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DTIC ADA578567: Validation of the Noncommissioned Officer Special Assignment Battery

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New staff sergeants might start getting the captain treatment in their careers and stay on site longer

Newly promoted staff sergeants may stay with their formations longer to better develop them into mid-level non-commissioned officers as the sergeant major of the Army’s senior enlisted council looks for ways to build NCOs.

Right now, especially within the units under Army Forces Command , many sergeants who get promoted to staff sergeant leave their formation almost immediately, according to Sgt. Maj. Wardell Jefferson, sergeant major for the deputy chief of staff of the Army’s G-1.

“What we’re trying to look at, is possibly, once that individual gets promoted to staff sergeant, we stabilize them in [their] formation and allow [them] to get that key developmental experience," Jefferson said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual gathering on Oct. 16.

“So when they go off to be a drill sergeant or a recruiter, they’ve already met their core competencies within their career management field," Jefferson added.

Army leadership says that keeping soldiers in place longer after being promoted will help develop better NCOs, and it’s similar to what the service does with its captains on the officer side of the force.

“They stay a captain for a pretty long period of time, but during that time, they’re getting developed so when they go out and they have to lead soldiers, they’re prepared,” Jefferson said. “Right now, our staff sergeants — not all of them, but the majority of them — are not ready to do that.”

Jefferson said he “always thought that officers did it right” with career development, but the enlisted force is hampered by its massive size, he noted.

The active component has about 400,000 enlisted soldiers. Army Human Resources Command assignment professionals manage an average of about 2,500 individuals each, according to Jefferson.

That makes its difficult to replicate for enlisted soldiers the level of talent management that officers receive. The implementation of the Integrated Personnel and Pay System , or IPPS-A, will assist that by automating some aspects of personnel management.

The Army is also looking at potentially instituting an NCO special assignment battery test.

“What that’s going to do is test an individual’s abilities to see where they’d better serve. Maybe in the future they’d become a drill sergeant," Jefferson said. “Or, based off their test results, they need to go be a recruiter.”

The service also wants to track enlisted soldiers’ knowledge, skills and behaviors, something already on the table for officers thanks to the Assignment Interactive Module 2.0 marketplace. That’s an online system that essentially allows officers and their prospective units to voice preferences to one another.

“In the future, we’re looking to do that for the enlisted force too," Jefferson said.

He added that the Army is working to identify which knowledge, skills and behaviors are needed for various duties to help build that future enlisted marketplace.

Human Resources Command is currently running an enlisted marketplace pilot for the 19D cavalry scout and 19K armor crewman career fields, according to Jefferson.

The Army just completely revamped the way it promotes for senior NCOs

Instead of multiple boards a year, the army will create one, annual list of its most talented soldiers..

“As we continue to evolve, that’s going to open up to more CMFs [Career Management Fields] throughout this pilot,” he added. “Hopefully by 2021, it will be opened up to all CMFs.”

Most of the talent management initiatives put in place so far have been lobbed at officers.

“Our efforts so far have been focused on leaders, specifically officers, but I want to be very clear that 21st century talent management and taking care of people extends to all of our people,” Army Chief of Staff Gen. James McConville said at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual gathering on Oct. 15.

“After we prototype and test these programs with our officers and make sure we have them right, we will expand them to our enlisted soldiers," he added.

But the good news is that it’s easier to change policies, which govern most of the enlisted force, than it is to change laws, which govern officers.

Some changes have been made on the enlisted side already, such as the NCO evaluation board , which moved the Army away from promoting based on seniority and toward promoting based on merit.

Kyle Rempfer was an editor and reporter who has covered combat operations, criminal cases, foreign military assistance and training accidents. Before entering journalism, Kyle served in U.S. Air Force Special Tactics and deployed in 2014 to Paktika Province, Afghanistan, and Baghdad, Iraq.

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• Corpus ID: 142110212

Validation of the Noncommissioned Officer Special Assignment Battery

• Kristen E. Horgen , Christopher D. Nye , +6 authors Jeffrey S. Conway
• Published 1 March 2013

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Job analysis of u.s. army drill sergeants, examining enhanced suitability screening for predicting performance in recruiting duty assignments, adaptive vocational interest diagnostic: development and initial validation, 36 references, evaluation and refinement of a screening instrument for u.s. army recruiters: noncommissioned officer leadership skills inventory.

