Narrator: Welcome to Testing, Testing 1-2-3.
A podcast brought to you by TestGenius
Jenny Arnez: Welcome everybody to Testing, Testing 1-2-3.
This podcast is a presentation, a Biddle Consulting Group, incorporated
the publishers of TestGenius.
The topics covered in this podcast are sometimes controversial and pertain
to an often changing landscape.
The opinions expressed of the host, Mike and myself, and guests are their
own and may not align with those of the organization for which they work.
None of the conversation or resources shared on this podcast should
be construed to be legal advice.
As a best practice, if you have concerns over these issues or opinions
expressed, you should explore them with an attorney or other expert.
And with that, let's begin.
With me again today is Mike Callen, the President of TestGenius.
Michael Callen: Hello, Jenny.
Good to be back with you as always.
Jenny Arnez: Yes.
I love these.
I love these conversations.
Always learn a lot.
Michael Callen: Yep, I do as well.
Thank you.
Jenny Arnez: Oh good.
Today our topic is You Say You Don't Test.".
And let me give a little context of that.
Our team attends about 25 conferences and trade shows a year.
And sometimes people will come up to our trade show booth and they'll
be looking at our backdrop and our sign and they'll look at and they
go, oh, testing, you do testing.
Oh, we don't do that.
And sometimes it leads into a conversation.
So we thought it would be beneficial today to talk about
that So you say you don't test?
Michael Callen: Yeah.
Often it doesn't lead into a conversation.
And so I think, that's why I'm so excited to have this conversation with
you today is that we have an opportunity to talk about this really important
issue that I feel really passionately about and be able to provide some
really great reasons why having that attitude is wrong and why people
absolutely, positively should be testing.
Jenny Arnez: Okay.
And actually just occurred to me, Mike, maybe we should pull
back the lens a little bit.
Do you want to just kinda give a couple of sentences about what
we do what, when we say testing.
TestGenius and testing.
What are we talking about?
Michael Callen: What we do is predominantly skill and ability testing.
We started off mostly doing hard skills and abilities.
Really concrete work sample type of tests where people are having to do the kind of
tasks or duties that they would have to do on the job, but without having on the
job experience or on the job training.
So basically what we do is we look at jobs, we look at job analyses,
and we try to sort out what are the fundamental skills and abilities that
are necessary for success on a job.
And, but how can we make sure that the job applicants have the requisite amount of
success in that skillability area on day one of the job as is required by the job.
So that's what we're trying to do.
And now after we started off in that route, we've subsequently added a lot
of soft skills tests and even some personality tests in different markets.
And so we're doing more than hard skills testing, but also
soft skills testing as well.
So what we're gonna talk about today is, why is it that an organization
should absolutely consider to employ these skill and ability testing and
personality, soft skills testing products ours and other people's as well.
Particularly if they have an attitude where they're against doing so.
So that's it.
Jenny Arnez: Okay, great.
Thank you Mike.
Thanks for that background.
Why don't I go ahead and put our slides up
and do you want to kick us off?
Michael Callen: Yeah, I think you kicked us off perfectly.
Really this was a hundred percent inspired by real life conversations,
that we have at conferences where,
HR managers, recruiters, people that are right in the space that, the folks
that we want to talk to and the folks who should be really interested in
what we do sometimes walk up to us and say, oh, we either don't do this
or we've been told we can't do this.
Or even sometimes people say it's illegal to do this.
And, of course that's not the case.
But that's what we want to do is break it down.
And so I have five main points that I want to talk about with you today, Jenny.
And within the first one, there's about 10 subpoints that are in there.
And yeah, let's just do that.
Let's just go ahead and kick it off.
So point number one whether you're testing or you're not testing, it's
super important to know or remember that nearly everything that occurs
in a recruitment is already a test.
Even if you're not doing hard skills and ability testing or personality
testing or behavioral testing, it's very likely that what you are doing some of
what you're doing is literally testing.
I think the next slide has a point on here.
What we want to talk about here when we talk about testing people tend to
gravitate towards a test, a typing test, or a multitasking test or a personality
test, and to think of that as tests.
But back in the 1960s there was a landmark case called Griggs versus Duke Power.
And I want to say right up front I've learned all this from our CEO Dan
Biddle I was not educated in this arena.
And working around him and learning from him, I was able to understand the genesis
of this particular topic, When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 came into to play there
was basically it was explained that as an unlawful to discriminate against race
or to not hire minorities intentionally.
And so to us it's duh.
That's the most obvious thing in the world.
But there was literally a time and a place and our not too distant past
where this was a regular occurrence.
And so the Civil Rights Act of 64 came out.
It was ratified but it didn't come into effect until 1965 and
the Duke Power Company was hiring for a particular position.
And so what they did is they decided to employ a test that they thought
would screen out minorities because they had to now have some sort of
decision making process in place.
And they waited until the very, very end of 1964.
as it turns out, that test, as they had intended, had really bad adverse impact.
But furthermore, it wasn't valid or consistent with business
necessity for this particular job.
It was testing for things that went way above and beyond the
requirements of this particular job.
