Employee Screening Questionnaire

Use the Employee Screening Questionnaire to identify applicants who will be dependable, reliable and stable employees.

The Employee Screening Questionnaire 1 Has been replaced with the ESQ 2

Identify more applicants like your best employees. The Employee Screening Questionnaire (ESQ) is a 15-minute test of conscientiousness, integrity, and dependability.  The Employee Screening Questionnaire 2 (ESQ2) is a personality-based selection assessment.  It provides a hiring report accurately predicting applicants’ probable job commitment (low-turnover), risk of engaging in counterproductive work behaviors, as well as propensity for positive work behaviors.  It predicts applicants’ likelihood of engaging in several positive and negative work behaviours.  It helps improve profitability and reduce voluntary turnover by identifying candidates that are productive, accurate, committed, provide excellent customer service, and do not display counterproductive behaviours.

What It’s Best Used For

• Pre-Hire Selection & Placement: Screening candidates across a broad variety of sectors, from high-volume customer service and retail settings to sensitive healthcare and security roles. 
• Predicting Positive Work Behaviors: Identifying high-potential applicants who demonstrate strong organizational commitment, individual productivity, data accuracy, promotability, and customer service skills. 
• Filtering Counterproductive Actions: Screening out individuals likely to engage in costly business behaviors such as employee theft, unexcused absenteeism (bogus sick days), lateness, or general workplace loafing. 
• Mitigating Workplace Operational Risks: Flagging high-risk tendencies toward security or confidentiality breaches, safety violations, on-the-job drug and alcohol abuse, sabotage, or driving delinquency. 
• Preventing Inventory Loss: Stopping unauthorized giveaways to friends and family in retail or hospitality operations before a candidate is hired. 
• Targeting Call Center Operations: Utilizing the specialized ESQ Call Center Version (ESQ-CC), which is uniquely customized to identify productive, dependable agents who remain resilient against faking in a phone-heavy workspace environment.

There’s a lot new with the ESQ2!

• It has replaced the ESQ 1
• Most of the changes are technical and will not affect the look and feel of the report
• Norm group now consists of 98,000 applicants
• Scoring has been optimized to enhance the intuitiveness of reports with specific profiles ESQ2 administration now available in more languages!

Applications

• A pre-hire assessment for selection and placement.
• Excellent for a broad range of positions, from Retail and Customer Service to Healthcare and Security professionals.

Description

The ESQ contains 27 sets of four statements. Applicants indicate which of the four statements is most characteristic and which one is least characteristic of him or her.

Positive Work Behaviors

The ESQ2 predicts the following positive work behaviors:

• Organizational commitment and job satisfaction (low turnover)
• Customer service
• Productivity
• Accuracy
• Promotability

Counterproductive Work Behaviors

The ESQ2 screens for the following counterproductive work behaviors:

• Employee theft
• Absenteeism, including taking bogus sick days
• On-the-job alcohol and drug abuse
• Lateness
• Sabotage
• Driving delinquency
• Security, confidentiality, and safety violations
• Loafing
• Unauthorized giveaways to friends and family

ESQ2 administration now available in more languages!

• English
• French (Canada)
• Spanish (Mexico)
• Spanish (Puerto Rico)
• Portuguese (Brazil)

ESQ2 reports now available in more languages

• English
• French (Canada)
• Spanish
• Portuguese (Brazil)
• PAPER VERSION – English/French Only.

Resistance to Faking

Unlike other assessments, the ESQ is unique in that it is inherently resistant to “faking”. Most assessments are transparent. Oftentimes people are able to significantly inflate their scores when applying for a job. Faking good on traditional selection measures compromises their validity. The ESQ forced-choice format differentiates this assessment from others. The ESQ is two times more powerful at predicting future work behaviours than traditional selection instruments.

Forced Choice Format

The ESQ’s forced choice format makes it extremely difficult to fake. It is the first selection assessment that uses a forced-choice format. One of the techniques used is to pair items that are equally desirable (both statistically, and also according to two expert panels of judges) and force respondents to choose between them. Honest, dependable people have a different response pattern from less desirable applicants.

Superior Development

The ESQ leverages decades of research into personality and work performance. The ESQ is based on and uses the best and most relevant items from three well-known and thoroughly researched personality measures, the Personality Research Form (PRF), Jackson Personality Inventory-Revised (JPI-R), and the Six Factor Personality Questionnaire (SFPQ). There are over 2500 published research articles citing one or more of these assessments. This personality-based test is fully compliant with the American with Disabilities Act of 1991.

Reliability

The ESQ has shown good internal consistency reliability. Cronbach alpha values for the 15 ESQ scales, based on 163 job applicants, range from .75 to .84 (median = .83). Intercorrelations among the personality scales of the ESQ are sufficiently independent of one another so that each contributes uniquely to the prediction of job-relevant outcomes.

Validity: Empirical data from the JPI-R, PRF, and SFPQ are recorded in over 2500 articles published in scientific journals. Research indicates that the ESQ demonstrates approximately two times the predictive validity of traditional assessments (0.38 vs. 0.18). This means companies utilizing it will make better hiring decisions and will enjoy greater profitability. In addition, decades of research indicate that personality as a predictor of job performance exceeds other non-cognitive selection measures in its validity. Better than interviews, references, and educational background.

Employee Screening Questionnaire Call Centre Version

The Employee Screening Questionnaire – Call Center (ESQ-CC) identifies job candidates who are most likely to engage in counterproductive work behaviors. It is a personality-based measure customized for the call center industry, and is unique among such measures in that it is resistant to faking. The ESQ-CC also measures a number of specific personality characteristics that have been found to be associated with productive, dependable employees.

The ESQ-CC is the product of decades of research on personality and was developed by Douglas N. Jackson, Ph.D. Among other honors, Dr. Jackson was president of the American Psychological Association’s Division of Measurement, Evaluation, and Statistics, Chair of APA’s Committee on Psychological Tests and Assessments, and President of the Society of Multivariate Experimental Psychology.

The ESQ-CC is unique among selection screening measures in that it is resistant to faking. Applicants usually attempt to “fake good” by responding to selection questionnaires in the most desirable manner possible. Faking good on traditional selection measures compromises their validity. This results in less productive, and more delinquent workers passing through the screen. The ESQ-CC was designed to reduce the negative effects of applicant faking. The validity of the ESQ-CC remains substantial even when respondents deliberately try to fake.

Faking

The ESQ-CC is unique among selection screening measures in that it is resistant to faking. Applicants usually attempt to “fake good” by responding to selection questionnaires in the most desirable manner possible. Faking good on traditional selection measures compromises their validity. This results in less productive, and more delinquent workers passing through the screen. The ESQ-CC was designed to reduce the negative effects of applicant faking through the use of its innovative, forced-choice format. This is an improvement on traditional formats..