Employee Assessment & Performance Training Tools Reality Check

Our company offers a wide variety of computer-based diagnostic tools, tests, and training programs that can help your employees get a better handle on their strengths and weaknesses, improve their relationship skills and increase their competencies in the areas of sales and customer service.

 Please email us if you have specific training needs that require testing and training using computer based tools and or other measurement devices.  We will do our best to help steer you in the direction of the tools that will best meet your needs.

 Email us at:    dsnyder@mindread.net

However, we want to make it clear that any diagnostic tools we would recommend should only be used as general yardsticks to help you get a better handle on employment enhancement and training and should never be used for hiring, firing or punitive purposes.

Please read the following cautionary statement.

Beware of Lawsuits Stemming from "Aptitude Tests"

The following comments are offered as "words to the wise" only.  They are the opinions of David Snyder and are not intended to represent any kind of legal advice whatsoever.  But we feel that you should consider them carefully.

In the current climate of the business world there is a strong interest in the psychology of business relationships and the psychology of "performance."  Because of this interest and the market demand that it has created, there are numerous sales people out there selling a wide variety of so-called “psychology-based” programs to measure job skills aptitudes and "behavioral styles.”

In the areas of aptitude and performance assessment, buzzwords abound--one of the most common terms being used is “soft skills” measurement and training.

Programs that seek to teach the people you have already hired to be better at what they do (in time management, communications, leadership, business writing, or any other “soft skills”) can be very useful. But you should be very careful about the legal dangers of using job aptitude assessment tools in the hiring or promotion process unless you want to get sued.

Here is the reason:

Some “psychology-based” performance and aptitude assessment tools out there are based on very sloppy science and don’t really have much connection to psychology at all.  If they promise to give you a reliable indicator of “types”--saying, for example, that their tests can accurately pigeon-hole the people taking the tests into neat little groups--you should be very suspect.

First of all, no psychological tests, even the sophisticated tests that only licensed psychologists are authorized to administer, are accurate all of the time, and psychologists know it.

Second, some of the mass-market personality or behavioral profiling systems in use are dubious at best in terms of their normative standards and scientific validity.  Because of lawsuits, some large hiring agencies have made the decision not to use any kind of personality profiling in connection with employment, since it is possible for people to come back and sue you if they feel you used a scientifically invalid measurement to deny them a job, or a promotion, or any other opportunity.

When using performance and aptitude tools and measures in the workplace, the rule of thumb is this:  Only use these tools as general yardsticks for helping people to get a better handle on their relationships or communication styles and only use them to help people make personal decisions about improving their performance.  Use them as discussion tools for workshops and training sessions but do not use them for hiring, selection, or punishment.

As is in stated in David Snyder's book, How to Mind Read Your Customers, the only genuinely reliable predictor of human success is the desire to succeed.  To suggest anything else is not only legally risky but is probably morally unethical as well.

Snyder, Inc.
Tel:  252.747.1339