Personality Testing: Yes or No?

1. Is Mark making a good decision to drop the use of personality testing? Why?

My opinion is that Marks's decision is right in this case. I think it is very difficult to use personality testings to different job candidates if you don't have psychological education. I don't mean the personality testing separately. The tests are quite informative and reliable. However the much more difficult part is to define and decide what personality is the best match to the job.

This is the reason because I think that personality testing are only useful for high management job decisions if the testing is conducted by a psychologist team.

2. The better-quality personality tests are difficult to fake. Other than attempting to land the job, why would a job candidate fake a personality test?

A job candidate would fake a personality test if he thinks that he has a better chance to get the job. He would pretend personality skills which match better to the job.

This would decrease the reliability of the test and the worst case is that someone get the job who is not suitable to the job.

3. Could personality testing be used for management decisions other than hiring? Explain.

Yes, personality testing could be used for other management decisions. However, there a the same problems as I write in answer 1. To get really useful data it is a very big effort. One example for a non HR decision where personality testings are helpful is maybe to use it by an introduction of an new important IT-System.

You could test the personality characteristics of your employees if they match to the requirement of the new system. If the result is not consistent enough you have the chance to change the system to avoid a big harm to your company.