So, make of this what you will, but I do research on psychological measurement.
Also, I have no idea what Goldman is planning to use, so there's that.
However, all of the arguments you're making about bias, etc. could be leveled against everything that goes into a hiring decision--absolutely everything. Education, interviewing style, skills with regard to social norms in a certain setting, everything. Notice, for example, in the article that Goldman has started to consider people from non-ivies, as if it should be some revelation that there are competent individuals from non-ivy schools. It's hypocritical to be argue about personality test bias when the bias due to those other procedures dwarfs that.
The advantage of personality tests is that they're standardized, so you can quantify the bias. This is routine. You can argue about how to quantify it, but there are solid methods for doing so, and it's better than just going with your gut.
As for people mentioning previous use of personality tests: the Myers-Briggs does suck. It's why no one studying individual differences scientifically has paid attention to it for decades. If Goldman comes out using the Myers-Briggs, then complain about that. But complaining about personality tests "because Myers-Briggs" is like saying the internet shouldn't be trusted because "ActiveX on Windows 95."
About reliability: yes, there's issues about reliability, but the reliability of interviews is even worse. There are some people who make solid arguments that you shouldn't even do an interview because they have such little validity in predicting anything above and beyond what's discernable from resumes, history, and test scores.
The one argument you might make about these tests that has some weight is their "fakability." This is their Achilles heel admittedly, although the issue is more complex than it seems because people aren't as good at faking as they think they are, and it's unclear the faking is any easier than on an interview.
One reason why you're seeing increased interest in personality tests now is because of methods that have been developed for counteracting faking. There's been a lot of movement in this area over the last 10-15 years or so, and there's more ways of handling it than there used to. So, for example, in addition to quantifying a faking "style", which you could do before but was of unclear utility, now you can administer items that are controlled for social desirability but measure other dimensions (for example, have people choose between three scenarios that have been shown to be of equal apparent desirability but differ in their level of some other trait).
To be honest, expect a lot more of this. Big IO and testing corporations have been putting a crapton of money into this area and a lot of companies are showing a lot of interest in it, as they're complaining that intellectual ability and "job skills" (e.g., knowledge of algorithms) isn't really the main issues they have with employee performance--the problem is this other stuff, like emotional stability, social skills, etc.
I hate the rationale that's implicitly being put forward in these arguments, and that underlies health care in the US.
The US health system is set up under this model that assumes you're incompetent and should be prevented from making any decisions on your own, and only allowed to use something if it's deemed inconsequential enough.
That is, it is assumed a person has no decision-making competency, and then the burden of proof is on someone to show that you do, or that a decision is within the realm of what someone's limited competency is.
This seems completely backward: you should be assumed to be competent, and then only have that legally determined otherwise through extraordinary means.
All drug regulation should be eliminated, and be replaced by a competency-based evaluation, much like if someone is dementing or cognitively incapable.
That is, if someone is shown to be addicted, they should be ruled incompetent about making drug-related decisions through evaluations by psychologists and the courts, etc. Then that person would be treated as a vulnerable individual, like a child or cognitively impaired adult, and anyone taking advantage of that person would be treated similarly.
The scheduling system and healthcare system is so screwed up and I don't see why this isn't discussed more. There would be so much more competition, and it is completely different from the issue of who pays: you could have the government decide what it wants to pay for, and leave people who want something different to pay for it through different means.
If I'm being honest, I still love RSS feeds, but I'm unhappy with all the implementations.
What I want to be able to do is seed an RSS reader with a set of sites I want to be aware of, and then have it recommend other sites and stories based on what I give it, maybe even pull in random things from time to time. I want to read what I'm interested in, but also to be made aware of things I wouldn't otherwise because of the myopia that kind of comes from a human left to their own devices.
I haven't found anything quite like that. What I have found has either (1) is great at letting me customize it, but then doesn't suggest anything, or (2) suggests crap I'm not interested in at all, or (3) has some other problem, like eating up bandwidth with no way to control it.
It seems like you could take an open-source RSS reader and slap some sort of p2p recommender system on top...
Also, I have no idea what Goldman is planning to use, so there's that.
However, all of the arguments you're making about bias, etc. could be leveled against everything that goes into a hiring decision--absolutely everything. Education, interviewing style, skills with regard to social norms in a certain setting, everything. Notice, for example, in the article that Goldman has started to consider people from non-ivies, as if it should be some revelation that there are competent individuals from non-ivy schools. It's hypocritical to be argue about personality test bias when the bias due to those other procedures dwarfs that.
The advantage of personality tests is that they're standardized, so you can quantify the bias. This is routine. You can argue about how to quantify it, but there are solid methods for doing so, and it's better than just going with your gut.
As for people mentioning previous use of personality tests: the Myers-Briggs does suck. It's why no one studying individual differences scientifically has paid attention to it for decades. If Goldman comes out using the Myers-Briggs, then complain about that. But complaining about personality tests "because Myers-Briggs" is like saying the internet shouldn't be trusted because "ActiveX on Windows 95."
About reliability: yes, there's issues about reliability, but the reliability of interviews is even worse. There are some people who make solid arguments that you shouldn't even do an interview because they have such little validity in predicting anything above and beyond what's discernable from resumes, history, and test scores.
The one argument you might make about these tests that has some weight is their "fakability." This is their Achilles heel admittedly, although the issue is more complex than it seems because people aren't as good at faking as they think they are, and it's unclear the faking is any easier than on an interview.
One reason why you're seeing increased interest in personality tests now is because of methods that have been developed for counteracting faking. There's been a lot of movement in this area over the last 10-15 years or so, and there's more ways of handling it than there used to. So, for example, in addition to quantifying a faking "style", which you could do before but was of unclear utility, now you can administer items that are controlled for social desirability but measure other dimensions (for example, have people choose between three scenarios that have been shown to be of equal apparent desirability but differ in their level of some other trait).
To be honest, expect a lot more of this. Big IO and testing corporations have been putting a crapton of money into this area and a lot of companies are showing a lot of interest in it, as they're complaining that intellectual ability and "job skills" (e.g., knowledge of algorithms) isn't really the main issues they have with employee performance--the problem is this other stuff, like emotional stability, social skills, etc.