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Screening: Testing the Limits
by Kurt F. Geisinger
New technologies and an increased emphasis by test publishers on the needs of customers are presenting HR leaders with new opportunities and challenges.
Personnel screening is particularly useful in the two situations in which many companies currently find themselves: when there are a substantial number of applicants for a limited number of positions; and during the careful selection of the best-fitting candidate for a specific positions, especially when it's a leadership position such as CEO. Although the goals are quite difference, both situations can and should rely heavily on the proper use of personnel testing.
Two major factors appear to be reshaping personnel testing: the increased use of technology and how personnel-testing companies have refocused to be more oriented to the needs of their customers.
But these aren't the only forces at work. There has also been an increasing international focus in the field and the nature of specific personnel tests is changing, specifically as it relates to the use of personality measures, certification tests and general ability measures.
Lately, diversity has become a central focus for many hiring organizations. As companies become more international and more representative of the nations they're based in, screening measures must continue to be studied to determine whether they are fair for all candidates.
The Impact of Technology
Technology is increasingly playing an important part in the delivery of many kinds of personnel-screening events. In certain European countries, more than 50 percent of the screening measures that are taken are administered by computer, often in distant locations using the Internet. This form of testing saves real expenses when the distances between the candidate and the home testing site are significant.
However, one should remember that cheating on various cognitive (ability and knowledge) tests appears to be at an all-time high, to the extent that one company specializing in identifying cheating founded within the past decade has experienced 100 percent annual growth each year for the past five years. Therefore, most tests, at least those that have correct answers, continue to require being administered in secure settings.
The first tests administered via computers in the late '80s and early '90s were basically just paper-and-pencil tests that were loaded on a computer. Respondents used a keyboard to enter their responses. Newer tests, however, employ the many advantages of computer technology and advanced psychometrics.
Using computer technology, some innovative item types (e.g., essays scored by computer, applied questions involving videos and/or graphics and multiple-choice questions with more than one correct answer) are now being employed. Further, technology is being used to shorten the time required to administer the tests.
By successively choosing items for job candidates based on their performance up until a particular point in the test, testing software can select items that maximally identify what candidates know and do not know, and where they fit along the continuum of ability and skill measured by the test. The use of innovative items and scoring technology can also make tests more interesting for those taking them.
Finally, computer technology enables those being tested to take the tests at remote locations.
Interviews continue to be required for many positions, even though it is well known that interview information rarely provides strong predictions. Interviews should be known more for their ability to recruit candidates into the pool than as a screening or selection tool.
Videoconferencing, meanwhile, has become much more available and of higher quality, permitting interviews to be performed at a distance, thereby saving travel funds and candidate travel time. Specifically, it can be used to lure busy candidates to consider a leadership position for which they might not be willing to provide a day or two of travel time. Electronic in-baskets can also be used to see how candidates for leadership positions would make decisions and balance priorities.
Security issues are of increasing importance in the screening process, too. Background information provided by job candidates can often be verified through Web searches. Moreover, especially for leadership positions, it is often possible to develop questions for specific candidates regarding their employment history based on what a Web search uncovers.
Roles and Relationships
A second major change in personnel screening appears purely organizational at first, but its implications are far-reaching.
Throughout the history of personnel testing, industrial psychologists have studied the variables relevant to industry that they believed they could measure well, and those that predict job performance. These psychologists developed measures of the variables, sold them through publishing houses and studied them to determine how valuable they were in predicting future job performance. This has been the predominant model since the beginning of personnel testing in the United States roughly 100 years ago.
Presently, several organizational changes are occurring. First, businesses are now demanding certain measures they believe are needed, regardless of whether they are in the inventory of the publishing houses. Where possible, publishing houses are working to meet the needs of these organizations.
Historically, many of these needs have been met by organizational consultants, often industrial-organiza
The challenge for test publishers delivering electronic solutions is to provide materials, such as recommendations to the test user and to the test takers, that are usable by nonprofessionals. There are certain risks in this process, of course. Test misuse (e.g., the over interpretation of small test score differences across two individuals) is much more likely to occur if nonprofessionals are the primary test users.
Such potential problems require that all parties involved in the testing process (companies and their representatives) follow professional standards to avoid misuses that can adversely impact both job candidates and the companies using them.
A second, related change is already being seen. When testing firms built measures on their own or with the help of researchers, they conducted research to demonstrate the validity of the tests (that is, the accuracy with which the test predicts future job performance)
As tests become increasingly proprietary, however, the test publishers are often more secretive regarding the nature and usefulness of the measures. Unfortunately for the science of industrial testing, such information isn't always provided to test users. If we do not know to what extent measures actually are effective, we lose our scientific basis.
It should also be noted that with the number of multinational companies on the rise, personnel screening has increasingly become a task that bridges cultures, languages and country borders. The adaptation of tests has become a big business, with tests published in one language and then translated to a different language.
In so doing, however, language considerations must be only one factor. Some test questions do not hold up if they are simply translated from one language to another; they are relatively culturally bound. With the proper work, however, tests useful in one language can be reworked in a way that makes them valuable in another.
As companies become more internationally focused, having skills in more than one relevant language is likely to grow in importance.
The Nature of Personnel Tests
Certification tests for the development of skills will also continue to be increasingly relevant. Companies such as Microsoft have emerged as some of the world's largest testing companies, as they provide tests to certify that individuals are competent in specific IT capabilities. The availability of publicly verifiable certifications of relevant skills reduces the need for local testing at the company level. One can assume a set of skills and eliminate the employee during the probationary period if those skills are not found to be present or up-to-date.
A longstanding debate in personnel testing relates to which are more valuable: the testing of general ability or work samples. This article does not answer this debate; both are relevant, depending upon the nature of the job.
General ability, commonly known as intelligence for more than a century, is relevant for a wide range of positions, but the kinds of job-specific knowledge and skills that are often embedded into work samples can also be very useful, especially if training programs for new employees do not address those knowledge areas and skills.
Human resource executives need to consider whether one or both are relevant for given positions.
Personality tests have long been a tool in personnel screening, without the kind of widespread validation success that one finds in either ability or work-sample measures. They may be found useful in some situations, but users should demand hard data demonstrating empirical research indicating job relevance.
Too often, such measures seem relevant, but they can be faked too easily by job candidates and simply do not predict performance. It is difficult in a contrived situation to measure variables that are important for job success, such as motivation. Care is required, and it is expected that the use of such measures may well decline.
Conclusion
Needless to say, all predictions of the future are based upon present trends and work in progress. There can be no doubt that advances in technology represent the most significant change in personnel screening. The relationships between hiring companies and representatives who provide professionally developed screening measures are also changing.
Finally, the very nature of the measures that we use is changing, due to customer demand as well as evidence supporting their use.
Together, these changes no doubt provide human resource executives with many new opportunities as they formulate and execute their testing strategies. But as they proceed, the savvy ones will be mindful of the challenges awaiting them.
[About the Author: Kurt F. Geisinger, Ph.D., is director of the Buros Center on Testing and the Meierhenry distinguished professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. His areas of expertise include validity, admissions testing, proper test use, the rights of test takers and the adaptation of tests from one language and culture to another. Geisinger is presently editor of Applied Measurement in Education, and is either serving or has served on the editorial committees for eight other journals. He has edited or co-edited the Psychological Testing of Hispanics and Test Interpretation and Diversity, both published by American Psychological Association books, and the 17th Mental Measurements Yearbook.]
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