Course Description
Employment and Personal Testing explores the application, psychometrics, and legal considerations of tests and measures in applied settings. This includes personality, cognition, and other forms of selection testing.
Course Objectives
After completing this course, students will be able to
- Explain how personality measurement contributes to organizational effectiveness
- Correctly apply personality measurement to address organizational challenges
- Explain the skills needed to evaluate potential personality measures for application in organizations
Week 1
Lecture: Introduction
Lecture: What is Personality?
Lecture: The Mechanics of Personality Measurement
Outcomes
- Define personality
- Identify areas of organizational performance that can be improved through the use of personality measurement
- Define measurement
- Understand the concepts of reliability and validity
- Understand how personality measures are developed
Week 2
Lecture: Understanding the Job: Job Analysis
Lecture: Understanding You: Career Counseling
Outcomes
- Define a Personality-Based Job Analysis (PBJA)
- Explain why PBJA is beneficial for employment decisions
- Understand how job analysis information is collected
- Define Career Counseling (CC)
- Explain why personality measures are used in CC
- Identify various personality measures utilized for CC
Week 3
Lecture: Choosing the Right Employee: Personality Measures and Personnel Selection
Outcomes
- Define personnel selection
- Explain the relationship between personality and job performance
- Identify useful measures of personality appropriate for personnel selection
Week 4
Lecture: Using Personality to Connect with Others: Interpersonal Communication and Coaching
Outcomes
- Understand the impact of work style on others
- Recognize work styles different from their own
- Explain the dimensions of the MBTI and how they relate to communication and work relationships
Week 5
Lecture: Building Stronger Employees and Teams: Personality, Training, and Team Building
Outcomes
- Understand how personality measurement contributes to training outcomes
- Understand how trainee readiness is affected by personality
- Define Goal Orientation (GO)
- Understand how GO influences learning
Week 6
Lecture: The Right Person for the Right Job: Person Organizational Fit and Succession Planning
Outcomes
- Understand the concept of organizational fit
- Identify personality factors that can affect organizational fit
- Explain how personality plays a role in succession planning
Week 7
Lecture: Mental Illness and Work: Post Conditional Screening
Outcomes
- Explain the difference between personality traits and disorders
- Discuss the impact of personality disorders in the workplace
- Explain how ADA (1991) protects employees with mental illness and impacts personality testing
Week 8
Lecture: Problems with Measuring Personality: Applicant Faking Behavior
Lecture: Applicant Faking Behavior: Possible Remedies?
Outcomes
- Define applicant faking behavior
- Identify different forms of faking behavior
- Understand the consequences of faking on personality measurement and prediction
- List potential remedies for faking
- Understand strengths and weaknesses of each approach
The course description, objectives and learning outcomes are subject to change without notice based on enhancements made to the course. December 2013
