Employment Screening for Job Compatibility and Integrity

Most business owners and HR departments understand the need for criminal background screening as an essential protective measure. After all, if someone has committed violent or non-violent illegal acts in the past, there’s always a chance for that behavior to rise to the fore in the future. But how can employers be certain that a candidate with a perfectly clean criminal record will not end up committing unanticipated, even criminal activity after joining the team? By screening a candidate to measure their job compatibility and integrity, job employers can come closer to answering that question. This process also complements any previously conducted criminal background check.

Figuring out how compatible a prospective employee really is with a position can save both employee and employer a great deal of future friction — friction that could turn into hostility, disenfranchisement, and dissociation. Some individuals may say anything to obtain a steady job, even when the job itself turns out to be a poor fit for their emotional and financial needs. For this reason, HR professionals need to go beyond job compatibility matches that look great on paper or online. For instance, a detailed personal interview, conducted by a body language expert, can reveal how comfortable a candidate truly is with the job’s conditions and the workplace’s corporate culture.

Integrity in the workplace generally boils down to behavior that reliably follows a desirable moral and ethical compass. To get a firm idea of how a prospective (or current) employee will behave in the future, employers can administer self-reports such as the Predictive Index, or PI. The PI is a test that asks participants to respond to two lists of adjectives, expressing their own feelings about each word in the first list and their perceptions of how others feel about each word in the second list. The responses provide a personality snapshot across four categories: Dominance, Extroversion, Patience, and Formality. While there are no right or wrong answers, the results should give clear indicators as to whether a given personality type is likely to feel frustration or resentment under certain workplace requirements or conditions.

Just as criminal background screening can illuminate a prospective employee’s past, job compatibility and integrity screening can help predict that prospective employee’s future. By implementing this holistic approach to hiring, employers get the best of both worlds.

Source: http://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2011/05/facial-expressions.aspx