It recently struck me that I haven't really touched on the aspect of personality type testing as a valid tool in the recruitment process.
There are a few popular personality tests that I am certain you would have heard about, such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, the Caliper Profile, 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire and the DISC Personality Test.
These are popularly used as assessment tools to determine whether the candidate's personality type is consistent with the required traits to make them a desired employee or even if they are the right fit for the job role and the organisation's culture.
Elankumaran made the assertion that any effort to maximise organisational effectiveness requires a higher degree of job engagement among the members of the organisation.
Let's, therefore, look at the science. According to the American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology, a personality trait can be defined as: 'a relatively stable, consistent, and enduring internal characteristic that is inferred from a pattern of behaviour, attitudes, feelings, and habits in the individual.'
Hence these tests can be a useful tool, as used for several years, to determine whether an individual "makes the cut" to be welcomed into an organisation. Nonetheless, these traits basically exist in theory, and so supplemental data, such as a person's motive and/or life story, for example, would be needed to provide concrete evidence these tests are foolproof.
Considering this, during the recruitment stage employers should use other tools such as background checks and even assessment centres.
Regardless of this, personality tests remain a preferred tool and I would like to discuss them further as they relate to an employee's job involvement and engagement.
The American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology goes on to define job involvement as the degree to which a person psychologically identifies with his or her job. It further says a person who has a high level of job engagement usually obtains major life satisfaction from the job, so that job accomplishments lead to a strong sense of pride and higher levels of self-esteem.
However, failures in the job may lead to discontent and depression.
Therefore, we can go a bit further and delve into specific personal characteristics which contribute to or may take away from the overall organisational effectiveness. The literature suggests personal characteristics can generally outline an individual's human behaviour and thus assumptions can be inferred.
In my research, I choose to look at Barrick and Mount's (1991) meta-analysis, where the focus was primarily on five personality factors. These are neuroticism (emotional stability), extroversion, openness, agreeableness, and conscientiousness.
Of these five factors, not surprisingly, the neurotic employee would be the one associated with lower job efficiency and therefore deemed to have low job involvement. Neurotic personalities may display insecurities, depression, and worry, are anxious, and tend