Old 08-14-2018, 07:10 AM
  #37  
Excargodog
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Originally Posted by BoilerUP View Post
Again, these tests have NOTHING to do with *ability*, and everything to do with cultural/institutional fit of a candidate into an organization.

Are they perfect? No, absolutely not, nothing is...but they are another tool in the HR arsenal to mitigate the risks of a candidate ending up a liability to a company as an employee.
Even were I to agree that this is the case, the question arises as to whether they are an effective tool for that purpose. The company's own validity testing would suggest they are not.

These tests are normed against the general population. Even in that group they lack statistical power. But in this context they are being used against a highly screened population.

The overwhelming majority of guys who are chronic troublemakers never made it through all the hoops; multiple check rides, thousands of hours of successful flying, a half dozen physicals, working with dozens of other pilots as they accumulated their 121 hours,etc. The unmotivated people who would rather hold up a sign on the street corner claiming to be a Vietnam war vet (the last one, I swear, was in his mid 20s) do not go to the effort to get there.

You simply don't add value to a screening process by using such an ineffective tool against an already pre screened and select population. You just don't.

The USAF looked at it. By the time someone had successfully completed UPT/UNT, went on to RTU, and became a squadron flyer, monitored along the way by SOFs, supervisors, and Stan-eval, gotten a security clearance, etc., the yield on other stuff - including personality tests, was essentially zero.

Aptitude tests for newbies coming in the door at Basic Training or a flight screening program prior to going to UPT/UNT? Different story. It was the USAF (OK, Army air corps back then) that developed the stanine testing. With those aptitude tests you can at least mitigate your training costs a little, by not sending to expensive training people highly likely to drop out, but personality tests? At the level of already trained flyer? No cost-benefit whatsoever. You were wasting the taxpayers money, at least at that end of the pipeline.

And in real life, can you actually tell me you believe that a major airline company that uses the Hogan routinely has fewer problem child aviators than a major airline that doesn't? And that you believe the difference if any us actually attributable to the Hogan?
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