In 1911, Fredrick Taylor published Principles of Scientific Management, and among other ideas contained in the book was the notion that employees could be understood through questions and answers. For example, question "How many times a minute should [a secretary] be able to open and close a file drawer?" Answer: "Exactly 25 times” (Cox, n.d.). The idea that employees could be measured became popular and gave rise to other studies designed to hire the perfect person for the job. At the outset of World War II employers began using the Meyers-Briggs Type-Indicator test to assess female job applicants (Cox, n.d.). There was a labor shortage during World War II, but after the war ended there was an excess of applicants for jobs. Companies began giving potential hires employments tests as a means of screening the applicantant. The tests were designed to address native intelligence, aptitude, personality, and skills (Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 2014). By the 1960s employment testing was widespread and was a common process in many fields. Complaints were that the tests were discriminatory against anyone who was not a white male. In 1966, black employees at the Duke Power Company in North Carolina sued because the company was requiring employees to pass an IQ test in order to advance. IQ tests had long been held to be discriminatory against minorities. In 1971 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the black employees in the case, finding that employee tests that discriminate were unconstitutional based on the Civil Rights Amendments of 1964. This decision did not make employment testing go away; it made employment testing different (Smith, 2008). There was great push to create employment tests that would be useable and not discriminatory during the 1970s. The most prominent test was the Holland Code. This tested people based on how successfully employed people did in their jobs, the assumption being that this could indicate what type of work people would enjoy doing and do well. The Holland Code results were in scoring format based on the two highest scores a person achieved. The types of jobs it tested for were realistic, investigative, artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. The results indicated if a person would be better at being, for example, a forest ranger or a clerk (Miller and Miller, 2005). In the 1980s test changed again with a reintroduction of work done in the 1940s. This type of testing addressed psychological traits called the Big Five: 1) Extrovert 2) Agreeable 3) Conscientious 4) Emotionally Stable (versus Neurotic) and 5) Cultured. These five aspects of a person’s personality were assumed indicative of the person’s character and predictive of their behavior (John and Srivastava, 1999). This type of testing was popular throughout the 1990s. John and Srivastava (1999) contend that these five traits “relate to important outcomes in the workplace. Conscientiousness has emerged as the only general predictor of job performance, while other dimensions relate to more specific aspects of job performance” (35-36). Scoring high on the scales for agreeableness or high on the scale of neuroticism was thought to be indicative of a person’s ability to work in groups. Those who scored high for being extroverted were thought to be good candidates for sales jobs and management jobs (John and Srivastava, 1999). Today a search on Amazon Books yielded 2,670 results for “employment testing” and most of those books deal with how to give an employment test or how to pass an employment test. According to The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (2014) there has been a surge in employment testing since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the subsequent war in the Middle East. Employers cite safety and security, prevention against violence in the workplace and its attendant liability as the main reasons to justify the now widespread use of employment tests. Because so many job applications are now submitted on-line, employment tests are used to screen out the people employers do not want to interview. Not surprisingly, as employment tests have become more widespread, lawsuits alleging discrimination in the hiring process have become more frequent.
References
Cox, Ana Marie. (n.d.). “I Am Never Lonely: A brief history of employee personality testing.” stayfreemagazine.org. The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. (2014). eeoc.govGale (Firm). (2012). Encyclopedia of management. Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning.John, O. P., & Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big-Five Trait Taxonomy: History, Measurement, And Theoretical Perspectives. Berkeley, CA: University of California.Miller, M. J., & Miller, T. A. (March 01, 2005). Theoretical application of Holland’s theory to individual decision-making styles: implications for career counselors. Journal of Employment Counseling, 42, 1, 20-28.Smith, R. S. (2008). Race, Labor & Civil Rights: Griggs Versus Duke Power And The Struggle For Equal Employment Opportunity. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. (2014). “Employment Testing”. siop.org.
