Understanding Personality Testing in the Workplace with Dr. Clinton Kelly

you want to tell us a little bit about yourself? Clinton: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I'd be happy   to tell you a little bit about me. I have a  background in industrial and organizational   psychology. And so for those who aren't  aware of that, I do not work with the   depressed people at work. That's the question  I most often get from those who don't do this.  

I think I'm a counselor for people. Clinton: In the workforce, but no,   I actually help people help companies decide  who to hire and who to promote and within   organizations. So industrial organizational  psychologists, we focus on improving   organizations, making things more  efficient. I specifically focus on   hiring within organizations. And that's where  I've spent the almost last 20 years of my  

career doing is making tests for organizations. Clinton: Whether those be personality tests,   cognitive ability tests, multiple physical  ability, interview questions. And so that's   what I do is for all sorts of different types  of jobs and different types of organizations,   I help them make tests to decide who to hire. Jenny: Mike, why don't you say a couple of words,  

let people know who you are as well. Mike: Sure. , I'm Mike Callen. I'm the VP of   Products at Biddle Consulting Group. Our product  is TestGenius. It's a suite, a hiring suite,   which is a testing platform. And it contains a  series of off the shelf office skills testing,   as well as a program called CritiCall, which  is for police, fire, EMS, 911, and utility. 

collaborating quite a bit as we continue forward  in our own direction. Great collaborations. 

have to tell you when I think of personality  testing, because I'm not trained in industrial   organizational psychology, I'm new to this field. Jenny: Honestly, it wasn't until I joined Biddle   Consulting Group that I even knew  that I was a job like yours existed,   so I'm new when I think of personality testing.  If I were to go on to Google and  

in fact, I did that this morning. I typed in  personality testing, things like DISC profile   and Enneagram and Myers Briggs showed up. Jenny: How does that type of personality   testing connect to the type of personality  testing that one might do in the workplace,   that they want to use a personality test to  hire or to select the best person for the job? 

to be used to help hire individuals. Clinton: It's not designed to predict   performance in a job. It's more designed to  give feedback for the individuals,   maybe preferences of careers they may enjoy, but  it's not designed to be used. In an employment   context, neither is like the disc or strengths  finder. Some of those, they weren't designed  

with employee prediction with hiring in mind. Jenny: Okay. All right. It's interesting because   one of my daughters recently applied for a job and  they asked in the online application, what's your   Strength Finders profile? What Enneagram are you? Clinton: Yeah. I actually this morning I Googled   Myers Briggs selection and I found  a number of websites explaining how  

to use the Myers Briggs within selection. Clinton: So people use it, but like I said,   Myers Briggs themselves says, don't use  it for selection, but people do it anyway. 

right? If somebody says, what's your DISC profile  or something like that and you don't get hired.   If I didn't get hired, I might challenge that. Clinton: Yeah, it can be problematic. Like I said,   because when we talk about, tests and validity -  often misunderstood topics – often those tests are   not valid for that intended purpose. And for the  purpose of selection, and yeah, you can definitely   have some problems if it were challenged. Jenny: Okay, so a couple of questions come to  

mind. Mike, you mentioned Uniform Guidelines for  those who are watching or listening to this and   have no idea what the Uniform Guidelines  are. Can you guys give a definition?  Yeah, Clinton, go ahead. It's your  space. So I would I would get close, but I think you give it the best run. Clinton: Okay. Yeah, no, sure. I'd be   happy to. So the Uniform Guidelines were  created in the late 1970s. So they've been   around for a while and they are  the Uniform Guidelines on employee selection  

procedures. And they lay out the, like it says,  the guidelines or the requirements. If you're   going to use tests in a hiring situation on what  you need to do to demonstrate that those tests   are valid for use in that specific situation. Clinton: And the Uniform Guidelines when they,   when we use the term test, that is, it's very  broad. It's not test in the traditional sense,   maybe most people think of the multiple-choice  test. It’s anytime you are reducing your applicant  

pool. So if two people apply to the job and we  say yes to one person and no to another, whatever   we did to make that decision, that was a test. Clinton: An interview is a test, a personality   test is a test. If you're doing resume screens  and you make a pile of yes and a pile of no,   however you, whatever the criteria used to make  that decision, it is a test under the Uniform  

