Employers Adopt a More Aggressive Approach to Screening Workers

A national test distributor’s January catalog will feature a $5 booklet designed to allow employers to screen out job candidates likely to be highly aggressive employees.

Rehabilitating the estimated 8% to 12% of the population with highly aggressive personalities is beyond the scope of most employers, said Michael McIntyre, an industrial psychologist and professor at the University of Tennessee’s College of Business.

While most employers seek to avoid hiring such candidates, pre-employment tests that are now widely used are easily outwitted, asking such transparent questions as “Do you have a bad temper?”

The new test developed by McIntyre and a colleague presents 25 situations and asks candidates to select the most logical of four answers. Because aggressive people tend to justify their behavior with certain predictable rationales, their answers can belie this aspect of their personalities, he said.

The vetting of applicants has become a significant part of employers’ arsenals against workplace incivilities and violence, said Weldon L. Kennedy, former deputy director of the FBI and vice chairman of Guardsmark Inc., a Tennessee-based private security firm.

“Careful screening is the most important thing, despite the fact that we’re in a very, very high employment situation,” said Kennedy, whose firm conducts pre-employment background checks.

With employer liability for workplace harassment and violence increasing through the courts and legislatures, McIntyre said companies have been asking for the new test, which grew out of his master’s thesis almost a decade ago.

Consider the following example question:

“American cars have gotten better in the last 15 years. American car makers started to build better cars when they began to lose business to the Japanese. Many American buyers thought that foreign cars were better made.

“Which of the following is the most logical conclusion based on the above?

“A. America was the world’s largest producer of airplanes 15 years ago.

“B. Swedish car makers lost business in America 15 years ago.

“C. The Japanese knew more than Americans about building good cars 15 years ago.

“D. American car makers built cars to wear out 15 years ago, so they could make a lot of money selling parts.”

“D” reveals an aggressive personality because it is based on a person’s preference for retaliation over reconciliation, McIntyre said.

In trials on students and employees, the test reliably sorted highly aggressive people from the merely aggressive and nonaggressive, McIntyre said. In some samples, 90% of the people with high scores engaged in aggressive behavior in their first six weeks on the job.