Higher Assessments - Although Web-based psychological tests can help employers weed out poor job candidates, companies must exercise caution in this area.
By Tom Starner
Human Resource Executive
December, 2001
Nearly a decade ago, a poor hiring decision really hit Joe Evans where it hurts. Evans, president and CEO of Century South Banks Inc., in Dahlonega, Ga., hired a new executive based on gut instinct, nothing more. The move proved disastrous, as the guy was about as good a fit as Richard Simmons at a lumberjack convention.
"I made a mistake," says Evans, whose company, which has $1.6 billion in assets and 40 branches in the souteastern United States, recently merged with the larger BB&T, a Winstom-Salem, N.C.-based financial giant with $56 billion in assets. "It was a person I had known casually for a ling time. He was hired, relocated his family, and it didn't work out. It was clear to me that if a psychological profile had been part of the process, the fact that he was poorly suited for the job would have been clear."
Vowing to never repeat his mistake, Evans connected with Frank Merritt, an industrial psychologist, and the two agreed on a paper-and-pen test for would-be Century South employees. Since then, all new employees hired by the company have undergone pre-employment psychological testing.
My, how things have changed since that first test sheet was handed out at Century South a decade ago. Today, Merritt is president of ComputerPsychologist.com, a Web-based company that markets and administers pre-hire tests via the Internet. And Evans, the one who actually pushed Merritt to move more and more to technology as a means of testing, is still a prime customer.
"We were the first client for ComputerPsychologist.com as it is now," Evans says. "They still offer the same testing, but with the Web, the entire way to access these types of tests has changed.
"With the Web, clients get instantaneous results, as well as the ability to administer tests remotely if the need arises. In a few cases, new tests are emerging, designed specifically to be taken on a computer."
And therein, possibly, lies a problem. Along with the Web's emergence for the past few years, says one industrial psychologist, has come a rash of new companies offering testing for companies hoping to weed out the slacker, the antisocial type or - even more seriously the potentially violent employee. As with any other Web entities, say the experts, companies looking to do psychological testing over the Internet might best tread carefully before making any hasty moves.
Valid Concerns
"Online testing is essentially [a case of] 'Let the buyer beware,'" says Elliot Lawson, an industrial psychologist and personnel analyst supervisor for a division of the Maryland Dept. of Budget & Management in Baltimore.
"The employer doesn't have control of what test is popping up on the Web sites," adds Gary Kaufman, a Gallatin, Tenn., private-practice psychologist who specializes in employee selection, employee motivation, pre-employment testing and EEOC legal compliance. "What some vendors have done is cobbled together a new bunch of tests. When you ask for documentation, all they can offer are unproven tests which I'd never recommend to a client. Tests need a lot of research to back them up."
In Kaufman's case, that means using tests with a 10-20 year track record, especially when in a Web-based testing situation.
"When I go to a vendor's Web site, I don't always know what the test is or what the quality is," he says.
Those concerns are completely valid, says David McCord, psychologist and co-founder of ComputerPsychologist.com, which converted its process to an Internet delivery system in the fall of 1997. Nevertheless, companies that exercise proper due dilligence in screening out tests and vendors that lack the necessary documentation and credentialling will find Web-based tests helpful and convenient he says.
"Psycholgical testing in the workplace isn't new," McCord says. "But the Web adds so much convenience to it. It also makes it more visible and accessible to companies that might otherwise have a hard time accessing it."
Matrix Resources, an Atlanta-based IT staffing firm and a ComputerPsychologist.com client, began using the web to test job candidates in the summer of 1999.
According to Sandy Jess, Matrix's director of human resources, it's been a very positive move. Matrix makes extensive use of online-skills testing for its in-house staff. But beyond that, it will only use psychological testing via the Web for job candidates for specific positions (sales, executives) and only after interviews have been conducted.
"The immediate results for an HR professional are beautiful," says Jess, adding that Matrix currently has 300-plus employees spread nationally in 5 cities. "We're notified when someone completes the test and can see the results immediately."
Best of all, Jess adds, the online nature of the testing allows Matrix to use what she calls "profiles" for specific jobs. "We have candidates take the test and compare their results against the benchmarks for that position," she explains.
So far, ComputerPsychologist.com has created profiles for five different positions within Matrix, based on the test results and key traits of top performers from all of the company's locations. Candidates being considered for a particular postition are plotted against the appropriate profile.
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"The profiles are extremely valuable," says Jess. "With the Net, I can hire people for those positions in Phoenix, Dallas, Atlanta or Birmingham. We can look at a candidate and feel strongly about them, on way or the other."
Jess is quick to point out that, in most cases, the tests merely help confirm the candidate.
"We may see someone who is not a great fit," she says. "We screen people, yes. But usually we may have had other reasons, and the test may confirm something along those lines. Remember, a confirmation can be positive or negative."
According to McCord, ComputerPsychologist.com designed its products primarily to serve the pre-employment assessment clients. But just as important, other clients use aspects of a report that is relecant for career development - in internal tool that can be part of employee performance reviews.