And so there was a plaintiff named Griggs who, hired an attorney,
and sued Duke Power because of this unfair testing practice.
And during the course of this case it was determined or what was defined
was something called PPTs, which we refer to a lot within, our internal
Biddle Consulting Group space PPTs, as the slide shows stands for
practices, procedures, or tests.
And so when we talk about a test there's two layers of definition.
If you zoom right in on it, there's the testing that TestGenius does.
If you need to type on a job, we're gonna give you a typing test that's
gonna measure speed and accuracy within a certain amount of time with
content that might be similar to the content that would be typed on the job.
That's a test and it's really obvious, but there are tons of other aspects
of the recruitment process that are practices, procedures, and tests that
result in some portion of an applicant population not advancing in a recruitment.
And so therefore, any of these steps that occur within the recruitment process
should be considered to be tests or PPTs practices, procedures, and tests.
Certain PPTs that are in place that maybe wouldn't directly screen a group
of people out, but maybe because of how they are constructed or where they
are posted or located, they actually end up precluding a portion of the
population from even being included in the process from the very start.
Most organizations use a software program called an applicant tracking system.
the main purpose for the applicant tracking system is to collect
demographics at each step of recruitment and compare it to the census data on
availability of the population within your recruitment area who would be
available for this particular job.
comparing the census data on availability and the actual results.
It can see if there's a statistical disparity between the available
population and the actual population that end up moving through each and
every one of the steps that occur.
And unless you have any questions or comments, We can go ahead and move.
Forward to the first one.
Jenny Arnez: Yeah, let's move forward because I think my questions
you're already going to answer them.
I peeked ahead and I saw the next slide, so I know.
Michael Callen: great.
Jenny Arnez: We're gonna start answering.
Michael Callen: Awesome.
Jenny Arnez: I know it.
Michael Callen: So point number one under the PPTs, which is, nearly everything
in a recruitment is a test is the job posting and people don't really
often think about the job posting.
But it's a vitally important aspect of the human resource function.
So typically what happens is there's some sort of job analysis that's
been done that ferrets out the duties that are performed on the job the
knowledge, skills and abilities that are necessary to perform those duties.
And there's some sort of sorting of what are the fundamental duties
that require knowledge, skills, and abilities that are needed on day one
of the job before there's on the job training or brief orientations So the
job posting is going to have within it text that would include things
like, here's the position of the job.
It might be the pay that's offered.
It might be the days and hours of the job.
It might be minimal qualifications that are necessary to be successful on the job.
And then also desirable qualifications.
We call those MQs and Dqs that are helpful and can maybe position one applicant
ahead of another in terms of the job.
And so when you look at the job posting, two really important
aspects of it are one, where is that job posting located or posted to?
So if there is a venue, a newspaper, or a bulletin board or whatever
that isn't inherently accessible by the same population that is
the available population for the job, then you can literally have
adverse impact right outta the gate.
Let's say that there's some sort of newspaper that is predominantly
read by white people, for instance.
And so if you have this newspaper and you're advertising your job predominantly
to white people and their availability for people of color for this particular
job, is significant but they're not seeing the job posting, then right
out of the gate your demographic of your job applicants could be lacking
as compared to the availability.
The second thing that's really important about it is the content.
And so when you have a job posting, It's vital that before an organization
posts something regarding available job to their website or newspapers
or wherever they post them, that they stop and they do a review.
Let's make sure that the things that we're saying about this job are correct.
Say for instance, you have a job that you're posting for that requires people
to pick up 50 pound bags of concrete and load them and stack them onto a pallet
to get ready to have them shrink wrapped.
So if you go through and you post that but then later you find out that
those bags are no longer 50 pound bags.
The safety people did a review and they found out there was too many people
getting hurt and they realized if they bumped 'em down to 25 pound bags, that
not as many people would get hurt on the job, and therefore they made that change.
If you tell people you have to lift 50 pound bags all day long instead of
25 pound bags, and that's wrong, you have actually created adverse impact
that you otherwise could have avoided.
Understanding where a job posting is located and making sure that the content
in that job posting is correct, is really vital to avoiding adverse impact right out
of the gate that otherwise would not have occurred if you had done things correctly.
And again, to go back to the a ATS, the applicant tracking system,
they're able to go through and know what is the demographic of our job
applicants versus the availability.
And to be able to look at those populations and to determine if
there's any statistic differences between the two groups.
So does that make sense?
Jenny Arnez: It does.
So just as an example, a really basic one, let's say that the job posting says
that the job is, Monday through Friday from seven to four with an hour lunch.
If I were to apply for that job, or I read that job posting, but that's
not my availability, then that in a sense, that's a test because
it filters me out of the process.
Michael Callen: When you have it, you're right, it is a test.
However, It is a test that is valid and consistent with business necessity.
So you may have a test that has adverse impact against protected
groups or non-protected groups, and that doesn't necessarily mean
that adverse impact has occurred.
Or maybe it's an acceptable amount of adverse impact because
the typical example for this is to go back to the concrete bags.
