“Personality assessments” need to become the norm as a requirement of the pre-employment process in all organizations, not just among those for the safety and emergency workforce.  It’s a controversial issue, but there are precautions which Human Resource Management can establish in alleviating/reducing lawsuits:

• Write up the policy, place it on Intranet and company website, and on applications which applicants have to check and sign off on before any potential interviews can take place;

• The policy should emphasize that applicants can be re-examined after 90 days, but with an entirely different Tester, when results from initial assessment are unfavorable;

• If the applicant refuses to adhere to examination, the process ends immediately. Documentation stating applicant’s refusal is attached with the incomplete application for record-keeping purposes;

• If second assessment results are also unfavorable, the pre-employment process ends immediately, with these results and the former attached to the application.

Vikki