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Concurrent Validation of the NLSI for U.S. Army Drill Sergeants

Expanded enlistment eligibility metrics (eeem): recommendations on a non-cognitive screen for new soldier selection, development of recruiter assessment measures for the u.s. army, development of experimental army enlisted personnel selection and classification tests and job performance criteria, assessing the tailored adaptive personality assessment system (tapas) as an mos qualification instrument, development of a non-high school diploma graduate pre-enlistment screening model to enhance the future force, adaptive testing with multidimensional pairwise preference items, optimizing prediction of attrition with the u.s. army's assessment of individual motivation (aim), overview of ari recruiting research, related papers.

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Published in 2013

Kristen E. Horgen Christopher D. Nye +6 authors Jeffrey S. Conway

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Predictors of attitudes and performance in U.S. Army recruiters: Does personality matter?

Christopher d. nye.

a Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan

Leonard A. White

b U.S. Army Research Institute, Fort Belvoir, Virginia

Kristen Horgen

Fritz drasgow.

d The School of Labor and Employment Relations and the Department of Psychology, University of Illinois, Tampa, Florida

Stephen Stark

e Department of Psychology, University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida

Oleksandr S. Chernyshenko

f Division of Strategy, Management, & Organization at the Nanyang Business School, Nanyang Technical University, Singapore

Associated Data

• U.S. Army . (2017, September 18). Army is hiring: Army increases end strength by 28,000 soldiers . Retrieved from https://www.army.mil/article/184431/army_is_hiring_army_increases_end_strength_by_28000_soldiers
• USAREC . (2017, September 18). About us . Retrieved from http://www.usarec.army.mil/aboutus.html

Given the interpersonal nature of recruiting and the validity of personality assessments for predicting performance in a broad range of civilian and military jobs, personality traits are likely to predict the performance of recruiters in the Army as well. However, much of the research on the characteristics of successful recruiters has been conducted in civilian samples and has not examined the effects of recruiters’ personality on their job-related attitudes and behaviors. Although some research has examined the prediction of recruiter performance in a military context, more research is needed to identify profiles of personality traits that will help recruiters to be successful on the job. We explored this relationship in a sample of experienced recruiters with at least six months of service in a recruiting duty assignment. Results indicated that composites of personality traits were substantial predictors of recruiter performance and attitudes. The implications of these results for the selection and assessment of recruiters in the U.S. Army will be discussed.

What is the public significance of this article?— An organization’s effectiveness is based on the people who comprise it. Thus, selection and placement of personnel directly impact that effectiveness. Historically, cognitive testing has been the dominant tool for these purposes. However, cognitive tests have been shown to be limited in predicting elements of success beyond technical proficiency. They do not predict well those aspects of performance which depend on the individual’s motivation to perform well over time, or to remain with the organization over time. For these outcomes, noncognitive attributes such as personality and vocational interests provide critical predictive information. This special issue demonstrates the effectiveness of personality and interest measures in a military context, and how these tools are transforming the military selection and classification process. The effort reported in this issue marks major changes in the selection and classification process, changes that can help both military and civilian organizations be more productive and successful.

The effective recruitment of employees is critically important for the success of any organization. If an organization cannot find qualified employees to fill open positions, then the effectiveness and performance of the overall organization will be affected. Although this applies to all organizations, recruiting is particularly important for the U.S. Army. Each year, the Army must recruit tens of thousands of new Soldiers. For example, in FY17 alone, the U.S. Army planned to add 68,500 new Active Duty Soldiers to increase the total number of Soldiers in the Army to nearly 1,018,000 (U.S. Army, 2017 ).

Given their role in the recruitment process, recruiters play an important role in the success of the US Military. The U.S. Army employs approximately 9,500 recruiters operating out of over 1,400 stations worldwide (USAREC, 2017 ). To maintain such a large recruiting force while ensuring effective recruiting efforts, the Army needs to be able to effectively select new recruiters who will perform well from large samples of experienced Soldiers. Successful recruiting places some unique challenges on Soldiers that are different from many other assignments. Unlike most specialties, successful recruiting requires extensive interaction with civilian applicants, their family members, and the broader community. To address these unique challenges, it is important to identify the characteristics of successful recruiters so that the right individuals can be matched to this job.

