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April 19, 1999

Personality Plays Bigger Role In IT Recruitment

Companies use behavior evaluations to predict success of many applicants

By Diane Sierpina

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great IT job has just opened up at a local company, and you have the technical skills for the position. Unfortunately, that may not be enough. In an effort to recruit the best IT workers, a growing number of companies are screening applicants to see if they have the right attitude and personality to fit their culture and objectives.

Human-resources executives are reluctant to discuss their hiring procedures for legal and ethical reasons, but IT recruiters and consultants say more than 25% of companies filling IT positions assess candidates' personalities before making a job offer. Assessments range from multiple-choice questions for junior positions to an evaluation that could last up to four hours and include an interview with a behavioral psychologist for the most senior positions.

The cost of extensive evaluations can reach thousands of dollars. But that's a small price to pay compared with the expense of picking the wrong person for the job--which executive recruiters say can be more than three times the employee's annual salary.

At one time, companies placed a premium on technical skills and worried less about communication and interpersonal skills, according to Dottie Templeton, VP of employee relations at Gartner Group Inc. But that's much less true today. "You can be a technical wizard," she says, "but if you can't make yourself understood, your value to the company is cut to less than half."

Kevin Somerville, president of Somerville & Co. in Denver, a consulting firm staffed by 12 behavioral psychologists with doctorates, says 80% of his 200 to 250 clients are technology companies and one-quarter of all the jobs his firm handles are in IT.

"The competition in IT is extraordinary, and the margin for error is so small," Somerville says. If the wrong person is hired for a senior IT position, he adds, "it's much more difficult to undo the damage."

Somerville says he advises his clients to reject one-third of the candidates he interviews because they don't have sufficient management skills, lack interest in their own development, or there's a mismatch in expectations or culture. He says that half the clients follow his advice.

To assess the personality of IT job candidates, some companies are using behavioral interviewing--a style of questioning that elicits descriptions about past actions, struggles, and difficult relationships on the job that may reveal how a candidate will perform in the future.

"Most hiring managers do a miserable job of interviewing," says Harvey Bass, president and managing director of MRI Sales Consultants in Sparta, N.J. "They hire based on personality and the way someone looks and acts at an interview. Then in two months, they find the person can't manage their project for beans."

To address the problem, Bass coaches managers on how to phrase their interview questions. And he tells candidates to concentrate on relevant, real-life situations in prior jobs.

Profiling Pitfalls
Psychological profiling is not an exact science. There are 45,000 personality assessment tests in print, Somerville says, and not all of them are reliable. Some may even raise legal and ethical issues because they include questions that assess personal characteristics unrelated to the job and may even uncover mental-health problems. But many companies feel the tests can help identify potential weaknesses in a candidate.

"It isn't simply that you're looking for the dings and dents," says Jeff Leon, managing partner of Russell Reynolds, a New York executive recruiting firm. "You're looking at what's good and what needs to be watched or managed. We all have our flaws and we all have our strengths."

Can a candidate beat a test? It's unlikely, experts say. Some tests include trick questions, says Greg Selker, senior VP and principal at Christian & Timbers, an executive recruiting firm in Cleveland. If you say yes to a question such as "I'm a person who never was and never will be afraid" you're lying, Selker says. Miss a few of those and it raises questions about your integrity, he warns.

So how does someone prepare for a personality assessment? Bass says you should collect your thoughts ahead of time. Recall events, dates, names of persons involved, and measures of success--and stick to the facts.