Guidelines. And so the Uniform Guidelines lay out,  they lay out guidelines and say, if you're going,   whenever you're going to reduce  your number of job applicants to make a hiring   decision, there are certain requirements  that you need to comply with. If you don't,   you can't - you could have problems legally. Mike: That goes back even to your job posting   and your choice of where you put your job  posting, right? You put your job posting in  

a spot where you're not going to get a diverse  applicant pool. You have limited, essentially   limited your selectability in that case. Mike: If you put invalid criteria in there,   inother words, if you're posting a job and  it says a driver's license is required,   but a driver's license isn't really required  for that job, you have reduced your population  

there as well. And so there's a lot of things in  our arena that go well beyond the traditional,   written multiple choice type of test or  work sample test or personality test. 

Yeah, you're getting put into what we  call maybe a high potential group. Sometimes organizations will identify high potentials that  are then put on like a track for management track   that inherently comes with potential increased  earnings, other things that are benefit that   tie into selection.So whatever you're using to  identify like high potential,those could also   fall under the Uniform Guidelines requirements. Mike: Interesting. That's great. Thank you. 

it's a great test to hire accountants. It is valid  to hire accountants. And now let's say I give that   test to help me decide who I should pick in my NBA  draft in my NBA lottery, who I should pick next.   And I give, my NBA draft prospects this accounting  test. You'd probably say, what are you doing? That   test is not valid. It's not that it's not a valid  test. It's valid for helping me hire accountants.  

It's not valid to help me hire NBA players. And  so that's similar to like these different types   of personality tests. It's not that they're not  valid like Myers Briggs. It's just not valid to   use in a hiring situation. Yeah, for that purpose. Jenny: So you've used that word valid a few times  

now. Do you want to give a definition  of what that actually means?

for selection, there should be some evidence of  criterion related validation. And if we pull up,   I can pull up a slide here. We can show  a few here, criterion validity, what that   is a mathematical relationship between how people  score on the And some measure of job performance.  So for example, if we say, higher scores  on the test, they're more likely to sell more of

the product if it's a sales position. So if  we say higher scores on the test, they make   more sales that would be, if we can  mathematically show the relationship between   your score on the personality test and how much  product you sell, that is criterion validation. 

valid predictor of [00:12:00] success in the job. Mike: So that validity coefficient would be like   the strength of the validity, right? Clinton: Yes, the strength and the   higher that validity coefficient if it's  a traditional correlation coefficient,   it's going to range from 0 to 1 with 1. Clinton: 0 being a perfect correlation,  

which that doesn't exist. But in theory,  you could get there. The higher that number,   the stronger that relationship visually,  what that would look like a correlation   of 1. Every blue dot here would be  perfectly on this red line. That would   be a correlation of one. So the tighter  these blue dots are to this red line,   the stronger that correlation coefficient. Clinton: The more spread out they are around  

the line, the lower that value is going to be.  The closer it's going to be to zero. Perfect.   Correlation coefficient of zero would essentially  be saying, it doesn't matter how you score on the   test, we have no idea how you score on this test  gives us no indication whatsoever of how you're   going to perform on the job. Clinton: That would be a   correlation coefficient of zero. Jenny: And where does the criteria come from? 

And there are, that is flexible. The  Uniform Guidelines say they just need to be important criteria. And they mentioned some  examples. Some could be supervisor ratings of   performance. It could be a sales and a sales job. Clinton: It could be turnover. So we could   correlate with turnover like our people. Can  we predict maybe who's less likely to turn over   by with this personality test? And so that is  open and it just needs to be what they call  

criteria that are important to the organization  to the job. So most typically, it's going to   be some sort of measure of performance, if it's  sales supervisor ratings or turnover, those are   the types of things that are very common to see. Mike: And, when you have a test like this you can   assemble this test and then you can just, start  collecting all sorts of information and find out   that a test correlates to some sort  of aspect that isn't necessarily valid. It wasn't  

intended to select for that purpose. So can  you talk a little bit about that philosophy   of not just creating a test and throwing  everything up against the wall to see what   sticks versus having some intention when you  design? It's a little bit risky, we've gone   through this step with you folks many times. Mike: And there's a great deal of risk when you   go through and you put this together because  you could potentially go through and not find  

what you're looking for. And that doesn't open up  the ability to find, some other unrelated thing, 

