Personality Is Important For HR To Hire Employee

Is Personality Important for HR to Hire Employees?
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Introduction
The process of hiring or recruitment of employees within an organizational setup is one of the most crucial exercises for the business. The recruitment exercise can be quick or take some time, based on the type of skill set the employer is looking for, as well as the recruitment criteria of the organization. The prospective applicants are usually assessed based on many qualities, which the employer deems as the right fit for the organization. Among the most important things that the employer looks for from a prospective applicant is personality. Personality is the set of qualities and behavior that molds one’s character. It is what defines a person. However, most of the time, we fail at understanding a person's personalities. Assessing one’s personality during the interview process is usually done in many ways, such as applying the personality test. The main question is, however, should employers select based on personality? While there might be a few reasons as to why they should not, the greater part is that they should, based on some reasons.
Trends of using Personality Test
Personality tests have for a very long time been used by psychologists to establish a person's traits as well as assist the subject to interact with the others objectively. The human resource teams have identified the essence of not only these tools but also their implications in nurturing their talent. Consequently, institutions apply the knowledge to every worker’s behavior styles and capitalize on it appropriately to the benefit of the institution (Kramer, 2014). Lately, the personality tests trends have been banking on insights like training managers and team. The primary objective of these coaching is to enhance not only the relationship but also the productivity of the said teams and the managers. Besides, the same tools are used in several institutions during recruitment to ensure that the candidate picked fits well in the position. An employer will, therefore, have to go for personality because it comes along as some ‘package’ that has numerous additional desirable aspects (Rosse, 2014). There is much more to reap from such a criterion of hiring, than merely working with other traditional parameters.
The focus on personality during the hiring process has indeed been on the rise over the past two decades, as more academically qualified applicants continue to flood the job market. According to Siscovick (2017), almost 70% of the present interview processes entail personality tests and assessments, compared to less than 45% that did it two decades ago. This is nearly double the statistics and a stark indicator of how the traditional resumes and application letters are no longer being solely relied upon as the primary tool for recruitment. Personality has taken center stage in the whole recruitment process.
Human resource teams usually apply the Big Five personality dimensions to assist them during the hiring process. The reasoning behind the use of the parameters of tests of Big Five is that they are regarded as the primary traits which make up a person's overall personality. These parameters of tests of Big Five include neuroticism, openness, agreeableness, extraversion, and lastly conscientiousness. Openness characters are persons who enjoy new experiences as well as exploring new things. They include characteristics such as being imaginative and insightful. On the other hand, conscientious persons who are very reliable and prompt (Salgado et al., 2017).
Extroverts are those that draw their energy from interacting with other persons. Consequently, they are not only energetic but also assertive and talkative. Agreeable persons are more compassionate, friendly as well as cooperative. They possess traits like sympathy and kindness. Lastly, the neuroticism is the personalities that relate to other people’s emotions. Persons who score high on this parameter tend to be very moody and tense (Salgado et al., 2017).
Empirical studies demonstrate the link between neuroticism and job performance. Like highlighted above, neurotic persons are characterized by anxiety, aggression, as well as instability. Neuroticism has been conceptualized to encompass several facets like depression, anger as well as self-consciousness. Besides, neurotic persons have been conceptualized to not only have poor tolerance to stress but also to be more impulsive as well as bitter hostility. Although two individuals might have a similar score on the wide neuroticism scale, the, however, might attain varying scores on the other facets. It is therefore indeed not proper to solely rely on this facet to determine a candidate’s ability to perform (Salgado et al., 2017).
However, neuroticism affects job performance in different ways. For instance, anxiety can push an individual to overprepare for a job by making the person think of all how their performance in the position could go wrong. According to Feldman (2018), when an employee is placed in an area that is not in line with his or her temperament, then there is a high chance of underperformance due to a lower degree of engagement. Underperformance, in turn, leads to lower productivity and hence little to no profits for the company. The employee ends up being more of a liability than an asset, not due to lack of skills, but due to wrong job placement based on personality. If such an employee is to be placed in a different job specification that matches his character, then there is a great chance that there will be increased productivity.
Companies ought to use personality test over skills. Many empirical studies have proved that an individual’s genetic composition has the most substantial impact on a person's personality. The influence of genetic makeup on personality exceeds that of childbearing as well as the environmental exposure. Most studies have proved that most of the traits they question are majorly linked to heredity. Many of the studies results, if not all indicate that over half of the traits they examine are due to heredity. That leaves the rest, that is less than a half, of the variations to be as a result of environment, parental influence among other factors (Beck et al., 2015).
It is, therefore, true that a personality as much as it can be changed, the chances are very minimal. I am therefore going to explain below using examples why I hold the opinion that companies ought to use personality tests over skills. First of all, all job comes along with a considerable amount of pressure. Work-related pressure is inevitable. Besides, they have great implications not only to the overall work performance but also to an individual’s social life and health. Personality traits have a considerable impact on an individual’s ability to handle work-related pressure. Like I explained above, persons who are less anxious and more stable emotionally can perform better than those who are more anxious. Further, these persons seem to be more emotionally stable. Consequently, they can contain more pressures that come from work (Chan et al., 2014).
With the increasing workplace pressure, there is need to have some degree of tenacity and resilience, to not only be in a position to work on the intellectual requirements and skill sets being asked for, but also the extra dimension raised by the pressure. Secondly, certain jobs require certain personalities, for example, extroverts would best fit for a sales job. Although the skills also play a part, introverts with excellent sales skills in most cases do not perform better than their extrovert counterparts. Personality is more like a guarantee, as it rarely changes significantly over time. It is one thing that the employer can always be sure about when managing the human resource (Beck et al., 2015).
Further, it is true that skills can be trained, but personality cannot be trained. As a result, having the right personality for the specific position allows the organization to employ the correct candidates. This is because it is easy to impart the skills on an employee with the right personalities for the particular job. Lastly, a resume may not be an accurate picture of an applicant. During the interview, the human resource team needs to focus much on the personalities of the candidates to assess their suitability (Chan et al., 2014).
Lastly selecting from personality also helps eliminate any bias during hiring. There is some bias that can often go unnoticed even by the panelists themselves, known as unconscious bias. This is an innate form of prejudice that affects virtually everyone, including even the most well-meaning recruiters. It happens in a way that they unwittingly find themselves liking or disliking specific candidates on nearly baseless grounds, and in a way, they can’t avoid. Mickiewicz (2016) notes that these subconscious biases usually affect a great deal of most recruiters when it comes to the final decision-making process. The bias can even risk the company oozing out on the best personalities for the job. Such intrinsic biases can be well avoided if the employer opts to hire based on personality.
Personality and organizational culture
Personality traits are one of the factors that affect organizational commitment and subsequently job satisfaction (Mustafa, 2013). For instance, the emotional attachment that resulted from affective commitment was referr...