Big question right?! 🤨 In any case, what is certain is that, for most of us, jobs are gendered… Look, we (almost) all hold pre-conceived notions or stereotypes that some jobs are more (or less) suited to men or women. Obviously there are the big clichés: “A firefighter is a guy’s job”. “Midwife? … well the answer is in the job title!” And then there are the more subtle, more insidious ones…
“Women aren’t aggressive enough to be great salespeople…” 🤦♀️ #Seriously?
This idea that men and women have different capacities – in a natural way – stems from ideology inspired by Darwinism, which considers that the differences in behaviour, attitudes and aptitudes between the sexes are the result of a long process of the human species social and biological adaptation. Basically, men and women would have developed different skills over the years because the adaptation between each would have required significantly different attitudes…
Personality as a determining factor in professional success
For a few years now, there has been no doubt that, in the majority of jobs, an individual’s personality (as well as motivations and reasoning skills) has a strong impact on their ability to succeed! In fact, personality on its own can explain up to 43% of the performance differences observed between the best and worst performers.
Hence the question: Does personality have a gender? If we suppose that success in certain jobs is impacted by the gender of individuals – and given that personality is a reliable predictor of this same success – the question arises…
The results are not (by a long shot) as different as one might imagine…
If men and women are indeed characterised by different attitudes and abilities (whether radical or subtle), this should be reflected in the observation of clear differences in their respective personalities! #Logical
To find out, we studied the results obtained on the AssessFirst SHAPE test (a personality test used by more than 10,000 recruiters in 40 different countries) by the men and women who completed it during the month of May 2018.
Here are the results that we observed on a sample of 97,399 people (41,280 women vs. 56,119 men)…
Women N = 41,280 – Men N = 56,119 (scale from 1 to 10)
#StopStereotyping… 🙅♀️🙅♂️
What emerges from this study – clearly – is that there are no (statistically significant) differences between the average results obtained by men and women on any of the different personality criteria!
So NO, there are no “typically male” or “typically female” qualities. You can be a woman and have strong leadership qualities or be a man who expresses emotions in a spontaneous way… 🤷♂️
What this implies… in absolute terms!
It doesn’t sound like much, but this is the kind of thing that is incredibly important to always keep in mind. Imagine that you are looking to recruit a salesperson, for example. If you (or the operational managers for whom you are recruiting) hold stereotypes about gender, you will – consciously or unconsciously – tend to consider male candidates more favourably for the job … (and female candidates for others jobs: Executive assistant / Cashier / Dietitian…).
YOU can change that… (and the world)!
If you do not give yourself the means to accurately assess each your candidates’ intrinsic qualities (rather than inferring them from their gender), you will systematically be putting approximately 50% of your candidates at a disadvantage (and yourself as well!)… and obviously, you do not want that…
I would urge you to take an objective approach to evaluating your candidates potential… but also for your current employees too!
#PredictiveRecruitment #InclusiveRecruitment #GenderEquality #Equality #Men #Women #Recruitment #HR
Recruitment tests, regulations and legal obligations.
From the moment you decide to use a recruitment test, you need to keep certain principles in mind, all of which can be found in a law from December 31, 1992:
- You must inform the candidate – at the start of the recruitment process – that they will be subject to a recruitment test. You are not legally required to explain precisely “which recruitment test”. However, we obviously recommend that you do so.
- The candidate can perfectly refuse to take the proposed recruitment test and as a recruiter, you have the right to interpret this refusal as you wish.
- From the moment the candidate agrees to take the recruitment test, they must submit to the exercise “in good faith”.
- After passing the test, the candidate is entitled to access the results of the test.
- Finally, the test results are subject to the GDPR regarding the storage of candidate data.
