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| Q. Why use psychological
testing? A. Psychological testing provides the most objective measurement of job applicant knowledge, skills, and abilities. This measurement provides an accurate and fair means to compare different applicants to each other and to the requirements of the job. In addition, according to research done by the U.S. Employment Service and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, an enormous amount of personnel expense can be saved by using a valid pre-employment test. Forty-four percent of the American Management Association use psychological testing to select employees and the percentage is climbing rapidly. Infinet's psychological tests combine the best from tests of job-related knowledge, intelligence, personality testing, and ethics. Each of these is explained in more detail below. Personality tests are self-report measures of traits, temperaments, or dispositions. They aim to measure constructs, such as orderliness, sociability, agreeability, conscientiousness, flexibility of thought, and attitude towards new technology. The strength of personality testing lies in its ability to match an applicant to a particular company culture. The better the fit to the culture, the more the applicant is satisfied with their job, the greater the likelihood they will remain with the company. Ethics tests have been shown to predict absenteeism, tardiness, disciplinary problems, ability to work as part of a team, ability to maintain self-control, ability to attend to details, and job satisfaction. Integrity tests are designed to predict the predisposition of job applicants to engage in on-the-job-theft and other antisocial or counterproductive behaviors. They measure attitudes regarding tolerance of others who steal, projections about the extent of stealing by others, projections about on-the-job drug and alcohol use of others, and other questions of ethics and integrity. All human resources professionals and their respective companies benefit from the insight into an applicant that is provided by ethics testing. Ethics tests are used to determine the likelihood that an applicant will comply with the rules of society. There has been a great deal of research into the validity of ethics/integrity tests showing that ethics scores can predict antisocial behavior. In one study, ethics tests were shown to reduce inventory shrinkage (i.e. employee theft) by approximately 50% over an 18-month period. IQ tests tell human resources professionals whether the applicant has the abilities necessary for successful job performance. These include areas such as applied mathematics, applied reading comprehension, manual dexterity, short- and long-term memory, and visual-spatial processing (i.e. the ability to manipulate three-dimensional objects within your mind.) Q. How does this translate to cost analysis? (or Why must I use Infinet's Psychological Testing?)? A. Faced with an increasingly competitive business environment, many employers are turning to psychological testing as a way to improve their workforce. In a recent survey, according to the Legal Report published by the Society for Human Resource Management, 44% of Fortune 100 companies indicated that their employment selection system included some form of pre-hire psychological testing. One of the main reasons for this is to reduce turnover costs associated with bad hires. According to industry experts, turnover costs a typical company 0.8 to 1.5 times the annual salary plus the burden of employee's benefits for employee's benefits for an entry-level position. These costs are due to lost productivity, recruitment and interview, training, damaged morale, and shrinkage (or employee theft.) For example, a bank fires a customer service representative due to employee theft. Assume the ex-employee earned $36,000 per year and cost the company $10,000 per year in benefits (i.e., medical, dental, unemployment insurance, etc.). It will cost the bank $58,800 (1.3 x $36,000 + $10,000) to recover from and replace that bad hire. For management-level positions, turnover costs rise to 1.5 to 2 times annual salary plus the cost of benefits. Research has shown that pre-hire screening can significantly reduce turnover, increase profits, and improve production. Research has also reported that top performing workers identified by pre-hire screening are 2 to 3 times more productive than their average coworker. This large gap between the high performers and the average ones directly impacts your company's bottom line. In addition, psychological testing saves costs associated with interviews and training. When the screening tool is used to sort out those applicants who are not a good match, the interviewer's time may be efficiently redirected to more important matters. By using the pre-hire screen, job candidates are more likely to understand the training materials more quickly and completely, thereby reducing the time spent on training. Q. How do you ensure legal compliance? A. There are no laws that prohibit psychological testing for pre-employment selection. However, there are laws and regulations that have important implications for pre-employment testing. All Infinet's tests comply with all such laws and regulations. These include: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act (CRA), Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA), Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures, Title I of the Civil Rights Act of 1991, and Americans Disabilities Act (ADA). In addition, all Infinet's tests are developed in accordance with The Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing by the American Psychological Association and the Principles for the Validation and Use of Personnel Selection Procedures by Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. No Infinet test has ever resulted in adverse impact or discrimination against a protected group, and we work hard to keep it that way. In our opinion, a well-done psychological test is more fair than any interview. This is because our assessments are not influenced by applicants' ethnicity, nationality, age, or gender. Interviewers, due to the fact they are human, are plagued by biases and assumptions, known and unknown. We all have initial impressions of people when we first meet. Thus, things like physical appearance have a significant effect on who is selected to do the job. Rather than select the person who looks most like a salesperson, for example, our assessments select on the rational basis of IQ, personality, ethics, and knowledge. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has established a set of guidelines that all employment tests should meet. Those guidelines are as follows: the test must be valid, the test must be fair, and the test must be job-related. All of Infinet tests meet these three criteria. Q. How does Infinet establish the validity of a psychological test? A. Validity is the most important issue in selecting and using a psychological test. Validation is the cumulative and on-going process of giving meaning to test scores. Validity refers to what characteristic the test measures and how well the test measures the characteristic. Validity tells you if the characteristic being measured is related to job performance and qualifications. In order to show job-relatedness, Infinet uses three methods to meet all legal criterion, content validity, criterion validity, and construct validity. Content validity is used when the test closely approximates a job, as in a typing test for a typist position. This form of validity is used to test the job skill portion of our tests. Criterion validity compares success on the test with some form of success on the job. It is the preferred method for validation under the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures and is used by Infinet on all tests. Typically, Infinet will correlate test scores of existing employees with supervisor or manager ratings of observable behaviors of the same employees to establish criterion validity. Construct validity requires proof that the test measures the characteristic or concept it claims to measure and that this characteristic is important to successful performance on the job. Current thinking in psychology and assessment is that construct validity encompasses all other forms of validity. Q. How do I contact an Infinet representative if I have my questions? A. For specific help, you may reach one of our helpful representatives at (925)-944-3440 or e-mail Sales AT InfinetAssessment.com. |
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