Men are historically stronger than women.
Their body types are different, and they are more well suited to doing
work like lifting concrete bags.
if you gave a physical ability test that ask people to pick up these 25
pound bags or 50 pound bags, and they were to stack them on there, they may
find that the rate at which women fail that test could be nine or 10 times
the rate at which men fail that test.
So that in itself is adverse impact.
However, the test is a simulation of the job.
And if you cannot complete the test, then it's very likely to assume
that you cannot complete the job.
And so that's where that issue of validation comes into play.
So on one hand or one one side of the shop, we want to make sure that
we avoid adverse impact wherever we can avoid adverse impact.
But on the other side of the shop, the testing side of the shop, we go into that
knowing that sometimes there are tests that are valid and they're consistent
with business necessity that will either over the life of the test, during one
recruitment, during a year of recruiting,
Inevitably, you may find that there is some adverse impact that occurs, but
if your test is valid and consistent with business necessity, then you are
accept it is an acceptable process to go through and to do that testing.
And that's really a whole nother side of this particular issue
we're talking about today.
Which probably, I think we've explored it in a prior podcast where
we talked more about validation, but we might want to dig into it again.
Great question.
Thank you.
Jenny Arnez: Yeah, thank you.
Should I move on?
Michael Callen: Yeah, absolutely.
So the second point is the job application.
And people often don't even think about this as being a test.
But job applications some of them require very minimal information,
but some require more information.
And sometimes the information that is collected or the way that the
information is being requested can result in adverse impact.
One of the things that can happen, just for an example, is it may be an
issue where somebody is asking on a job application if you have college
degree or if you have a high school diploma, and those questions for a
particular job may result in adverse impact against a protected group.
And so the question becomes do, why are you asking that question?
If you, we go back to the job where you know the person is
gonna be stacking concrete bags.
What about a high school diploma Makes that an appropriate question?
And then if you ask that question and you end up in a disparity of job applicants
versus availability, now all of a sudden, you've caused adverse impact.
So you want to be really cognizant of and analytical about the content
that is on the job application, and you want to make sure that you're not
asking things that are unnecessary.
Very often people have asked questions regarding how far
are you located from work?
The reason being that they may decide that the people who live closer to the
office are less likely to be late on the job or have issues getting into work.
And so what starts off as, maybe a well-meaning reason depending on where the
work is located, it could end up causing adverse impact if the location is located
way out in the suburbs where you may have less people of color versus the inner city
where you may have more people of color.
And this is again, just an example, by asking that question and trying to not
call people in to become applicants moving further on into the process,
again, you may cause adverse impact.
And so think about the questions that are being asked.
And even if you have good well-meaning reasons the fact that somebody has
to commute 30 miles to get into a job is not a good reason to not
allow them to continue to become an applicant and then to move on
to becoming a candidate for hire.
And I would reference just the Bay area of California, how many people there
commute, two hours a day from 60 or more miles, and it's hundreds of thousands
of people that do that probably.
Jenny Arnez: So we've looked at job posting and job application,
so the third one is tests.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
So this is the easy one because this is what everybody's expecting.
These are the skill, ability, knowledge personal characteristics, personality,
situational judgment, all of the kinds of tests that people might use in
order to differentiate among applicants to determine who should be moved on
to the next step in the recruitment.
And in fact, when they say they're not testing this is
what they say they're not using.
And so to that end, on the latter part of this meeting today, we'll
talk more about why it is that they need to consider using tests because
there are really good reasons, compelling reasons why that's the case.
Jenny Arnez: Okay.
So our next one is background check.
Michael Callen: Okay, so background checks are tests, and if you do
background checks, some people are going to pass and some people are gonna fail.
And when you go through your applicant tracking system, you want to stop
and you want to look and you want to find out, what's going on with
your demographics and your metrics.
And you want to be aware of that.
But again, it comes down to the validity aspect.
So if you are.
Bringing somebody in, why are you doing a background check?
Maybe you do background checks for everybody because, there's
security or merchandise or whatever.
It's public safety.
There can be really good reasons why background checks are used,
but you want to make sure that you are applying those universally.
Don't test people for this position for background checks if you're not gonna
test these people over in this other position if they are in the same realm.
And I want to differentiate there 'cause there could be a little confusion.
Let's say you're hiring the cash carriers that drive the armored cars
and carry, money into, the banks.
You may need to do background checks on all those people.
It doesn't necessarily mean that you need to do a background check for
admin assistance who work in the office who aren't around the cash at all.
However, if you have for instance, the entry level worker that would be
the armed guard and the supervisor who would be the armed guard, those are two
different positions, you should use the background checks on both of those sets
of people so you're applying it equally.
Jenny Arnez: Okay, so we have credit check.
Michael Callen: Yeah, credit checks.
Those are tests.
Sometimes jobs require a credit check for whatever reasons, maybe
they want to make sure that people aren't financially compromised so
somebody could take advantage of them.
This is very common for a prison guard for instance.
You want to make sure that you don't have an extraordinary amount of debt.
