How useful are pre-employment screening tests? Evidence shows they can help retailers save money and make money... even if some people cheat.

The Wall Street Journal ran a recent story about pre-employment personality tests (behind paywall). In Test for Dwindling Retail Jobs Spawns a Culture of Cheating, they talk about someone who found answers online prior to taking a test called Unicru (now known as Kronos Workforce Acquisition). This test is frequently used to screen applicants for hourly jobs, such as retail positions.

Show me the evidence. Reading that, I wondered if such tests are really very helpful. Does this cheating erode the validity and value? Kronos, the sponsor of the test mentioned in the Wall Street, offers some impressive evidence that their workforce program can pay off for employers. They provide a case study for one of their customers, the sports retail chain Finish Line: 

"Finish Line has seen continuous year-over-year improvement in critical metrics like employee turnover, time spent per interview, and sales per associate since implementing Workforce Acquisition. In a one-year period, over 300,000 candidates applied for employment at Finish Line, with 75 percent of them applying online. Using Kronos’ assessment scores, the company was able to eliminate approximately one-third of applications that did not meet the basic hiring criteria. Finish Line estimates that it saved 60,000 store manager hours by automating the administrative aspects of the hiring process and not having to interview those candidates who did not meet the basic hiring criteria. Furthermore, those who do get hired are staying on the job longer.... Finish Line has also seen a nearly 10 percent improvement in retention companywide. This translates into hard cash savings as the costs associated with sourcing, interviewing, and hiring more employees has dropped. Cost savings are a tangible and important benefit, but even more important are those benefits that help drive business results. This is evident in the increase in sales per associate by approximately 20 percent."

No one can say for sure how many of these improvements can be directly attributed to the Kronos employment testing, but based on these numbers, it's clearly part of a worthwhile management initiative.

Hey, at least cheaters are proactive. As for the cheating? I suppose someone who goes to the effort of finding test answers online is showing initiative -- so maybe that's evidence suggesting they'll be a more engaged employee. According to the Wall Street, "The producer of the test, called Unicru, says it believes the incidence of cheating is low, because there's no decline in the benefits it brings retailers: lower employee turnover, better safety and improved sales performance. 'We see absolutely no evidence of any significant cheating taking place in the use of our assessments or that the cheating is substantially affecting the validity of the assessments,' says David Scarborough, who helped develop the test and works for its owner, Kronos Inc."

Kronos seems to be doing something right: They say their test is deployed in 38,000+ distributed locations nationwide (more than anyone else), and that more than 100,000 daily users are processing, on average, one hourly application every two seconds.

Comments

[Rob Guardiola]

Cognitive ability pre-employment tests have very strong evidence of predicting future job performance. Literally thousands of studies and a number of meta-analyses provide evidence-based support. Cheating on cognitive ability tests significantly impacts the validity of these tests.

Personality tests, however, do not have as strong validity evidence, due to a number of reasons. There is one school of thought that states: who cares if you cheat/fake on a personality test? Most people alter their personality at work (as compared to at home, with friends, etc.) anyway. Maybe the people who cheat/fake on a personality test are just more aware of the need to adjust within a work setting?

I can't say I completely agree with the argument, but it does provide an interesting basis for discussion. Also, there is a good review of the topic article on ere.net.

[Liz]

I have taken two or three employee tests and only one of them was a personality assessment. I didn't think any of the questions were too personal, however that is only my opinion. I also felt that the personality assessment wouldn't have been very helpful since the questions were repeated several times and it was easy to predict what kind of answers the employers might be looking for. It's also too hard to know someone's personality through a test. I think the best way to use pre-employment testing is to use a PEO to administer the test. They take care of everything and deliver the results to the company so they can take the next step.