I keep thinking of a conversation that I had at the recent HR SouthWest conference in Fort Worth, with one of the vendors at the exhibition. During our conversation to help me to understand more about the vendors offerings, I was hearing about their pre-employment testing, background screening, assessments and thinking, OKAY you have to have a differentiator, and then they said 'Integrity Testing". Whaaa - I stopped them right there. Tell me more …..
Merchants Information Solutions Inc has had this “Integrity Testing” available to their customers since 1979 – called American Tescor’s behavioral psychological assessment - and they are now just starting to “market” it separately and with vigor. Okay this test will help you understand if someone is prone to theft, substance abuse, hostility and faking (really faking? What does that mean?).
I mean really, how can you tell if someone is going to be filled to the brim with integrity or if it just shows up in his or her character depending on the day and the temptation of the situation? Apparently they say they can, and they also say that they will give a GUARANTEE cost savings on the product, and if you don’t get that cost savings, you get your money back.
It got me to thinking – is integrity born with you, or do you grow into it/out of it? Nature vs. nurture? Is it something that will show up immediately? Or will it present itself as someone moves up the corporate ladder and the opportunities are more or that you are less likely to be caught and punished for small matters? Does integrity waffle on the balance depending on the environment you are in? Or as a strong person, with concrete morals and values, can you have semi-integrity, and still live with yourself? If this proves to be absolutely accurate – shouldn’t we give this test to our politicians?
Hmmm, me? Skeptical? BUT Merchants does have some white papers from Cornell Research to prove the point of this test being a highly effective way to eliminate high-risk hires, and save money. Worth a read.
I am sure that there are other companies that also have something similar to this, that I am sure, is a great money saver and absolutely essential in some industries. But where are they? AND why wouldn’t any company want to have a full employee base that has such strong integrity, for a positive environment. Which begs the next question – perhaps there is not enough people with integrity out there in the world to be able to do that! Yikes – my head hurts just thinking about it.
Labels: HR, pre-employement testing