Although past research on civilian recruiters has examined the effects of recruiter characteristics on recruiting outcomes (e.g., Chapman, Uggerslev, Carroll, Piasentin, & Jones, 2005 ), these studies have tended to focus on only a narrow range of individual differences and not a comprehensive list of traits. In addition, this research has also generally focused on “hypothetical laboratory experiments” (Darnold & Rynes, 2013 , p. 137). Consequently, these studies may not generalize to the types of recruiting scenarios that are encountered in the U.S. Army. In contrast, research conducted by the U.S. Army has provided initial evidence that personality traits can predict the performance of Army recruiters (Halstead, 2009 ). However, more research is needed to identify a broader profile of individual traits that can help a recruiter to be successful on the job (Muhammad, Wolters, & Jayne, this issue). Therefore, the goal of the present study was to examine the personality predictors of recruiters’ attitudes and performance in a large sample of U.S. Army recruiters.

In the recruitment literature, much of the early work on the characteristics of recruiters that facilitate success focused on the demographic characteristics of both the recruiter and the applicant. The goal of this research was to determine if similarities between the recruiter and the applicant resulted in more favorable recruitment outcomes. This research showed that recruiter demographic characteristics only have a small effect on recruiting success (Breaugh, 2013 ). In contrast, research on recruiter personality has been more promising. Chapman et al. ( 2005 ) conducted a meta-analysis of the predictors of applicant attraction. Although their review focused on a broad range of predictors including job and organizational characteristics, perceptions of the recruitment process, and perceived fit with the job/organization, they also included a number of recruiter characteristics in their analyses. Again, they found that recruiter demographics had a negligible effect on recruiting outcomes (ρ ranged from .04 to −.05) but that recruiter personality had a much larger effect, with the meta-analytic correlations ranging from .09 to .53 depending on both the characteristic being assessed and the outcome to which it was related. In addition, these authors found that recruiters were more effective when they were personable, competent, informative, and trustworthy. Interestingly, these results are similar to the work conducted by Jaeger ( 1955 ) who showed that exposing students to recruiters who were friendly, honest, and sincere could improve recruiting outcomes.

Although these results suggest that personality may be useful for predicting recruiter outcomes, only a narrow range of personality traits were examined. Therefore, it is possible that other personality traits may be useful for predicting recruiter performance. Past research has demonstrated that personality traits are valid predictors of a number of workplace attitudes and behaviors (Barrick & Mount, 1991 ; Hogan & Holland, 2003 ; Judge & Zapata, 2015 ; Mount, Barrick, & Stewart, 1998 ; Oh & Berry, 2009 ). In addition, personality assessments have been shown to provide incremental validity over cognitive ability for predicting these outcomes in both military (Campbell & Knapp, 2001 ) and civilian (Schmidt & Hunter, 1998 ) jobs.

A key finding in the personality literature is that some traits will be more important for predicting performance in certain jobs than in others (Hogan & Holland, 2003 ; Tett & Burnett, 2003 ). For example, Judge and Zapata ( 2015 ) found that Extraversion and Agreeableness had the strongest validities in jobs requiring social skills. In addition, Agreeableness was negatively related to performance in jobs that required competition. Mount et al. ( 1998 ) also examined the predictors of performance in jobs that required interpersonal interactions. They found that both Agreeableness and Conscientiousness predicted performance in these jobs, but that these effects were moderated by the context in which the study was conducted. These authors also demonstrated that Emotional Stability and Extraversion were sometimes valid predictors of workplace behavior in these jobs.

Additional support for the utility of personality measures as predictors of success in sales jobs was provided by a meta-analytic examination of 129 independent validity studies involving 45,944 salespersons (Vinchur, Schippmann, Switzer, & Roth, 1998 ). Results of this meta-analysis revealed that the broad Big Five personality dimensions of Extraversion and Conscientiousness were the dimensions most strongly related to measures of sales performance, with validity coefficients of .22 and .31, respectively. Again, these results suggest that personality traits may be useful predictors of performance in jobs with interpersonal interactions, such as recruiting.