Bias-Free?
Natuarally, McCord and others selling psychological testing over the Web, or in any delivery format for that matter, are well aware of legal issues spawned by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and the Americans with Disabilities Act.
"We don't know who our clients hire and who they don't hire," McCord says. "Complete tracking is not in our hands. They have to be aware of those issues."
As protection, McCord says, ComputerPsychologist.com uses only established personality tests thay are validated by years of research.
Apart from gender bias and other issues, a tough hurdle is the challenge of eliminating cultural bias, which McCord says not even the Web can do.
"Cutltural bias is a huge issue in all testing," he says. "There are books and courses on the issue. Of course, the usage of language loads a test with some culture. Vocabulary by definition is going to favor some cultures over others. But the research has shown that cultural bias is almost impossible to elimate."
However, thanks to technology, one company believes it has eliminated cultural bias from psychological testing using a computer-based test not derived from former tests. How? By using mostly graphics-based tests that almost eliminate language issues.
TechMicro Inc., based in New York, is offering its screening application, Savvy Recruiter, via the Web after testing it as a CD-ROM-based product for seven years with users who need to hire people for high-pressure jobs. James Mitchell, a Sanford, N.C., psychologist and private sector consultant who has used Savvy Recruiter in the past and sill uses it, believes that Web-based psychological test are becoming critical in hiring the right people in today's competitive world.
"I'm in the business of understanding, predicting and improving performance in high-risk and extreme situations," says Mitchell, formerly with the Air Force's Special Operations Command, Special Tactics Unit. "Savvy Recruiter provides me with a comprehensive battery of tests that measure cognititve abilities that are empirically linked to effective performance in high-risk jobs."
Mitchell says that task focus under pressure and freedom from distraction, for example, are prerequisites for effective performance in a variety of high-risk situations.
Of course, not all employers need to hire someone for a job in which mistakes could theoretically result in the death or injury of a co-worker. But, Mitchell says, that doesn't mean Savvy Recruiter can't be used to measure all sorts of critical behaviors, including aptitude, stress tolerance, social awareness, communication skills, memory, integrity, loyalty and even the propensity for a job candidate to be prone to addictions such as drugs or gambling.
"Employers make decisions about who they should hire and who they should not hire all the time," he says. "A test like this allows an employer to develop a performance profile for effective employees, so the employer can be more certain that hiring decisions are being made on the basis of criteria that actually discriminate based on job performance and not irrelevant and potentially unfair features.
According to TechMicro president Michael Hersh, Savvy Recruiter offers 10 modules altogether, and is not based on traditional standardized pen-and-paper tests.
Founded in 1994, TechMicro has been working for seven years with test publishers to computerize some of their existing printed test materials. But Savvy Recuiter, Hersh explains, represents the first test ever designed from its inception to be computer-administered, and now delivered via the web. As such, it is not just a printed test that has become computer-administered, but rather, Hersh says, an application optimized to use all of the unique capabilities offered by computer technology in assessment.
"Employers receive an incredible number of applications for most positions, whether there is a booming market or not," says Hersh.
"They often need to wade through a high number of applicants, and [Web-based appilcations] are useful."
Hersh says computer-based tests such as Savvy Recruiter can screen out candidates who might appear capable for a certain job on the surface, but perform poorly when they're placed in a working environment as a team player, for example. "That's hard to assess during an interview," he says.
In other cases, a highly skilled candidate might have a tendency to unravel when faced with tight deadlines.
It's hard to assess how much of those capabilities will come to frution, even if you are able to assess the skill level successfully," he says. "So they are hired before you discover they can't function well, and can't work under pressure."
Getting Specific
Another recent entry into the Web-based psychological assessment world is CareerHarmony.com, a New York-based company whose CareerHarmony Assessment Management System (CHAMS), which is delivered via the Web or over company intranets, has been used by companies such as Federal Express, Bosch and AMG. Simply, CHAMS assesses the abilities of individuals and predicts their success in a position, according to Shlomo Dover, co-founder and president of content development.
"Instead of the usual conventions, which are mainly self-reports and questionnaires, we offer representations of job elements that also require performance measures," explains Dover, former chief psychologist for the Israeli Defense Forces. "That means interacting with a simulated environment."
In other words, CareerHarmony's assessment tools are job-specific, and not a general profile of abilities generated by a self report or questionnaire.
"For example, we offer an assessment product for programmers that is validated for programmers and includes different assessment test batteries than for sales professionals, auditors, pilots, etc.," he says. "Every job is included in our arsenal of products. That means representing the measurement of the relevant job competencies and skills of that job."
Even skeptics such as Tennessee psychologist Kaufman agree that the Web can offer a new way to accomplish an old task.
"I think it's another way of getting the job done," Kaufman says. "While I personally prefer to use software on a terminal, there's no reason why Web-based administration, if security is controlled, can't be a viable alternative."
Kaufman adds that when you purchase these services, you just have to be as careful as when you're buying a new computer system or other major piece of equipment.
"You have to do your homework, because anyone can make up a test and put it on the Web," he says.
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