Should Aptitude and Personality Testing Impact Hiring?

Last year, Duma Works launched an aptitude and personality test feature as an additional tool for companies to use to screen talent for their organizations.

The question always comes up about how much weight HR Managers and Recruiters should place on these aptitude and personality tests, because after all, it’s very difficult to understand the intricacies of who someone is and their motivations from a 30 question survey. It’s also tough to knock candidates out for test scores — maybe they aren’t as good test takers, maybe the tests were developed in other markets, maybe they haven’t been trained as well in standardized tests…

We thought we would share how Duma Works uses the aptitude and personality tests in-house to help advise on how to fit aptitude and personality testing into the job candidate screening process.

Background on the Aptitude & Personality Tests

The Aptitude Tests we issue at Duma Works have 3 segments. One for spatial reasoning, one for critical thinking, and one for language skills. This part is pretty straightforward. When all the candidates have completed the test, we can bring up their individual report and take a look at how they did on each one of the sections.

The Personality Test is a series of scenario-based questions and once the candidate has completed the test, the system analyzes the results and determines where the candidate falls on the spectrum for a variety of traits. The traits include things like: Competitiveness, Goal orientation, Flexibility, Collaboration, Patience, etc.

Once the results are calibrated, the system will suggest two important things:

1- If the results of this candidate indicate that they would be a good manager.
2- Which types of professions this candidate would be best suited for, based on the historic data collected about personality traits across professions.

The company has the choice of whether or not they would like to share the candidate’s results with the candidates. Results are not sent automatically.

This is the layout of the personality and aptitude test that we issue at Duma Works.

Aptitude Test

The way we work with aptitude tests is sometimes on a case-by-case basis, but there are a few common threads that I would like to draw on.

1- We issue aptitude tests to everyone we will hire to get a sense of where they fall. 2- For every role, we have a conversation before we issue the tests about how strongly an aptitude score should factor into the hiring decision for this specific position. Not every position requires a rocket scientist, and in fact, some positions would be better off with someone with a higher EQ than IQ. 3- We do not share aptitude results with the candidates, as we don’t feel it is necessary for their performance on the team.

4- For internship positions at Duma Works, we typically weigh the aptitude tests more heavily. This is because when we are screening entry-level job applicants, we have less screening methods to work with. For interns, companies typically hire on “potential.” At Duma Works, we try to understand this potential more accurately through practical screening questions, where we have job candidates do a case study that is taken from the day-to-day activities they will be required to perform. We then use the aptitude tests as a gauge for how much time it will take to train this person.

And lastly and most importantly, we factor the aptitude testing into the other screening results we have for this applicant before making a hiring decision.

Personality Test

Again, we typically work with personality tests on a case-by-case basis, but there are a few common themes.

1- We NEVER factor personality test results into our hiring decision-making as a binary factor — Yes we will hire, or no, we will not hire.
2- We use the personality test as a way of understanding what the applicants future trajectory might be in the company.
3- We use the personality test as a way of understanding what areas an applicant may need more support in when they join the company. For example, if they don’t demonstrate good managerial traits, we may decide we need to give them additional managerial coaching and take them as a junior manager instead of a senior manager (of course, this is if we adore the candidate based on practical test results and other screens).
4- We use the personality test as a way of understanding what niche within a department this candidate may be happiest in. For example, if a candidate demonstrates a stronger tenacity for IT-based jobs, but is applying for a sales job, we would consider encouraging the candidate to focus on running things like sales data analysis or market research instead of going door to door for meetings everyday.

Overall, the personality test is just an indicator (that can be disproven) about how a candidate will fit into the role, the specific department focus, the management level, and what their likely career trajectory would be.

Summary

Personality screening is advisable to issue to job applicants before hiring them to get a greater sense of the candidate’s strengths and weaknesses but not necessarily as grounds to disqualify anyone. Also, we advise taking the results with a grain of salt, as there can be many factors (including bad internet access!) that can impact scores.

Furthermore, if you are going to share results, make sure you have thought it through with your team, or HR team if you have one. Test results are always very sensitive and it is inevitable that your employees will share their results with each other.

Personality tests are easier to deal with, as personality types are widely acknowledged as different, and as an employer, it’s important for you to make sure each member of your team is in the department for which they are best suited.

Aptitude test results are trickier, as these scores go back to childhood upbringing, access to standardized tests from a young age, and even genetics. Be careful when sharing results, as members of your team may not have performed as well as they might have imagined, and take it to heart.

If you have any questions, want to chat about your recruiting process, or want to learn more about Duma Works, please visit our website dumaworks.com or reach out at magic@dumaworks.com . I’m always happy to meet new people, exchange new ideas, and build new partnerships.

Hope this helps, and happy hiring!

Originally published at dumaworks.com on March 8, 2017.