Criterion-Related Validity Of Personality Testing

People’s career success is commonly believed to be correlate with their personality. Based on that belief, the personality test has been designed as a hiring tool and most personality tests are presented as questionnaires that applicants are required to fill out during hiring processes. Data shows that personality test has become an industry with $400 million a year and at least 30 percent of organizations in U.S. have used that in hiring practices (Berry et al. 13). Managers are convinced that personality test enables them to select the applicants who are more likely to be successful performers on particular jobs and would stay in position for long time. However, some concerns related to personality test are criterion-related validity, faking …show more content…
Honest and reliable character is the basic requirement for an applicant to be employed since questionable characteristics, such as violent, disagreeable, drug abused and dishonest, would result in companies’ low productivity and huge profit loss. For instance, data shows that the cost of direct theft by the employees is more than $40 billion dollars per year; besides, employees’ drug and alcohol abuse causes high rate of sickness and absences, which lowers the level of productivity and costs companies $98 billion dollars per year (Stabile 281). These examples illustrate the great cost of bad hiring for company. Therefore, ensuring a good hiring saves companies a lot of money and time to consequently boost companies’ overall …show more content…
The basic premise of using personality test to correctly predict applicants’ job performances is that personality traits are relevant to job performance. According to Murray R. Barrick, Michael K. Mount and Timothy A. Judge, in Michigan State University, East Lansing, USA, some researchers doubted on the criterion-related validity of personality traits (9). This brings out the question on personalities’ correlation with job performance; more clearly, some researchers are skeptical for whether personality can predict job performance. Indeed, recent studies demonstrate the criterion-related validity of personalities and prove that personality traits are predictors of job performance. Researchers establish valid personality-oriented job analysis (POJA) and found that the traits that are rated with strongest job-relevance really accurately predict job performances (Goffin et al. 648). In other words, the personality traits which are commonly believed to impact the performances are studied and analyzed to indeed predict job performances. These studies directly show that personality traits are relevant to job performance and can be assessed to predict job