommendations - books, audiotapes, seminars - that would benefit the potential employee.

Generally the employeer pays about $100 per test, Merritt says.

"It can be a net cost savings for a lot of companies," he says. "For instance, we have companies who will test before they have the candidate travel to see them. The candidate can take the thest from anywhere."

Because the test are assessments of personality traits and attributes sought for specific job functions, there really are no right or wrong answers, Merritt says.

"Since there is no, if you will, good or bad, there's no way for the candidate to see through the testing," he says. "They don't know if a company is looking for a person to respond to a question one way or another on the personality part of it."

When it comes to the problem-solving questions, Merritt says companies often administer the testing at their facilities, where the test takers can be monitored. If the candidate takes it at home, Merritt sayys he often advises the employer not to use those results for the final assessment.

The testing should never be the final word in the hiring decision, he says. "this is a tool to use. This shouldn't be a be-all, end-all to your entire hiring process," he says.

"From a recruitment perspective, some of our clients were looking for the wrong kind of person," Merritt says.

For example, one real estate company was looking for street-smart, transaction-oriented employees.

"When we tested the [in-house] profile people, they were the type of salespeople who developed long-term relationships. They were not transaction-oriented, so [management] was able to redirect their recruiting efforts."

This testing tool used to be administered the old-fashioned way, with paper and pencil. After working together at Corporate Psychology Resources, a consulting company that does corporate coaching with senior executives, Merritt and McCord started collaborating on what would become ComputerPsychologist.com.

"We would share ideas of how we could do our work more efficiently by programming computers to do some of it," McCord says. "We had our first experiment in the late '80s, and then the company was launched and we started serving clients in the summer of '91."

Today, Merritt serves as president of ComputerPsychologist.com and Corporate Psychology Resources. McCord specializes in computerization of testing and test development.

The business moved from pencil and paper to incorporated fax technology into the process.

"They'd fax to us and we'd call back with the results," Merritt recalls.

Later they moved to modems, but, "It was never and easy technological process," he admits. "Then abolut '98, we went on the internet, and since that point things have been easier."