Company Expects to Prosper Finding Cheaters : Stanton Corp. Offers Written ‘Honesty’ Exams to Replace Polygraph Testing

Have you ever had an argument with someone and later wished you had said something else? If you were to answer “no,” you would be on your way to failing the Stanton pre-employment honesty test.

That and 82 other questions are aimed at weeding out the 30% to 32% of what James Walls, one of the founders of Stanton Corp., calls the “high-risk” individual most likely to walk out the door with a company-owned item.

Written testing is expected to get a shot in the arm when a new federal law curtailing use of polygraph testing in the workplace takes effect Dec. 27. Inquiries about the written test are up 30% to 40%, Walls said, and Charlotte, N.C.-based Stanton has budgeted a 10% increase in staff.

Clever in Interviews

The use of lie detectors has been controversial since they were invented in the United States in 1921. They measure pulse, breathing rate and perspiration, all of which may change when a person lies. But doubts about the validity of the polygraph led to a campaign to halt their use.

Walls stopped giving polygraphs in 1980. He and his partner Carl Klump saw the writing on the wall in the late 1960s and 1970s and anticipated that legislators would come down against this lie-detecting method.

“We could see that polygraphs would be passe. You didn’t have to be a genius to see where it would go. So we began to concentrate on the written test.”

Part of the problem, according to Walls, who has been working with criminologists and psychologists for 25 years to develop a written questionnaire, is that the dishonest job applicant is clever at hoodwinking potential employers in a job interview.

6 Million Tests

“They have a way of conducting themselves that is probably superior to the low-risk person. They have learned what it takes to be accepted and how to overcome the normal interview strategy,” said Walls, a former polygraph tester who started developing the written test in the early 1960s with Klump.

“The high-risk person will get hired unless there is a way to screen him,” Walls said. For this reason, he maintains, a written, objective test is needed to weed out the crooks.

Some 6 million written tests have been given to date.

Another defect of interviews is that they encourage managers to hire people who display the most energetic facades, he said.

“If you hire people off the street they’re like gangbusters for the first 30 days. But after the probation period, the air goes out of the balloon,” Walls said.

He and Klump sold their company in 1984 to one of their biggest clients, drugstore chain Revco D. S. Inc. But Revco ran into problems after its $1.3-billion leveraged buyout soured, and it sold Stanton to Nashville, Tenn.-based Business Risk International in July, just before Revco filed for bankruptcy protection.

Written at 6th-Grade Level

BRI, which concentrates on post-employment testing, did not have a division dealing with pre-employment screening, which makes up 97% of Stanton’s business.

While the 45-minute test asks about past transgressions such as stealing, it also takes into account how long ago a theft occurred and whether it was repeated.

The test is written at a sixth-grade level so as not to penalize less-educated job applicants.

The written test, which costs $7 to $14, is given to job applicants who have been selected after interviews. “Let’s say there are five jobs and 50 applicants. After the initial interviews, you narrow it down to 15. You then administer the test to the 15, and you will find that 30% of them are in this high-risk group,” Walls said.

Prospective employees are not told that they are being tested for honesty, only that they are being asked questions about their background. Walls justifies this less-than-frank explanation by saying that within the first questions it is obvious that the test deals with attitudes toward honesty. “The test is very transparent, it’s not subtle.”

Retailers’ Problems

Retailers make up 80% of his clients, with the remainder in transportation, banking and health-care fields. “Revco’s still a client of ours,” Walls said.

A big problem retailers face is unauthorized discounting, usually to friends, Walls said.

He said his experience has shown that levels of honesty are about equal among all ethnic groups in the United States and attitudes toward trust are the same all over the world.

“We sell programs in Canada, India, Australia and the Philippines. It’s the same test. And overall the attitude toward trustworthiness shows no cultural difference,” Walls said.

What about the question on wanting to go back to an argument and say something different? That’s called a distortion question, because no one would truly answer no.

“Distortion questions are there to find out when someone is answering defensively,” said Walls. It sends up a red flag that the applicant is holding something back.