Personality: Its measurement and validity for employee selection

Hough, L. M., & Dilchert, S.
In J. L. Farr & N. T. Tippins (Eds.),
Handbook of employee selection (pp. 299-319).
New York: Routledge.
(2010)

One of the most important advances in our field can be attributed to the recognition of the importance of personality variables in determining and explaining performance. With the addition of personality variables to our models of job performance, we are now able to explain significantly more variation in behavior and performance than ever before. In this chapter, we review the issues, document the evidence, and describe the consensus emerging about the usefulness of personality variables in employee selection. We describe factors that hinder our understanding and those that help increase our knowledge of personality variables and their role in more accurately predicting work-related criteria. We address issues related to taxonomic structure, measurement methods, level of measurement, validity, and factors that threaten and enhance the validity of personality measures.