Yeah, no, you need to be intentional  when you're designing these tests. We don't just, like you said,  just throw a bunch of stuff against the wall and see what sticks. And so whenever we're  designing a test, a personality test for a job,   we want to be intentional and we want to  do what we call a job analysis where we   analyze. What is done on the job? What are  the requirements of the position? What are individuals spending their  time doing? What are the most important parts,

the most difficult parts? We're going to  interview employees, talk with them. And   so you need to do your research and be intentional  with what you are doing. One of the, I'll share a   slide here. Sorry, I'm going to skip forward. Clinton: This is an example for one we put  

together for a factory worker. And this doesn't  show everything. We did multiple interviews and   we even went on site and watched employees, but  we took a look and we said, Hey, there's some   attributes we've noticed in our research, in our  analysis of the job, the workers that appear to,   in this case, stay on the job, here's  some characteristics that we're seeing.  These eight things that they're  self confident, analytical, forthright,

and et cetera. It takes some time. So  you need, like Mike, like you said,   we need to be intentional and purposeful.  So you're not just saying let's just throw   some stuff out there and see if we get lucky. Mike: So we, when we've created personality   tests we've worked together to create personality tests, we have used a concurrent  

validation strategy. And I know that, basically  I would say that, from my perspective, the two   basic ways to do to validate a personality test  would be either a concurrent study or a predictive   study. Why don't you talk a little bit about that  and, maybe what some advantages of either are.  Okay. So great. So those are the two  types, the concurrent or predictive. Concurrent,

what that is done typically with your existing  employees. So if you are in a job and you have,   a few hundred employees already employed in this  position, what we do is we develop the test or   take an existing test from some vendor. Clinton: We administer it to your current   employees. And then we correlate that with  measures of job performance. So if you have   existing measures to job performance, or we  can create new measures of job performance.  

And so that is a concurrent one. As you take your  existing employees, have them complete   the test and we correlate it with job performance. Clinton: Predictive is where we start to give   the test to job applicants. And often you'll  not be scoring, it's collecting data in the   background. So people are applying for this  job and you're giving 'em this new test. The   applicants don't know that it's not being used,  but you're really not considering their score. 

And as you hire new individuals on  the job you then, at a later point in time, correlate how they scored on the test with  measures of job performance. And so both   you're trying to do the same thing- correlate test  scores with job performance. The main difference   is concurrent is with existing employees. Clinton: Predictive, usually use it with job   applicants and at a later date, you have to come  back. So the advantage, you can probably tell just  

from the way I'm describing it, the advantage of  concurrent is it's typically faster. You can take   your existing employees. You don't have to wait  six months or a year to find how they panned out. 

then going to be able to apply later. And  then I guess one so one advantage of the   predictive study is that you get the broadest  range of people that in terms of knowledge,   skill, ability, and personal characteristics  with the concurrent study, you have a little  

bit of range restriction. Is that not correct? Clinton: Yeah, we can't, you can get some range   restriction because these individuals are current  employees and we assume they're performing at an   adequate level or else they would not be current  employees or they would no longer be employed   there. So that can be a downside is that range  restriction is because there are scores on your  

test. There's maybe not as much variability  or differences in how they score. One of the,   one of the upsides of a predictive  study is you are getting, like you said,   the range of responses and you can also  get, you're getting that real   life situation from the job applicants. Clinton: They are really applying for a   job. So you're mimicking what you intend the  test to be used for in a concurrent sample.  

When you're giving it to current employees,  they already have the job. And so they may   complete the test from a different frame of  reference than your job applicants. And so   that can be a potential downside of a concurrent. Clinton: And so there are benefits and negatives   to both approaches, but both are equally  allowed under the uniform guidelines. And   both have been shown from research perspective  to, to basically result in creating tests  

that are predictive of performance.. Jenny: So you're mentioning developing  

tests or validating tests that  are used for employee selection. 

What is your test designed to do? And sometimes  I'll see this with clients who want to take a   test. And not necessarily a personality test, but  let's say a technical skills test and they want   to use it in a diagnostic way to diagnose where  someone is needs training or things like that. 

