The online personality assessment can be a useful tool for efficiently screening, assessing and recruiting potential new hires. Hiring managers can glimpse negative personality traits and even use results to forecast a candidate’s future job performance. This standardized data can provide practical insights into how well a candidate will fit into the company culture and it can also be used to predict a potential new hire’s chances of success with the company.

But can such exams really provide an accurate overview of who a job prospect is as an employee or even as a person?

The Risks of Personality Assessments

One issue that repeatedly comes up with regard to personality assessments administered during the hiring process is how ethical they are. That is, the popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator buckets people into 16 personality categories, from introvert to emotionally driven. But even The Myers-Briggs Company, which publishes the assessment, disavows its use as part of the hiring process.

Another ethical issue that can come up with such personality appraisals is the actual questions. Some may ask questions that could be viewed as biased. So employers could face liabilities if any of the questions in the assessment are designed to uncover any disabilities that a candidate may have, especially if they are subsequently not selected for the job.

The Time Commitment

Human resources departments and hiring managers will want to invest the time in selecting the right personality assessment. These tests should provide more insight into who a job candidate is as far as how their personality will impact their future job performance.

After all, he or she can tell you in an interview that they have great customer service skills and really enjoy working with hotel guests. But the reality could be that one unsatisfied guest could change his or her mood for the rest of the day.

That said, keep in mind that personality assessments are also a time commitment on the part of the candidate. With employers currently in such a competitive job market, now may be the time to really take stock of how essential this aspect of the hiring process really is. Now is not the time to deter potential new hires from continuing with the interview process.

Personality Assessments Are One Dimensional

Any job candidate who’s ever taken a standardized test during their formative years is likely going to look for “the right answer” rather than honestly responding to the questions. That is, he or she will seek out the responses that they think are what the employer wants to hear. So all test results are going to be skewed to some extent.

Moreover, the way in which we behave and respond to a given situation is driven by any number of environmental factors that impact us at the moment. Are we distracted by background noise or a personally situation that’s currently happening in our lives? Are we currently under pressure from our supervisor or even personal financial pressure?

Personality assessments can’t gauge such outside influences. For example, how a new front desk hire behaves when checking in guests on an average occupancy day and how he or she responds to long lines caused by a large group’s arrival could vary greatly. A personality assessment won’t necessarily belie this difference.

Perfect Scores Don’t Necessarily Translate to Perfect Hires

Candidates who achieve optimal results on a personality assessment won’t always equate to perfect hires.

Just as hotel companies today are emphasizing diversity and inclusion in their hiring practices, job candidates wit similar “successful” results on personality assessments may mean a glut of homogenous new hires. These new employees may not look like, but they may have comparable ways of thinking and dealing with situations. Optimally, hiring managers should want to create cohesive teams where employees and their supervisors can work together in  a way that balances each other.

It’s also possible for candidates to achieve results that don’t necessarily align with their background and experience. That can leave a hiring manager with a conundrum.

Reinvest the Dollars Spent

Actual job interviews are likely going to give hiring managers a more accurate portrayal of who a job candidate is as a person and as an employee. But the traditional interview format and standard questions that we’ve all come to expect during this process don’t typically provide in-depth insight into a person’s character.

Plus, personality assessments are a cost-center for every employer that uses them. Consider putting those funds toward expanding the behavioral and situational questions used in your interview process. This might mean working with a consultant who can help shape those questions or attending a human resources conference where you can meet with fellow attendees and find out what types of best practices their businesses have in place to help assess a candidate’s personality.

Also keep in mind that we’re all human. No personality assessment and no amount of interviewing is going to provide the full picture of who someone is and what specific idiosyncrasies they might have.  Like all of us, even the best candidate for the job is flawed.