Police officers anybody who's in a situation where they're
dealing with members of the public and being in a bad financial
situation could put them at risk.
That's something that happens and that is a test.
Jenny Arnez: Okay.
Then we have a telephone interview.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
So that might be a pre-interview.
And if you are talking to people and some people survive the process and
are moved forward and other people aren't, that's a test as well.
Jenny Arnez: Okay.
And then an in-person interview,
Michael Callen: Obviously, this is one of the biggest ones, it
often is a very subjective process.
Sometimes people do structured interviews and there are less subjective, but
there's a certain amount of subjectivity when people are talking to somebody,
they're asking questions and then they're rating or making decisions
upon the responses that people give to each of those questions.
But it's a test absolutely, positively.
And I would imagine that nearly a hundred percent of the people who
aren't using the traditional tests in point C are doing in interviews.
They're not just hiring people outright from a job application, and
so they are testing people whether, they'd like to think so or not.
Jenny Arnez: Then we have our physical ability tests.
Michael Callen: Physical ability tests are something that can be done upfront.
Physicals.
Those are typically considered post offer testing process.
And you can't really dig down deeply until you've offered
somebody a job offer for hire.
That's where you can actually get down and send somebody to a doctor.
And a doctor could go through and look and see, do you have any
musculoskeletal issues that might preclude you from performing on the job?
And at that point, they can rescind the offer and move forward.
Jenny Arnez: And then we have psychological screening.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
Not a lot of positions use this, but there are certain positions,
emergency services, dispatcher, obviously police, probably fire where
they're doing a psych screening.
They're looking for abnormal personality.
when you have people that are working in the emergency services with the
public or with a confined population and those things are tests as well.
Jenny Arnez: Okay.
I think our last, training or academy.
Michael Callen: Yeah, so some positions, once you get hired, you
move immediately into a training program or an academy, and you go
through that process and you have to traditionally graduate from that process.
They'll call it different terms, but if some people make it through
and some people don't make it through, that also is a test.
And maybe some people don't have all of these that they're offering,
but everybody has some of these.
And so even if you're not using traditional tests, you're gonna be
using some of these items somewhere along the way, and you are testing
because these are all, PPTs.
These are all practices, procedures, or tests that are determining whether
or not a human being is moving on in the recruitment process.
Jenny Arnez: Yeah I would think most positions would at least do
a job posting B, job, application, and then that interview.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
Jenny Arnez: Yeah, that's really helpful.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
That's three tests that they're moving through.
Again, like every other PPT, you want to make sure that it's valid and
consistent with business necessity.
Are we asking for things that we shouldn't ask for?
You should be looking at the applicant tracking data to make sure that there
isn't any sort of step along the way that's causing persons to fail.
And it's probably important to to talk about adverse impact and disparate impact.
Adverse impact is a aspect of the statistical disparity
that is non not intentional.
And that's usually what happens when there's adverse impact.
Somebody will inadvertently post a job where it says you gotta lift a
bag that's heavier than the bag that you have to actually lift on the job.
And that would be adverse impact and it's unintentional adverse impact.
But one of the main reasons why you want to go through and do this is
that you want to make sure that there isn't disparate impact that's in play.
When you have a person who is in human resources, such as a recruiter who's
making decisions, there's a lot of authority within that one human being.
if you have somebody who is not of a proper mindset who's making decisions,
it could be that they are making decisions that are based upon invalid
selection criteria that could be adversely impacting women or people
of color or other protected groups in a way that's really darn insidious.
And again, that's where we have these applicant tracking
systems is to make sure.
No
organization or leaders of an organization want to wake up someday
and read about themselves in a newspaper because they've got some rogue HR
person who's out there throwing away all the job applications from people
with Hispanic surnames, for instance.
It's just, that's just plain evil and wrong.
despite what's happening in the news right now that's wrong and
it's always wrong and, that's something that should never happen.
People should never be denied an opportunity where they otherwise
should be given the opportunity to step through this process and become,
go from an applicant to a candidate, potentially to an employee if you fail
for a reason that's valid and consistent with business necessity along the way.
That's all fine and dandy.
So just important to understand that difference between adverse
impact and disparate impact.
Jenny Arnez: Yeah.
Thank you.
Sure.
So we're talking about a response to people say, yeah, we don't test.
And so that's what this podcast is about.
So your first point here is that nearly everything in a recruitment is a test,
and you list several here, A through J.
And now we're going to move on to the next main point that is
subjective versus objective measures.
Michael Callen: First of all, yeah, like you said, we've got these PPTs and whether
you're testing or not testing that's something that you want to be aware of.
The second thing is if you are not testing using tests like what TestGenius offers,
we have a process built into our software that either allows you to validate the
software, or we provide documentation that allows you to transport that validity over
to the position that you're using it for.
So if you're not using those kinds of concrete measures then what are
you using to make your selections?
And that's where you go to the other items that you pointed out.
You've got your job posting, you got your job application, and then it
comes down to the in-person interview.
Now, your typical applicant isn't gonna be thinking about
the job posting or the application, maybe unless they encounter something
along the way that makes 'em go, wow, I don't really feel good about this.