And generally speaking, that's a really  dangerous area to tread into because, you have a much better job-related measure of what's going  on, which is their performance on the job at   that point. So at any rate, it's just an aside. Clinton: That's that's a great point and kind of   shows in this, you can see that in this  graph, tests are by no means perfect. 

top there above the word test score. There's  somebody who scored approximately 50, but rated   almost 60 on their performance measure, right? Clinton: Yeah, so in that case, they performed   better than we thought they would on the job. Mike: And then conversely, down below the   line to the left of the 40,   there's somebody who scored, is that right? Mike: Am I saying this right? Yeah. They under  

tested and under performed, either way, right? Clinton: Yeah, but they were a lower test score,   but even then, the performance  was lower than was anticipated. 

it's, they're better than the alternative. Clinton: And so they are getting you,   they are increasing your odds. And so it's like  when people sometimes will say this person is just   not a great test taker. I often will say there's  also sometimes someone's great grandma who smoked   40 cigarettes a day and lived until she was 97.  But you probably would not say in, in, in general,   the trend is if you smoke a lot, you're  likely going to have some other health issues. 

We're going to expect everybody who smokes  several packs a day to live to a hundred. That's not the, that's not the case. Another side of  that's really important, at least I always try  

to bring this up when I have this conversation  with people, is that the alternative is that   a human being is making a selection based  upon, in terms of the applicant, nothing.  You have selected somebody who will be  hired and you have selected somebody who will

not be hired, for apparently no reason  whatsoever, or no concrete reason. And   so that's another reason why to have this  decision making process tied to something   that's observable that you can find patterns in. Mike: Or if you can find that there's disparities,   you can measure those things and see what  exists and then remediate that situation. 

assessment. How do they begin? Clinton: There's a, I guess there's   a couple of different ways. There are,  you can, reach out to vendors out there. 

custom test from scratch approach, and there  is the off the shelf approach. There are   existing personality tests that are off the  shelf. And then there's the, Hey, we build   it custom for this particular job approach. Clinton: What you're looking for may depend on   your situation in your organization. If you're  a smaller organization and, or it's a role in  

your organization where you don't have that many  employees. Off the shelf is probably going to be   the better route where you, a vendor has spent  the time to develop a test for that type of job.  And because you just don't have to  do a sort of study where you can show this

mathematical relationship between test scores and  job performance, that requires data. And if you   only have 10 employees, Iin a certain position  in the organization, you don't have the data and   the necessary data to demonstrate a  relationship and have any confidence in that.  And so in that situation, you're going  to need to rely on an off the shelf test where they've done some of that research and can show  how it predicts performance for that type of  

job. If you have a large organization,  you may be in the spot where you say,   let's custom develop this. If we have a few  hundred employees in a position, you can do that.  So those are the kind of the  2 approaches. And I'm sure there's, I can get into like, how can you continue to want  to get into how we do that once identified maybe   which one, the custom or the off the shelf. Jenny: Yeah. Yeah. I think you should. Yeah.  So then when you get  a customer or off the shelf,

there are different types out there of tests. Clinton: A lot of them, when it comes to   personalities, they're typically statements. When  you take a personality test, you're often reading   statements. And I'll show here a couple examples.  This is an example we'll call a forced choice   personality test, where you say, Hey, I'm more  likely to, and this is a silly example   here, but eat a salad or eat a hamburger. Clinton: And you have some points in the  

continuum. Sometimes you're just given two  options. You just pick one or the other.   This point, you're given four choices on other  personality tests. You're just given a statement   and you just slay like true or false, or that's  like me or not like me. For example, I enjoy   team projects and you would say true or false. Clinton: Other times one of the most common still   is we'll call it like your type skills that  strongly disagree to strongly agree. Again,  

I enjoy team projects or strongly disagree or  somewhat disagree or to the strongly agree. So   personalities generally are in that kind  of flavor where they, you can see they   have statements and you're making some sort of  agreement or disagreement with that statement.  And if you're looking to implement it,  so you need to go, if you're going to the vendor

route, go to the vendor and you should ask the  vendor about what this test was designed for and   its intended use to make sure they  built this for selection. And not only built it   for selection, but they have validity for your job  type, going back to that accountant and NBA player   example to make sure they're not giving you a  test that were designed to select NBA players   and you're trying to use it to hire accountants.  Just what was this test? Where, what validity  

evidence do they have for your job type? Mike: So as well, Clinton, there are many,   I may not be using the right word, but I would say  standardized personality tests where the battery   like Hogan, for instance, they're going to ask the  same 110 questions of every person, but over time,   they're going to do small studies with certain  job titles or certain groups of people in order   to be able to take this standardized test and key  it or score it in such a way that it doesn't have  

meets with that particular population on the other side of the coin. 

