Profiling for both job selection and marketing purposes is on the increase.
Many employers invest considerable money into screening potential employees, particularly those who will be working in stressful and sensitive positions. Many businesses invest heavily in profiling typical customers.
Profiling Staff
Profiles can be used to make more informed decisions about selection of employees, and to manage personnel better. However, a profile based on testing alone is not enough to make a judgement on whether a person may be suitable as a new member of staff or not. Other criteria are required, such as interview data, background information, relevant skills and knowledge tests, and so on. A profile might be used to screen out unsuitable candidates on the basis of personality traits or characteristics, or aptitude but if a number of candidates have the profile an employer is looking for, then recruitment will be determined by more personal attributes such as attitude and commitment, and whether the employer likes the potential employee.
Profiling Customers
Marketing psychologists may profile potential customers of a product to determine how to market their product more clearly. Building up a customer profile involves things like segmenting the market in terms of demographic factors such as age, gender, occupation, etc. and creating a product concept to target those groups with. Profiling is used to differentiate the buyers so that marketing can be successfully tailored towards their individual tastes and preferences.
Marketers use psychological techniques to gain the attention of their target audience and use profiles created from the use of personality tests to give their products a 'brand personality' which meets with the approval and desire of their buyers.
Ethics
There are ethical issues with profiling with regards to where its use may be appropriate or inappropriate. The individual provides the profiler with a great deal of personal information, so a level of trust should be established between the profiler and individual. This is not always possible if the test is perceived in a negative way by the individual.
The results of psychological profiles may also be used for marketing or staff management. Any personal results used in this manner should remain confidential. However, profile information may have to be revealed for good reasons such as if it is requested by a court of law.
Profiling Problems
The effectiveness of profiling depends to a large degree on the skill and knowledge of the practitioner. They must be able to make sense of the data in a meaningful and useful way. One of the main concerns is if the information obtained from test results is not integrated sufficiently well with other data from interviews, observations, and so on. If it is not, then the interpretation may be misleading. It is not enough to simply administer a test and then score it. In fact, only ability tests could be scored objectively, but even then tests of intelligence can be broken down into different types of intelligence which may be influenced by other factors that the clinician should be aware of. Other tests simply cannot be scored objectively and require a much more complex interpretation in conjunction with other relevant information.
The difficulties in using tests should also be taken into account when considering how appropriate they are. For instance, the client should be capable of understanding instructions provided to them and it should be appropriate to their cultural background. If the test norms where standardised on a sample who are too far removed from the client then it would not be an appropriate test to use. A clinician should also be familiar with a tests validity and reliability when selecting a test. The test should measure what it is intended to and any limitations of the test should be taken into consideration when scoring the test and interpreting the findings.
In conclusion, there are many different psychological tests and many different ways in which they are used. To gain a good insight into an individual's profile it is preferable to use a battery in conjunction with other information. The test results only provide part of the profile information and must be interpreted in conjunction with other findings. However, it is likely that the choice and use of tests will also be influenced by financial constraints and clinicians will have to work within parameters of cost-effectiveness.
The way in which information is gathered, and the relative importance given to different types of information is also likely to change over time. Profiling today gives less weight to test scores and more emphasis on other sources of information, such as the individual's context, their culture , and level of social support than it once did. As new insights and clinical trends emerge so too might other areas for assessment.
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