Originally Posted by
rickair7777
I think it would take a very large paradigm shift to ban personality analysis in hiring because that actually also occurs in regular interviews.
The issue isn't personality analysis per se, it's the use of tests per se. Psychological testing that discriminates between those who are presumed to be impaired applicants and those who are presumed to not be similarly impaired applicants would seem to be in direct violation of the amended law. If you look at sites that promote such testing, they are increasingly giving warning in their advertisements that this may be the case, and appropriate legal issues should be examined before instituting such testing - their means of insulating themselves from their own liability.
If you look in the professional HR literature, they too are increasingly concerned that such testing would not survive judicial scrutiny.
About the only avenue I could imagine would be to attack the validity or fairness of the testing. That would be an uphill battle because the employers do actually have some empirical data to show...
The way those tests work, is before an organization uses them, they give the tests to their current employees. Then they identify what THEY consider to be desirable employees, and then attempt to find a consistent personality pattern across that group. Maybe they also look for patterns in problem children, to help weed them out.
Also the test companies have develop "broad" pattern matches (across many organizations) for certain types of employees, ie safety sensitive, customer service, manager, etc.
First point, I can't find anything in the literature that suggests that such testing has a predictive value positive or negative for successful employment of more than about 0.6. That's scarcely better than a flip of a coin. If you have data showing any more precision than that,I'd be glad to see it. But the validity of the testing FOR THIS PURPOSE does not seem very great.
Second point is the business necessity issue. Even if the testing were more predictive than 0.6, other people not using it in the same situation are still being successful, making it hard to argue that there is a business necessity. Simply gaining a slight business advantage over rivals is not adequate legally to defend not requiring with the law, otherwise every company could simply opt to not comply with other provisions of the ADA law, like requiring ramps for the orthopedic ally challenged. It was never imagined that passing the ADA WOULDN'T cost company's money.