Personality Tests and Employee Conscientiousness

This paper studies whether the use of a personality test in the hiring process leads to an increase in the conscientiousness of workers working in an organization. Furthermore, it explores the relation between conscientiousness of employees and various human resource practices. Finally, this paper explores the presence of a sorting effect in which workers self-select into firms with more highly conscientious employees. Using a managerial and an employee survey provided by the workplace employment relations survey 2011, a significant negative relationship between conducting a personality test and the conscientiousness of employees is found. Additionally, a negative relation between conscientiousness and monitoring intensity is found while conscientiousness is found to be positively related to wage and pay for performance. Finally, the results suggest no presence of a sorting effect of conscientious employees within firms. This paper adds to the literature regarding personality human resource management and has implications for the use of human resource practices in firms. Suggesting that a personality test does not lead to more conscientious employees but does increase the efficiency of other human resource practices.