Other research has demonstrated the validity of personality facets (i.e., narrower dimensions of personality underlying the broader traits) for predicting work outcomes (Dudley, Orvis, Lebiecki, & Cortina, 2006 ) and that the validities of these facets could vary substantially even within the same broader trait (Wood, Nye, & Saucier, 2010 ). For example, in a recruiting context, Sociability (a facet of Extraversion) could be positively related to performance but Dominance (another facet of Extraversion) could be negatively related. These results could help to explain the moderate validity of Extraversion in some previous research (Mount et al., 1998 ).

Military recruiter research

The research described above suggests that personality traits may be useful for selecting U.S. Army recruiters. However, most of the existing research was conducted in civilian settings and focused on sales jobs rather than on identifying the personality profiles of recruiters. There may be some important differences between military recruiting and civilian sales jobs. Military recruiters are marketing a career or an Army lifestyle and the opportunity to serve one’s country honorably rather than specific products or services. This may result in some differences in the profile of individual characteristics that can lead to successful performance in military recruiting jobs. Consequently, we believe that the results from research on civilian sales jobs can provide a useful starting point, but will need to be carefully evaluated for their relevance to Army recruiting.

To this end, the Army conducted a series of studies to develop new screening tools that could help to identify individuals for recruiting duty who are most likely to be successful. A test battery was assembled to measure dimensions of recruiters’ personality hypothesized to be related to performance, such as their work orientation, interpersonal skills, and leadership orientation. This measure was called the Noncommissioned Officer Leadership Skills Inventory (NLSI). Subsequent predictive and concurrent validation research demonstrated that the NLSI was related to supervisor and peer ratings of performance and the number of signed contracts per month (adjusted for geographic differences in recruiting difficulty; Horgen et al., 2006 ; White et al., 2002 , 2004 ). In this work, Army recruiters’ leadership orientation and work motivation were strongly associated with recruiting success. More successful Army recruiters also scored higher on measures of interpersonal skills and social perceptiveness than less successful recruiters. Using the data from these recruiter studies, additional research was conducted to revise and improve the prediction model using statistical learning and data mining methods (Halstead, 2009 ).

As a result of these promising findings, the Army implemented the NLSI and its new scoring algorithm to select Soldiers for recruiting duty. It was administered at Digital Training Facilities (DTFs) worldwide for operational testing. However, the volume of testing at DTFs was insufficient to support full implementation of a recruiter screening program. To reduce costs and expand opportunities for testing, the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences (ARI) was asked to develop a computerized measure of personality that was suitable for unproctored administration and could be used to identify Soldiers with high potential for recruiting duty. The result of this effort was the Noncommissioned Officer Special Assignment Battery (NSAB).

The NSAB is a version of the Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System (TAPAS; Drasgow et al., 2012 ) administered to noncommissioned officers (NCOs). The TAPAS was developed to be fake-resistant and administered as a computer-adaptive test (CAT). With a CAT, each Soldier sees a different set of questions tailored to measure his or her personality, a procedure which greatly reduces item exposure and the risk of test compromise. As such, it is potentially well-suited for use in a large-scale, high-stakes, testing program where maintaining item security is a concern. However, this assessment had not been validated for predicting recruiter outcomes prior to the present study.

Given past research on the validity of personality for predicting performance in a broad range of jobs, the present study examined the validity of the NSAB for predicting U.S. Army recruiters’ performance, stress, perceived fit, and attitudes about their jobs. Here, the goal was to identify a set of personality characteristics that might be useful for selecting Soldiers who will be satisfied with and successful in recruiting duty assignments. The present study also contributes to the broader recruitment literature in two ways. The first contribution is the use of a field sample of recruiters rather than an experimental research design. As noted by Darnold and Rynes ( 2013 ) in their review of the recruitment literature, most of the studies in this area have focused on hypothetical laboratory experiments and nearly all of the reviews of this literature have called for more field studies. The current study provides an initial response to this call.

