Michael Blair said it’s possible. Blair is strategic staffing leader for CenturyLink in Overland, Kan., which operates in 33 states and employs some 20,000 people. He said in his experience that those who do well on personality assessments tend to outperform those who don’t.

Blair goes further: Within customer service and sales, he said he’s documented that those who assess well generate more sales revenue and have less turnover. Tying assessment outcomes to potential interviews means hiring managers can do two interviews instead of five, which means across 10 hires, they can save 15 hours for other purposes.

“By using the assessment tools, we can help the business make better hiring decisions, improve performance and improve business outcome measures,” Blair said.

This is the result of using high-quality assessments that are backed by research, closely tied to job requirements and done in conjunction with personal interviews and reference checking.

Don’t Cut Corners Now
It’s likely that cutbacks mean there is less talent in many organizations right now. At the same time, recovery has begun, and there are thousands of would-be applicants looming on the horizon, motivated in part by months of unemployment. Couple that with a continuing need to cut costs, and personality assessment tests might well be one of the first things to go.

Those in the trenches likely will say that would be a mistake.

“We have found that if we ignore [personality assessments], we ignore them to our peril,” said Meredith Patterson, director of human resources of for Logical Choice Technologies.

Using assessments as part of a process to choose finalists can mean that fewer candidates need to be interviewed, which translates into more time for talent managers to devote to higher-value activities, such as employee relations and rolling out policy changes within the organization.

Companies that use personality assessments as part of a well-planned and -implemented selection process can readily demonstrate their value and the value of HR as a whole to an organization’s bottom line.
�
“We have hired, despite the results of the assessment, and it has always come back to bite us,” Patterson said. “We religiously follow it because it has been successful.”
�� �
Michael Spremulli, founder of The Chrysalis Corp. and a corporate personality profiler, said he has had large clients use thousands of personality assessments a year for labor-intensive positions, and smaller ones use a combination of assessment tools to identify higher-level positions.