negatives about either of those scenarios? Clinton: Yeah, that is correct. Most of the,   a lot of the tests out there that measure  what we call the big five personality   characteristics. And it, like you said, Mike,  it's the same exact test for every position. 

on openness to experience for the lower range. Clinton: And so they're given the same exact test,   but there's a different, like constellation of  profiles of where you fall in these big five   personality characteristics that they're saying  is indicative of success. And I don't know if   there's really like a, say this one is better  than the other, but when you have a test that's   custom designed for a specific position, the good  thing about that is that it was, like I said,  

that it was custom tailored for that job type. Clinton: And so that, again, the frame of   reference, even the way the items are written from  what I've seen, just in my personal experience   with work, I tend to see higher validity  coefficients with those tests when design,   when they are well designed and put together.  Higher validity coefficients than with the   general tests that are just Hey, we then custom  create a profile depending on your job type,  

but it's the same exact test for all jobs. Mike: Yeah. I think another aspect that's   very important to maybe particularly important  now in this age of social media is   the applicant satisfaction part of it.  When I was growing up and I had nothing   to do with this particular career, I took  a lot of tests or did interviews or did   physical ability tests, those kinds of things. Mike: And so I've often reflected back on those  

processes and thought about which ones were very  satisfying to me. They had the face validity and   face validity is basically, how does it feel?  Does it feel to the applicant? Like it would be   something that they might encounter on the job.  So it doesn't mean the test is valid or not. 

ABC job? There's a lot of things that don't feel  really good about that. Whereas if you're asking   it in context of the job, do you prefer an active  work environment where your day goes by quickly   versus a quiet environment where it's maybe a  little less stressful or those kinds of things   that has a lot better feel to it than the other. Clinton: That's a great point that face validity,   which is not what we always say. It's not like a  technical type of validity, but it is real in the  

sense that candidate perceptions of the experience  matter. If candidates feel a positive experience,   they're less likely to, for example, to challenge  a test or beat it up or complain about it. 

test or a personality assessment, a score is  spit out for that person, correct? Can you talk   a little bit about personality test scoring? Clinton: Yeah. So when it comes to the scores,   there are different scores that are done and  those, when we talk about those off the shelf   tests that measure the big five personality  characteristics. You'll often get a scale, a  

score in each of those big five personality, what  we call sub skills. You'll get like an   openness to experience score, an extroversion  score, conscientiousness score, and then you'll   often get an overall fit recommendation. Clinton: And this is something that's on   the screen. This is for a custom developed tests  that Biddle and TestGenius, where you give like   an overall recommendation. And you can see here  on the screen here, in this case, we say, Hey,  

people are highly recommended. They have a 77  percent chance of being successful on the job. 

decision. What you don't want to do,  and is tempting for many people to do,   who are not super familiar  with personality tests, is take subscale   scores. And let that drive your decision. Clinton: Because the subscales are a sub   component. They are sub, like it says, they're  sub to the overall score. So less data points  

from the test are driving subscale scores 'cause  it's just a portion of the overall test. And   so it really should be that overall score or  profile score you get from a personality that   should drive your recommendation and those sub  skills can be informative pieces of information   to then maybe dive into maybe in an interview or  another step of the selection process. But don't  

let a subscale score. I've seen this happen where  someone says there's some overall profiles like   we highly recommend them based on the overall  profile, but they'll see a subscale score where   they're fairly low on some subscales I don't  know if you should hire this person - I'm like,   no, don't let that drive the decision. Mike: That's a really important point   that you brought up about the subscale is  that you can use it to drive questions in  

the interview process. In fact, very  often the reports I know the reports that are in   the test that we've created together, you've  included those drill down questions because   that gives you a really great opportunity  to, a find out, did the test potentially   really nail this subscale or did it maybe miss  the subscale or furthermore is this weakness,   maybe something that the candidate is familiar  with and has the ability to work around it, which  

can turn a weakness into a strength. So is that  always something that's included with personality  

tests for selection or are we just lucky? Clinton: Yeah, not always. So Yeah,   they're not always included, so that is, yeah, so  there are some where they just give you an overall   score and and I've even seen some that just give  you an overall score, there are even those sub,   sub scores, and then, but yeah, so it is just, it  is nice when you get more information like that,   there are a number of tests out  there that will provide sub scores and even  

