THE CORPORATE CURMUDGEON
The Face of Character
By Dale Dauten

Dear Job Applicant:

Thank you for your interest in working here at Mundane Industries. Although you qualifications were impressive, I regret to inform you that you were disqualified from consideration by our standard drug and personality testing.  While you are to be congratulated on testing negative for drug use, I'm sorry to report that you tested positive for personality.  Our experience has shown that having a personality is detrimental to our "team" approach -- as we like to say:  No personality; no personality conflicts.

If you would like to question or contest our findings, state your concerns in a letter, fill out a Self-Addressed Stamped Envelope, then place the letter in the SASE and mail it to yourself, as your objections merely confirm that you are DEFINITELY NOT the sort of person we are seeking.

Sincerely,

Winslow "Win-Win" Cheeseley
Asst. Sr. Asso. Exec. V.P., H.R.

What got me thinking about personality tests was meeting with Jackie Squires of  a job candidate testing company called Scheig Associates , out of Gig Harbor, Wash. (www.scheig.com).  A mutual friend, knowing my feelings about testing, had set up this bear-baiting session.  Here's my view on personality tests:

Sure, it works -- it screens out the occasional blockhead who won't play the game.  But then what? You have an applicant guessing what you want to hear, matched up against some psychologist's guess about what makes for success in a job.  Paper-scissors-rock.  And then you get the results and suddenly you're no longer a person, you're a "Quadrant Four" or some such.  It's auto-pigeonholing, the "People Magazine" of stereotyping.

But, to my amazement, Squires wouldn't be baited.  Turns out, instead of testing personalities, at Scheig they identify star performers.  They then ask the stars what makes for success, using the answers in testing and to guide interviews.  In other words, the hiring is based on behaviors, not personalities. 

In fact, working with groups of star performers, the first thing you realize is that personality is not related to output.  For instance, one of their studies was with salespeople for car dealers.  Squires says, "Of the ten star performers, only one was the sort you'd call a 'salesman type.'  One of the others was a woman so soft-spoken you had to lean in to hear what she was saying."  Which confirms that the best salespeople are the ones who don't seem like salespeople.  BUT, just when you think you have the secret -- hire against "type" -- you remember that one guy who is a stereotype AND a star.

Which fits what I learned from my searching out great bosses for my book, "The Gifted Boss" (Morrow, $20).  The best bosses have come to mistrust the  traditional hiring process.  Not only do they know that great employees are rarely in the job market, but because they understand the artificiality of the entire application/ interview process.  Instead of sorting resumes, they spot and court talent, often taking years to reel in a great employee.  This fits Squires' review of research that evaluates the various hiring criteria most employers use.  The impressions formed by the hiring managers during job interviews came out with validity scores right about random.  In other words, you could do about as well in your hiring decisions if you never met the candidate. 

While this seems counterintuitive, it fits with all those examples of dart boards beating stock analysts, and it also fits with some research I encountered early in my career.  I was doing a project on "credit worthiness" -- trying to predict which people will or won't repay a loan.  In one study, the absolute WORST predictor of repayment was the loan officers judgment.  In another study, the BEST predictor was whether the person had a telephone.  That's because phone companies don't haggle -- no pay, no phone.  You can't charm the phone company.

The only conclusion is that we are lousy at "reading" people.  What we read is fiction.  I know this doesn't sit well -- like everyone else, I'm convinced I am a skilled judge of character.  But what is the face of character?  You might as well ask, What is the shape of water?  So next time you're doing hiring, remember this:  The person you interview is never the person you hire.

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Dale Dauten is an entrepreneur, speaker and author.  His latest book, on how great bosses and great employees find each other, is "The Gifted Boss" (William Morrow).  Please write to him in care of King Features Syndicate, 235 East 45th St., New York, NY 10017, or visit www.dauten.com.

1999 by King Features Syndicate, Inc.