For the next 45 minutes, Schoch serves up a volley of queries designed to plumb the inner depths of the job candidate's personality. Although degrees, skills, and experience count, Schoch is on the lookout for compassion, diplomacy, energy, and confidence. "A person must be qualified to do the job, but it's also necessary to have the right personality," she says.

Welcome to the brave new world of behavioral-based hiring. While many companies still fawn over an MBA from Harvard or a corporate pedigree with initials such as GE or IBM, some understand that you can't transform a curmudgeon into a cheerleader, or a brilliant but headstrong loner into a team player. Without the right cultural fit, all the brains or brawn in the world is useless. And the traditional resume-probing interview only goes so far.

"Organizations are increasingly on the lookout for people who have desired personality traits. They are trying to create the right chemistry," says Winfred Arthur Jr., a professor of psychology and management at Texas A&M University. "In many instances, they are creating models based on successful behavioral patterns within an organization and then applying them to hiring."

Although businesses in a wide range of industries are embracing the concept of hiring for attitude, it's particularly common in service industries that require customer contact. Some companies are taking the concept further, using role-playing and simulations to see how applicants react to specific circumstances. "Personality-based hiring is now in the spotlight," observes Bill Byham, CEO and chairman of Development Dimensions International, a Pittsburgh consulting firm that helped pioneer the concept.

ACTING OUT

The idea of appraising candidates is nothing new. In 1911, noted engineer Frederick W. Taylor introduced the idea of personality testing in his landmark book The Principles of Scientific Management, and in 1919, Henry C. Link focused on testing workers in his book, Employment Psychology. In 1940s, Katherine C. Briggs and Isabel Myers developed the Myers-Briggs Type-Indicator test based on their interpretation of Carl Jung's archetypes. Almost immediately, companies used it to screen female applicants for factory jobs - and its use spread for decades.

Today, behavioral analysis goes way beyond Myers-Briggs. Dozens of firms offer products designed to assess employees, and many companies concoct their own systems. Some use group interviews with observers who note how candidates act with and react to one another. Others ask applicants touchy-feely questions such as "What's your personal motto?" or "How has humor helped you through a difficult situation?" Still others require interviewees to role-play as a representative facing an irate customer.

"Companies want to hire the best people and develop workers to their fullest potential," says Gabriel Goncalves, founder and CEO of PeopleAnswers, an assessment firm that has worked with Texas Instruments, Neiman Marcus, Hilton hotels, and Burger King. "The thinking is, you can train someone with the right attitude and values, but even the brightest or most knowledgeable person isn't likely to succeed in the wrong environment."

PeopleAnswers identifies the traits and qualities of a client company's top performers and builds them into its software to create a behavioral-based model of its ideal employees. (The model also can incorporate an industry's best practices.) Then, after a job candidate takes a web-based test, the organization can compare how his or her values and attitudes compare to the ideal.

The system measures more than 50 different psychological dimensions and, in the end, generates a "behavioral DNA" for each candidate. Hiring managers then identify those who have a high likelihood of succeeding in specific job junctions. "The idea isn't to use it as a substitute for making employment decisions," Goncalves says. "It's useful for identifying suitable candidates that a company can interview."

HIRE GROUND

Clearly, this isn't your grandfather's personality test, because it's not your grandfather's business. Companies are intent on creating their own "brand cultures," so personalized screening is key, even when - or perhaps especially when - thousands of jobs must be filled each year.  At HSBC North American Holdings, an Illinois lender with $14.3 billion in 2003 sales and 33,000 employees, three types of assessments systems, including PeopleAnswers, help identify more than 12,000 new hires annually. "We have identified the DNA for our ideal candidates, and we are able to find them more effectively," says Scott Johnson, senior manager of human resources.

HSBC uses an applicant tracking system, personality assessments, and skills test to identify top candidates from nearly 40,000 resumes that stream in each month. It does not depend entirely on the tests to choose its new hires, though. In follow-up interviews, managers ask their finalists questions designed to gauge how they'll think and react in certain job-related situations. "It's all about applying the right balance of tools and using both technology and humans to make a decision" Johnson says.

At Women & Infants Hospital, finding the right person is a critical ingredient in boosting patient satisfaction, reducing turnover, and fueling productivity. And the approach has paid off handsomely. Patient satisfaction rates have risen to above the 90th percentile (up from the 67th percentile in 2002), turnover has dropped, and the medical facility has been rated among the best in the United States. The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services has designated it a National Center of Excellence in Women's Health - one of only 21 facilities nationwide to gain the distinction.

Nevertheless, hiring for attitude isn't an automatic ticket to greater performance and profits.  Organizations that introduce a flawed behavior-based hiring system or ask the wrong questions when interviewing candidates can make hiring decisions just as bad as those at companies that hire the traditional way. And even the best attitude-based hiring program cannot make up for a company's poor products, bad business processes, and inefficient use of resources.

"The ultimate question is, how does an organization predict, with limited information who will behave in the desired way?" explains Bruce N. Pfau, coauthor of The Human Capital Edge. "It's fairly easy to study top performers and identify the qualities and traits that make them successful. It's another thing to select applicants who can display the same characteristics."


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