Industrial psychology & HR

Recently I started talking with one of the people in the HR department of our company.
I have been really intrigued by some of the tools they have been using. It was impressing that practical psychology plays a major role in the HR department.

Ok most of the tools might look like pseudo science to some, but the fact is that every little piece of information about a person's character and behavior will help in putting him in a situation to get the best out of him.

First tool I got exposed to is the 16 Personality factors (PF)
these are warmth, reasoning, Emotional Stability, dominance, Liveliness, Rule-Consciousness, Social Boldness, Sensitivity, Vigilance, and so on.
Through a questionnaire type of test you will get a scale score on those traits plus the Big five traits Score. Also there is a CP & CN score that helps give an idea if the person is honest with them self or they see themselves in a different way which is not close to the reality.

This test is a helpful tool when hiring a new employee, since if you already have a profile of all the employees, you can stipulate how this person will behave in the current environment, or if any clashes might occur with any superiors.
Now some might react that its bias to accept or refuse a person depending on a single test, that is true but this will give a candidate an edge when all the technical experience between candidates are closely matched.

With current employees it helps makes sense of some of the behavior they were exhibiting, and helps the management deal with their employees in a better way.

The other tool, tool as in an assessment test, that is used sometimes is the enneagram, which is a classification of 9 character types that people fall under. Each character type exhibits traits of other characters depending on whether he is relaxed or stressed.

What is amusing about this to me is how it seemed to be an extension to my interest is zodiac profiles, and it certainly sparked my interest in getting my hands on some data of the employees and seeing how closely it would match to their zodiac profile.
that is after I translate the zodiac profile to a 16 PF profile.

I certainly just started learning about this side of HR. Although this nothing new, what i have experienced so far from that department is personal administration. I even was envious of a secretary type of employee holding a manager tag to her/his (reason they took precedence is that they are mostly females).
So I hope to keep on learning :D

ENJOY
ps. the image is from http://www.enneagram.gb.com/ and If asked to remove it I will promptly do that, but since I found it to be expressive I liked to use it


EDIT: a Couple of tests to try out

• 16 PF Test
  
• Enneagram Test