Then they might ask a question.
But if you are applying for a job and you have passed through the first two
steps, the posting in the application, and you get invited in for an interview
and you know that you have the requisite skills, abilities, maybe experiences
that are necessary for this particular job, and you sit down and you do a job
interview with someone and you don't get called back for something and you
feel like that interview went well then that causes an undue amount of focus on
that subjective measure, that interview.
And so really this has to do with just how we're situating a person in terms
of how they feel about the process.
And so if you back it up one step and you say, prior to the interview,
I go and I take skill and ability tests, and those skill and ability
tests are face valid to me.
That is they feel like the kind of thing that I would be doing on
this job that I've applied for.
And I feel like I don't do well on those tests and I don't get advanced
to the next step, then I probably am gonna feel pretty well about that.
If I am skilled enable, and nobody gives me a test.
And I sit down and I talk to somebody and they interview me, and they're
asking me questions that don't really make me feel like they're job related.
They're just sorting out whether or not they like me.
Then it's really important for organizations recruiters, HR staff
in particular, to own that and to say, is that a really, good
process that we have in place?
It comes down to the point where you want to make sure that your job applicants
feel as though the process was fair.
And if they should have had a good chance to move forward, you know
that the odds are that they will.
And if they didn't have a good opportunity to move forward, it's for a good reason.
And so that's where having objective measures in place is really valuable.
Jenny Arnez: Okay.
I don't think it's a stretch to say that an interview is a subjective measure.
Anybody who's gone in for an interview knows that because we always prepare.
And right.
We make sure our hair looks good, we'd make sure we present well.
We want people to feel good in our presence.
Is there is there a place for subjective measures in the hiring process?
Michael Callen: Yeah, absolutely.
And that's another really great question, Jenny.
I'm gonna talk a little bit more about this in the fifth point.
But there are functions that a human can provide that are way
beyond that a computer can provide at least at this particular point.
And so one of the reasons why we want to test is that the recruitment
process does require almost always that there are subjective measures,
like the interview that you're talking about where people have to go through
and make a determination that's based upon, some set of human components.
And it might come down to, I feel that they won't do a good job,
or I feel that they won't fit in.
Our test can't feel.
And so if that is a valid and valuable part of the process,
that's something that a human can provide and probably a human alone.
And so that's fine.
It's absolutely fine, but you want to do it in a positive proportion so that
there's a good feeling about that.
Jenny Arnez: And consistency
Michael Callen: that
Jenny Arnez: Consistently.
The way you interview one person is the same way that
you interview the next person.
Michael Callen: Interviews or any other subjective measures, you want
to use the same measures against that everyone who's participating in, that
recruitment absolutely, positively.
And as soon as you vary from that process, you may have adversely impacted
somebody to their extreme disadvantage.
Jenny Arnez: Thanks Mike.
Sure.
That's good.
Let's move on.
So you've got optics.
Michael Callen: Yeah, optics.
This isn't something that people thought about 30 years ago, but now
you know, we have this thing called social media and everybody's a
critic and everybody has an opinion.
And those opinions aren't always valid.
But the degree to which you can control the valid opinions you
want to be thinking about optics.
Almost everybody who has a recruitment is recruiting to their own constituency.
In some cases, it's their own customers or their own market.
And If you are not offered a job or you are not advanced through
a particular process with an organization, the HR should be thinking
about what are the optics of that.
And again, it goes back to the prior point when you're using objective measures.
And if I go through and I'm asked to, take a Word test, an Excel test,
and a PowerPoint test, and I struggle with those tests, I'm going to feel
as though I probably didn't deserve to be moved on to the next step.
And if I don't get moved on to the next step, I'm not gonna
feel really bad about it.
I'm gonna, I might feel bad because I was looking forward to the job,
but I'm not going to blame the employer or the process for that.
Now, you're always going to have somebody who has a problem and
who's gonna complain, but that's also a part of social media.
But when you have 99 good comments and one bad comment, think about Yelp.
You're gonna go, you're gonna look for a restaurant.
Somebody might have four stars.
The last review might be a terrible review about service or something.
But if there's 95 reviews behind it, you're willing to forego that one and
then take in the opinions of the others.
And I think that's a really important part of the recruitment
process that often gets forgotten in terms of looking at these PPTs.
Jenny Arnez: Yeah, I totally agree.
I think now more than ever, every business at some level is
a public business or potentially
Michael Callen: if you're private sector, you're public.
And if you're public sector, you're public.
Yeah.
There's not anybody who really isn't unless you're top secret.
But then they're not gonna be talking about you probably.
Jenny Arnez: All right.
So now we're at work sample tests.
Michael Callen: Okay.
So understanding how work sample tests fit into the recruitment is very important.
Our TestGenius tests, for instance, are the kind of tests where you are
asked to do something but the majority of the canned test within TestGenius
are work sample tests, which are
going to have an applicant sit down at a computer and perform a
function that would be similar to a function that's performed on the job.
Now there's two really important advantages of giving work sample tests.
