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Keywords Employee selection, Individual behaviour, Personality tests
Abstract Complex issues arise when personality variables are incorporated into traditional approaches to personnel selection. Personality assessment and testing in employment contexts is more complicated than it would appear. Rather than arguing against considering personality variables, we focus on five problematic issues associated with their use in personnel selection. These issues are: the appropriateness of linear selection models; the problem of personality-related selfselection effects; the multi-dimensionality of personality; bias associated with social desirability, impression management, and faking in top-down selection models; and the legal implications of personality assessment in employment contexts. Recommends that practitioners and researchers be cognizant of these issues in the use of personality tests in employment decisions.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 11th Annual Conference of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in St Louis, Missouri, USA, April 1997.
Personality is receiving renewed attention in selection and employment contexts. A search of PsycINFO abstracts using "job performance and personality" as keywords and limited to 1990-2000 identified 248 journal articles and 127 dissertation abstracts for just the past ten years alone. Taxonomic advances such as the emergence of the five-factor model (FFM) of personality structure (Goldberg, 1993; John, 1990; McCrae and Costa, 1990; Ozer and Reise, 1994; Wiggins and Trapnell, 1997) as well as meta-analysis based validity evidence (e.g. Barrick and Mount, 1991; Tett et al., 1991) have played a major role in this resurgent interest in the use of personality variables as predictors of job performance. This renewed interest is further evidenced in the many other primary studies (e.g. Arthur and Graziano, 1996; Digman and Inouye, 1986; Graziano et al., 1996; Hogan et al., 1992; Mount et al, 1994; Nolan et al., 1994) that have demonstrated relations among specified personality variables and real world criteria of interest.
However, personality assessment for personnel selection purposes carries with it several potentially problematic issues. The present paper identifies and discusses some of the issues that arise when the assessment of personality variables is incorporated into traditional approaches to personnel selection. We do not argue against the importance of considering personality variables in employment contexts. Neither is it our intent to provide an exhaustive review of the personality literature. Rather,...