Have employers been sold modern snake oil?
I'm struck by how many jobs now require applicants to take personality tests, pee in cups to prove they aren't drug users, and have criminal and/or financial backgrounds run on them. All of those cost the companies money (and annoy the applicants), but do they do any good? I have serious doubts that they do anything but improve the bottom line of the personality test, urinalysis, criminal background, and credit check companies. (And the related industries of beating at least the first two of the above.) I could be wrong. I could be biased because I have moral/ethical objections to all of the above. But I have this feeling that no one has actually studied the matter.
Has anyone so much as looked at whether, say, Borders has better employee retention and fewer problem hires than Barnes and Noble? (Borders personality tests, Barnes and Noble doesn't.) I know both bookstores carried a book on the problems of personality tests in hiring a few years back. Unfortunately, I don't know more about the book than that it exists, or I'd see if it actually had useful information on the subject.
I know from my criminal justice classes that urinalysis at least used to be so inaccurate as to be almost pointless. Judging from Mythbusters, they haven't fixed the poppy seed problem, which makes me think that they also haven't solved the Sudafed problem, or their basic inaccuracy. Why would they? Employers are perfectly willing to pay for the inaccurate tests.
I'm just as suspicious of the criminal backgrounding. Oh, sure, it keeps backgrounding companies in business, but do most employers really have enough of a problem with criminal employees to make it worthwhile? I mean, I just agreed to a criminal background check for a job as a photocopier at an office supply company. All right, maybe, maybe some people bring sensitive information to office supply company photocopying centers to have barely-above-minimum wage clerks copy them, but I find it unlikely. Especially since the customers don't know that the company screens for ex-criminals. (And does screening for ex-criminals ensure that you don't hire people who might succumb to temptation?)
As for the credit checks. Please. I have no idea what those are even supposed to prove. Is there some connection between poor credit and poor employees that I don't know about? Between poor credit and crime? (Now that I can believe, especially if poor credit is a bar to employment. :P)
Not only are all of these hoops questionable ethically, I suspect that employers are spending a lot of money on nothing. Or worse than nothing. I mean, I was turned down for a job at a video store because their personality test company said I was very, very unhirable (escapee from a barbarian horde, perhaps) despite the fact that I had just gotten a promotion at my regular job. The same video store had a terrible problem with employee theft despite (or because of?) the personality test.
It's all very frustrating. -_-