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Personality tests help HR departments identify top applicants

Posted on June 24th, 2011 Read time: 1 minutes

With the large number of candidates applying for any one job, a company's HR administration is increasingly forced to look for creative ways to identify standout applicants. One strategy businesses are beginning to employ is personality tests.

Through personality tests, employers and HR departments are able to supplement information commonly found on resumes with more subjective measurements to form an intellectually and emotionally diverse staff, The Globe and Mail writes.

"What they do is bring you an efficient way of covering a lot of bases," Shawn Bakker, a psychologist at Psychometrics Canada, tells the source. "You can consider a personality assessment like a pre-interview, allowing you to quickly gather information you could find out in other ways but that will take you a lot more time."

In fact, according to recent survey from the American Management Association, 39 percent of companies claimed to use personality tests, or pre-employment assessments, when interviewing candidates, The Globe and Mail adds.

Personality tests are part of a new set of hiring tools and trends called HR 3.0, which also includes using social media and networking to connect with candidates, Tim Wolters, an expert in the field, told American Public Radio's Marketplace.

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