Employment Testing Blog

Behavioral Trait Testing: Are your candidates being honest?

  

  

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"The closest a person ever comes to perfection is when he fills out a job application form."

-Stanley Randall

A common question our clients and potential clients ask is this:

"How can I tell if my applicants are being honest with their responses?"

And that's a challenging question.   The core problem is that applicants have an incentive to misrepresent their personality traits, skills and knowledge levels in order to get the job.  That's why pre-employment testing companies like ours exist--to help the hiring manager determine what the actual truth is. 

With skills and knowledge testing, it's much easier to manage the honesty question because, if you can control the testing environment, you've covered most of your bases.  Test them in a proctored environment.  Provide a consistent level of coaching, if any at all.  If you've taken those steps, then the applicant won't be able to search for the solutions to the questions and honesty won't be an issue.

But what about behavioral trait testing (or personality testing)?  Admittedly it's slightly more challenging to control dishonesty with these types of tests.  Because the answers, right or wrong, are wholly located in the person's head, the location of the tests matters less.  Your applicant can test in your office or from a remote location (unlike with skills or knowledge testing) with similar results.

Fortunately, a Candidness score appears in every EmployTest report that includes behavioral test content. This Candidness score helps to tell hiring managers whether the candidate provided honest answers to behavioral test questions.

A High or Moderate Candidness score indicates that questions were answered honestly and that other scores in the test can be trusted. A Low Candidness score indicates that the hiring manager may want to use other screening tools (ie interviews or reference checks) to supplement their analysis of behavioral traits covered in the test.

By using these tools, you can develop a feeling of confidence that your applicants are being honest and, if they are not, then you have the tools to spot the dishonesty.