Any company that uses reaction time tests to make personnel decisions is fooling itself. These game-like measures simply don’t measure much at all.
You might see this article as an attack on your business practice. Maybe you’ll even find it an affront to your livelihood. I don’t mean to offend, just to tell the truth.
A few years ago, on the promise of revolutionizing the employment screening industry, two companies began using laboratory tasks borrowed from the field of cognitive psychology to accomplish two things: assess individual differences in personality and use the results to help companies make personnel decisions. It’s a tribute to their sales and marketing departments that these organizations are still in business.
This article concerns three issues: First, it describes the reaction time-based cognitive psychological measures these companies use. Second, it shows how the businesses market their products in misleading ways. And finally, it explains why reaction time measures of personality can’t predict the kinds of outcomes employers care about, like job performance, turnover, and workplace safety.