The first one is that, again, if I go and I take these tests and I don't
do well on the tests, I feel like it's okay that I lost the opportunity
to move forward in the process.
I feel good about that.
But the other aspect of this is that they can serve these kinds of work
sample tests can serve as something called a realistic job preview.
One of the best examples that we have for that is in our CritiCall testing.
We have this whole brand of tests for emergency services dispatcher,
police, fire, 9 1 1 EMS, utility, ambulance, all those environments where
people have to get phone calls from the public or from other
people that they work with.
Where issues are reported, it's a very high stress situation.
They have to be multitasking and they have to be able to go
through and work through that job.
And so if you have a good work sample test that puts someone who does not
possess the skills and abilities to, for instance, multitask, the test itself is
going to make you feel uncomfortable.
Now, I have taken this test a hundred times since 1999 when we were first
developing it, and I am not a multitasker, and I know exactly what's gonna happen
in the test, and yet it makes me feel very bad about that job making me
realize that I'm not a multitasker,
I really don't want that job to begin with.
And so what I will do is I will self deselect from the
recruit recruitment process.
I will say, this job really isn't for me.
And, maybe I wouldn't have been moved on, but I'm not gonna
pursue this job any longer.
But again, this is the most important part of this point.
And this is the thing that people who don't do testing don't understand is
that this self deselection process is so good for everybody, okay?
Obviously it's good for the organization.
You didn't hire, train onboard and have fail somebody who should never
have gotten the job to begin with.
That's a really tragic issue.
Not only, for that particular person, but for all the people that they work with.
They've been waiting for this person to get hired.
They're excited, they get to know this person.
They come in and they fail, and then they get dismissed.
That's a big problem.
But again, to go back to this optics situation, it's
really good for the person.
Juxtapose the person who took a work sample test failed and realized the
job wasn't for them as compared to the person who got hired, onboarded,
trained and then went on to fail on the job and get dismissed.
How does that person feel in scenario B versus the person in scenario A?
And that's a hundred percent avoidable by going through and making sure that you
have a good testing procedure that's in place wherever possible, exposing these
job applicants to a realistic job review, giving them an out in the process, giving
you an out that they also would accept.
So it's a really super important point for HR departments to keep in mind.
Jenny Arnez: Oh yeah.
And as you're talking about the work sample tests, I think how important it
is to make sure that you're selecting that your tests are valid, right?
If you have me testing on Excel advanced skills, but that job, the job I'm
applying for doesn't require it, then that's not a realistic job preview.
Michael Callen: No, and that I think is the crux of why it is that certain
people will decide to not test, or one of the reasons why they will decide to
not test is that, they're, they have a concern that the test won't be valid.
And that's a really good concern not to overuse the term valid,
but it's a valid concern.
We have tools that are in place that allow organizations to ensure very
quickly and easily that a test is valid and consistent with business necessity.
There are certain maxims that are in place regarding human resources that determine
what kind of tests should be used on the job.
If you're just using Excel at a basic level and you give an advanced Excel
test, you have tested beyond the job.
You can't do that.
If you have to lift 25 pounds of bags of concrete.
You can't say you're only gonna be testing for five minutes, so I'm gonna
have you lift 50 pound bags of concrete.
You cannot do that.
It's illegal to do that.
And the Dial case is a case where the Dial corporation tested on a line job at a
level beyond the level of the job itself.
And they ended up having to pay a lot of money out to
plaintiffs because they did that.
And so it's just one of those areas that's clearly wrong.
So it's each organization's responsibility to make sure that their tests are valid
and consistent with business necessity.
When you look at our tests, we provide a tool that allow you to do that.
It'll literally generate a 30 plus page validation report that's for
this particular position at your organization, complete with, a table
that tells you of these seven tests, here's the ones that are valid, and
here's some suggested cutoff scores that would show competence in this area.
So we're literally walking you down the primrose path allowing
you to do this in a safe way.
Now, look at all those other PPTs, you're making decisions at those levels.
What do you have in place that allows you to make sure that your interview happens
in a valid and business consistent way?
What makes sure that your job application is done that way, or any
of the other PPTs that we listed, or any other ones that we didn't list.
You are already doing testing and you should be concerned about your validity.
And by the way, if you use concrete testing or even soft skills or behavioral
testing, we give you the tools that are necessary to show that this is
valid and consistent with business necessity, either in establishing
it locally for that position or in transporting the criterion validity
through a transportability report.
Jenny Arnez: Really to flip that over, what you're saying is
somebody says, we don't test because we're concerned about validity.
You're saying that's exactly why you need to test.
because of your concern for validity.
Michael Callen: And when somebody's standing at your table at a conference,
it's hard to tell them that.
It's hard to say to them look, you're wrong.
Jenny Arnez: Maybe they're listening today.
Michael Callen: Nobody likes to hear that.
But that's the point.
And so what we try to do is we try to have, a little bit of an elevator
pitch ready to be able to try to get 'em to think about it differently.
And these are, really good reasons as to why they want to do that, for sure.