some additional information or potential  prodding questions, but yeah, it is,   like I said, it's great when you can have that  additional information to prod into an interview.  Yep. But like Mike had said, just  don't let us, don't let a subscale score drive your overall decision. It's like letting, like one  quarter, one quarter of performance in a business   drive your overall decision. If you don't look  at the yearly profit and loss, you're like, no,  

over a year we made a lot of money.But one  quarter one, it was slow. And now you say,   Hey, we've got to close the company  because things are horrible. It's no,   don't let the subscale score, the overall score. Mike: I want to tell a quick story because   this was something that was so  impactful about 10 years or so ago. 

situational judgment was good, but there was  this one subscale, which was hostility. And  

there was a red flag on the hostility scale. And  the interviewer asked the first prodding question,   Hey, so tell me about a time, and it was some  question that had to do with when they were in   a stressful situation, how they didn't handle it. Mike: And then they asked the second prodding   question and then started, started to  feel that this was exposing something,   asked the third prodding question, and at this  point, the candidate slammed her hand down on  

the desk, said, I've been to anger management  classes. I've worked through this. If you   would just move on, I would appreciate it. Mike: There was a great instance where,   you know, that this did bring up  something that should have been discussed   and was discussed and herein is the real  value in collecting that data and having   an opportunity to talk about it because,  boy, when you talk about dodging a bullet,  

that was an important one right there. Clinton: And that is a great example of how to   use that. In some cases, those subscale scores, it  may be you may find something like you said that's   yeah, this is a red flag, but more, more often  than not, I'll see individuals without prodding,   like I said, without doing those follow up  questions, take a subscale and automatically maybe   disqualify someone because of a subscale score. Mike: And we talked a little bit about how you  

use it for selection. There's a, we do a lot of  work in the 911 space, and I know we're going   to do a follow up podcast where we talk a little  bit more about that. But there's a, there's fairly   popular personality tests in that space that  are content based validated, which   the Uniform Guideline specifically says,  don't content validate a personality   test.You want a criterion validate it. Mike: So let's talk, why don't you talk  

a little bit about the defensibility aspect?  I think that the stuff we've talked about up  

to this point is really the utility aspect of  the validation. Here's why you go through this   process so that it will do a good. Good job of  selecting, but why do you go through this process   to make sure that if somebody, an applicant or  the DOL or the DOJ or the EEOC or some plaintiff's   attorney has a problem with something that you  did, what, why does this, how does this come   into play and how does this help somebody ease  out of an uncomfortable defensibility situation? 

when the Uniform Guidelines kick into place. Clinton: The Uniform Guidelines say, Hey, if your   test screens out a disproportionate amount of one  protected group status, you need to show that your   test is a valid test and that it's screening those  people out because they can't do the job. And it's   not screening them out just because they're female  or they're Hispanic or whatever group that may be. 

And so if you are using a test that  doesn't have the proper validation in place, and let's say you're screening out a  disproportionate number of some protected group  

status, you will lose in court if you get sued. Mike: Yeah. Good point. That's good advice. It   doesn't happen very often, but it does happen  that a process gets questioned and it can really financially impact an organization in  terms of legal decisions that might go towards the plaintiff, but also it hurts their reputation in  the space. You don't want to be that group that got sued because they did something incorrectly.

Yeah. So if you're a vendor out there and you're not doing your due diligence,  yeah, it can really hurt your reputation. Clinton: And that's what I tell with clients  and said, yeah, you can, we can put out a test that doesn't have the proper kind of validity  to back it up but I don't want to do that.   Cause that's going to, that's going to hurt  my reputation as an individual in the field. 

when criterion validity is established elsewhere,  the Uniform Guidelines in 7B does allow for   validity to be transported from the environment  in which it was established over to an employer's   own specific environment. Mike: Why don't you talk a little bit   about what that means? Processes and  any recommendations that you have. 

they just don't have hundreds of dispatchers.  They have maybe a handful. There's a lot   of smaller jurisdictions out there. Clinton: So if they want to implement   a personality test and say, Hey, what profile  or what type of personality is more likely to   be successful in this job? They just  logistically don't have the numbers to  

do such a study. And so what 7b, section 7b of  the Uniform Guidelines allows is it says, hey,   if a validation study for let's say 911  dispatchers on the personalities has been   conducted with a specific test, you as  a smaller group, you can adopt this test and not   have to do your own criterion validation study. Clinton: If you can show that your dispatchers,   your 911 dispatchers perform substantially the  same major work behaviors as those 911 dispatchers  

where this study was originally conducted. So  basically you have to show, hey, there's a match,   there's overlap between my job where I want to use  this test and the job where they, what that they   used to initially develop and validate this test. Clinton: And if you can show that the two jobs   are substantially similar in the tasks  and the work behaviors they perform,   you can transport that validity  under Section 7B of the Uniform  

Guidelines. And that fulfills  their validation requirements. 

of this conversation. But in terms of  being able to transport the validity   from this original study and bringing it over  to your environment, is it not those particular   performance dimensions that were purported to be  measured or in that original study by that test? 

it's a very easy process. I have seen this in  the past where a client that I was working with   was wanting to use a test. Clinton: And they had some   criteria and validation, but they weren't able to  give me information on what the people in those   jobs did or what exactly they did in that  original study. And so it was,   we couldn't really transport the validity because  they didn't do their homework on that initial  

study. And so that's why it's important. Clinton: When you do that initial study,   the vendors should have done a good  thorough job analysis of analyzing   the job. So you can make sure there's a  match between where they did the study and   your job where you want to implement the test. Mike: That's a really great point. And we might  

want to toot our horns a little bit right here. Mike: But, being a shop, both of our shops   are shops where we lean very heavily on the  Uniform Guidelines and, the principles and   the legislation and, laws that have been put  into place so that we are doing things right   to begin with so that if somebody does determine  that they'd like to transport that validity over  

to their environment, they're able to do that. Mike: But you do really want to do your research   or as much of the research as you can to make sure  that you are partnering up with an organization   that has the same values and is doing  things right to begin with. Otherwise it's the   garbage in garbage out philosophy, right? If  you start to transport over a validation study,   that's a bad validation study.Then,  you're protected by nothing, right? 

Yeah. And so that's one thing. If you're  looking to implement a study is ask that vendor to say, Hey, do you have a validation study? They  should have a technical report. If you're asking   a vendor who's got a personality test and you  ask questions about validation or do you have a   technical report that documents things and they  start to kind of him hot or dodge you or they   send you like a one page more a marketing flyer. Clinton: Those would be red flags in my opinion  

to say, this person may not have done their  homework. You should be hearing things like   Uniform Guidelines, like criterion  validation. There's certain terms,   keywords that the vendor should be mentioning. Mike: Very good. We've mentioned Uniform   Guidelines a lot of times. Mike: So we actually have a   website set up. That's uniformguidelines.com where  the Uniform Guidelines are in there.  

Topically by heading hyperlinked. There's also the  Questions and Answers to the Uniform Guidelines,   which came what, 10 or 20 years later, right? Or  I don't remember how many years, but that was,   they circled back through and said, okay, we've  got this document, looking back now upon it,   what are different scenarios that have been  encountered and how did this get interpreted? 

bring us all back. And as we wind down Clinton,  if someone wants to get in touch with you,   how do they do that? Clinton: Yeah. So you   can reach out through our website at iopredict.com Clinton: And my email is just CKelly. So my name,   first initial, last name, CKelly at ioPredict.com.  You can also reach out to Mike over at TestGenius   and Biddle. And like I said, we have a great  relationship and we work together hand on hand  

and hand on a lot of validation projects.  And so those are some ways to get in touch. 

, I think we maybe even went a little bit  longer than we had targeted. But it's been really valuable hearing from your experience regarding  this subject, which is, can be a little nebulous,   it can be a little scary to tiptoe into.  So I've learned a lot and thank you so   much for your time today. Clinton: Yeah. Thank you   for having me. I really I enjoyed it. Jenny: Oh, it's been great. And we do have  

show notes that will show on the page where you  see this video. We'll have links to IoPredict's   website to uniform guidelines.com and other  resources that were mentioned in this video. So   thanks to everyone for listening and for watching. Mike: Great. Thank you.  Thanks for tuning in to Testing,  Testing 123 brought to you by TestGenius and   Biddle Consulting Group. Visit our website at  testgenius.com for more information.