Jenny Arnez: So let's hit that fifth point -paper trail.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
The paper trail is a really important aspect of this issue within recruitment
Let me tell you a story that will highlight the point and then we can
get a little more granular with it.
Again, we do a lot of work with dispatch centers and we're at a lot of conferences
in that space, and I have over the years, many times, had the same conversation
with different center directors and they will tell me that, I could sit down
with a person and talk to 'em for five or 10 minutes and know whether or not
they're gonna be successful on the job.
I know absolutely positively that they're telling the truth.
They have been around the game long enough.
They know how people operate.
They know enough about the human nature as it pertains to this particular
position, and they could have a brief conversation with somebody and
determine whether or not somebody was gonna be successful on the job.
However.
Even though they would be successful in that regard.
The problem there goes back to the optics aspect is I sit down, I have an
interview with somebody and somebody decides through a short conversation
with me that I can't multitask.
People talk to me all the time while I'm texting, therefore I can multitask.
That's not the same thing, but in their mind it is the same thing.
And so if I have a problem with that recruitment process, the best solution
for that is having some sort of paper trail that documents the process.
And so what the same people who talk to us at conferences and they
say, I can sort out whether or not somebody's gonna be successful or not.
We'll finish that conversation by saying, but I choose to not to do that.
First of all, I don't want to spend my valuable time talking to people
who don't have the skill and ability necessary for success on the job.
But more importantly, they understand this paper trail aspect and they
understand that if somebody doesn't feel good about that part of the
recruitment, it's probably the most highly subjective thing that we've talked
about this entire conversation here.
But if somebody goes through that particular process and they're weeded
out to some subjectivity in five or ten minutes, there isn't any paper trail that
allows people to show that the process was valid and to have the degree of
defensibility that you would want to have.
And so if you go back and you say, this center director is able to sort out
whether or not people have the skills or abilities, then you can take that one step
back prior, and you can say why don't we just give tests for those
skills and abilities and personal characteristics, and let's make sure in
a concrete way that they possess them.
So the center director isn't put into that situation.
Having a
testing process in place is a really important aspect because there is
documentation all along the way as to what decisions were made and in most
cases why those decisions were made.
And if the test is gonna screen out the greatest number of
applicants you want that to be the most concrete and most documented
step of the whole entire process.
And so that's the reason why we want to talk about the paper trail and make sure
that there's a good paper trail in place.
Jenny Arnez: So when you say paper trail, are you really
talking about defensibility?
Michael Callen: The paper trail is the evidence that shows it is defensible.
So the defensibility is the scrutiny of the paper trail.
But if you have a job posting and people have reviewed that.
Somebody signed off on it.
That's documentation, that's part of the paper trail.
If you have a job application, and every year as a process, HR is
reviewing their application to make sure that their application is asking
the things that should be asking and not asking the things that doesn't,
then that's a part of the paper trail.
Hey, your application is bad.
We review it annually.
Okay.
That's documentation in your favor.
If you go through and you have tests, are they valid and
consistent with business necessity?
Our tests can validated by a group of subject matter experts in case of
content validation in virtually the same amount of time as it takes one applicant
to go through and take those tests.
There's a couple of survey items.
It takes a few more minutes, but essentially they go through that process.
You choose a select hand.
Chosen pool of subject matter experts that are good performers on the job.
You ask them to go through and take these tests in validation mode.
They take the test, they answer the survey, and the
validation report is delivered.
And that's a really great bit of paper for the paper trail.
Somebody says I don't think that test was valid.
Email 'em a copy of the validation report.
Here's our validation report.
You don't
think it was valid?
Here's 35 pages of documentation that shows why.
And in the instances where we've been asked for something like
that by or a client will ask us, Hey, this is being challenged.
What should we do?
And I say, send off the plaintiff's attorney a copy of the validation report
and they send it off to 'em and we don't ever hear back from 'em again.
It just evaporates because you can say, I don't think it's valid, but
here's 35 pages that say otherwise.
So having this paper trail in place and especially not having some sort of
bottleneck that somebody experiences that doesn't have a paper trail to
justify it, wherein x percentage of the people are screened out and y
percentage of the people continue forward is a valuable situation to have.
What allows you to support your defensibility of the hiring process.
Jenny Arnez: So we're talking about responding to the comment that we
hear it sometimes at trade shows.
Yeah, we don't test.
And I'm wondering, Mike, do people ever express to you, yeah, we don't test
because you've already talked about validity, it's not valid, but do we, do
they ever say, we don't test because it's too time consuming or it's too expensive?
how do you respond to those comments?
Michael Callen: Yeah, they do definitely say that one of the most
frustrating things in our particular
realm is to be talking to somebody about this process.
Especially for instance, our process where you're able to test people at home
in their bunny slippers in the evening rather than having to call them in.
So your staff is not involved in the testing process other than
setting the testing process up.
And so when we're talking to somebody who could be using this process to
their benefit, and they say to us, I just don't have time to look at this
right now because I'm busy recruiting people that aren't gonna stick because
I don't know whether they're skilled and able, it's very frustrating for us.
We're always trying to help people understand that the process is
automating things that human beings would be doing otherwise.
And so there is a valid concern to say adding testing, may slow
down the recruitment process just enough that we'll lose somebody who
otherwise would've been a good hire.
And it's important for us to hire people.
But the flip side of that is if you're hiring the wrong people and you're
turning them over, you're hiring the wrong people and you're having to
recruit people using a bad, broken process to replace the person that
you didn't get right to begin with.
And again, being able to test people in their bunny slippers is a really important
aspect of a recruitment because you get an applicant in, as soon as somebody says
this is a qualified applicant, you send them a test link probably before you could
have scheduled them for a phone interview.
You can have them test and you can determine whether or not they
would be subject to or should be subject to a telephone interview.
What was the second aspect of that you asked about?
Jenny Arnez: Money on the financial investment.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
Jenny Arnez: Is there a benefit financially to implementing testing?
Michael Callen: Absolutely.
Positively.
The main benefit is in going through the process and avoiding hiring
somebody who doesn't work out.
And, there's a hard cost to that recruitment process.
There's a hard cost to the onboarding.
There's a hard cost to the training.
But maybe the hardest, most challenging cost is regarding the chemistry of the
workers that you put that person into.
It's gonna take, what, two, three weeks, a month before somebody
realizes, okay, we've got 'em all trained up and they can't do the job.
The effect upon the chemistry and the engagement of your
existing employees is palpable.
And you want to avoid that at all costs.
These people are the people who are there for you.
They're the people who are working there for you, and you want to
hire people to help them out.
It's not a concrete number of dollars, but what one of our reps, Nick Brown
will say, at the conferences, when somebody comes up and asks, what is it?
have you ever received a
resume from somebody who says they have experience using Excel, and then when
they sit down to use Excel, they're putting numbers in the cells and
pulling out a calculator to sum them because they don't know that Excel has
functions that add those up for you?
Everybody laughs but then they all say, yes, I know that person.
I've run into that person before.
And so you want to encounter that situation ahead of time.
You don't want to encounter that situation at the end of the process.
So very important.
Jenny Arnez: Okay.
So I'm looking back, thinking back of our conversation, what you
shared over the last several minutes and from an employer standpoint,
testing helps to maximize my people's time.
Michael Callen: absolutely.
Jenny Arnez: We get the right people in the interview.
Michael Callen: Let me say and effectiveness.
Jenny Arnez: And effectiveness, yeah.
Michael Callen: Because it's not just the time, it's the
time times the effectiveness
Jenny Arnez: So it helps maximize and help our people's time, helps them to be
more effective, maximize effectiveness.
Also, you've talked about the financial- you hire and then you keep your people.
You don't have to repost, re-interview and start the process all over.
Ideally having testing in place, valid testing in place helps
you to hire the right people, have the best fit for the job.
Michael Callen: Yeah.
And again, it goes back to your existing workforce as well.
That engagement and job satisfaction of the people who are already trained up in
performing well on the job is really your most important aspect of human resources.
So you want to protect those people as best you can and make sure that
they are effective on the job and that you're not doing anything
that makes their job more difficult
Jenny Arnez: Yeah.
And plus testing helps you to have a valid process too.
Michael Callen: Yes.
a valid and consistent necessity with business necessity is a technical
definition of the technical term valid.
But it doesn't mean that there isn't, that you shouldn't consider
valid as a colloquial term as well.
You want to make sure that all of the processes in your recruitment are valid.
That word valid comes from, the root meaning true.
And, truth is the basis of good human resources.
And yeah, absolutely, positively, you want to make sure that all of that is in place.
Jenny Arnez: So as we look at winding down.
Any summary comments or statements you want to make, Mike?
Michael Callen: I guess really it just comes back to the original question
is people really seriously should be considering this testing issue.
If you're already doing testing then you want to be thinking about all the
PT PPTs that are in place, and you want to make sure that they are all valid
and consistent with business necessity.
Don't put an obstacle in the way of your applicants that isn't a
valid obstacle, because that's to everyone's mutual detriment.
To the people who come up to me at conferences and say, we don't do
this because of A, B, C, or D reason.
I just highly recommend that you reconsider that.
I think in light of the things that we've discussed today, it would be
really hard for someone to maintain
that position as being valid.
Because, I don't think it really is.
That's my opinion.
You said a disclaimer right at the front.
But I think there's a lot of good concrete reasons as to why that's the case.
Jenny Arnez: Thank you, Mike.
This has been very helpful as always, and listener or viewer, if you ever have
any questions about any of our podcasts, feel free to reach out to us here.
We have contact information on the page where you're viewing this video
or listening to this video, and we sure are grateful that you joined us today.
Michael Callen: Absolutely.
Thank you so much for your time, and thank you, Jenny.
Jenny Arnez: Yeah.
Thank you.
Michael Callen: Bye-bye.
Narrator: Thanks for tuning in to Testing, Testing 1-2-3.
Brought to you by TestGenius and Biddle Consulting Group.
Visit our website at testgenius.com for more information.