The second contribution of this study to the broader recruitment literature is in the prediction of recruiter attitudes and performance rather than applicants’ intentions to apply for the job, which has been a common outcome in previous research. This is a substantial departure from the literature on recruiter effectiveness but is consistent with the general approach in the employee selection literature. If the goal is to identify the personality characteristics that will help to identify high-performing recruiters, it is important to be able to predict recruiters’ attitudes and behaviors, which are more closely associated with job performance than applicants’ perceptions of the organization and the job. Although effective recruiter performance presumably leads to positive recruitment outcomes (Rynes, Bretz, & Gerhart, 1991 ), multiple factors can influence the intentions and eventual choices made by applicants, and many of these factors are not related to recruiter performance (e.g., Chapman et al., 2005 ). In other words, two recruiters who exert the same amount of effort and have equivalent characteristics may have very different recruiting outcomes based on the characteristics of the job and/or the organization for which they are recruiting (Chapman et al., 2005 ). Therefore, although examining recruiters’ attitudes and behaviors as outcomes represents a departure from the literature on the effectiveness of recruiter characteristics, the advantage of this approach is that it provides useful information about the prediction of actual behavior and attitudes that can influence recruitment outcomes.

Sample and procedures

The data for this study were collected from a sample of 854 experienced recruiters in the U.S. Army. Experienced recruiters were defined for the purposes of this research as recruiters who had been on recruiting duty for between 16 and 35 months. We selected this range because recruiting experts indicated that, at 16 months on recruiting duty, recruiters are fully trained and have reached their full performance levels. The majority of the participants in this sample were white (74.7%), male (94.0%), and had some college education (60.9%). Participants had completed an average of about eleven years in the Army and just over two years in recruiting.

Data were collected from experienced recruiters over a three month period from August through October 2011. All data were collected from recruiters and their peer and supervisor raters through a set of web-based assessments. The full data collection began with an email announcement distributed to U.S. Army Recruiting Command (USAREC) personnel. This was followed by an email announcement sent directly to a subset of USAREC personnel comprised of 2,289 experienced recruiters with 16 to 35 months of recruiting experience. Email reminders were sent to encourage additional recruiter participation.

In addition to filling out an initial survey that included the NSAB, recruiters nominated up to three peers and a station commander or First Sergeant (supervisor raters) with whom they had worked closely to provide performance ratings. These raters received an email in early November 2011 identifying the recruiter(s) they were being asked to rate and a link to the web-based performance rating scales. A reminder email was sent to raters to encourage additional participation and data collection was completed at the end of November. A total of 887 peer and supervisor raters (63.3% were peer recruiters and 24.2% were supervisors, 12.5% indicated that they were in an “Other” position, which likely meant a non-recruiting peer role) provided ratings on 637 recruiters for a total of 1065 rater-ratee pairs. The majority of the raters were white (79.4%), male (94.1%), and had some college education (54.9%). Most raters were recruiters (63.3%) or station commanders (24.2%) and had over thirteen years of experience in the Army.

Personality

Personality was assessed with the Noncommissioned Officer Special Assignment Battery (NSAB). As noted above, the NSAB is a version of the Tailored Adaptive Personality Assessment System (TAPAS). At the heart of the TAPAS is a trait taxonomy comprising 21 facets of the Big Five personality factors plus Physical Conditioning, which has been shown to be important for military applications (Drasgow et al., 2012 ; Stark et al., 2014 ). The NSAB, like TAPAS, utilizes a multidimensional pairwise preference (MDPP) format that is designed to be resistant to faking. The MDPP format was chosen because it provides a more mathematically tractable alternative for constructing and scoring adaptive tests using item response theory (IRT) (Stark, Chernyshenko, & Drasgow, 2005 ; Stark, Chernyshenko, Drasgow, & White, 2012 ). The version of NSAB administered here consisted of 126 items measuring 18 personality dimensions. These dimensions are listed in Table 1 . This assessment was administered as a computer adaptive test (CAT) deployed via a web application.

Correlations between the NSAB scales and the criteria in the sample of experienced recruiters.

Bold values are significant at the .05 level. The sample sizes for these correlations range from 504 to 670.

Army recruiter performance rating scales

The Army Recruiter Performance Rating Scales were designed to be completed by the supervisors and peers of recruiters and assess recruiters’ day-to-day job performance. The rating scales used for this study were based on existing scales developed in 2001 (Borman et al., 2001 ) and refined through a series of interviews and workshops with subject matter experts (SMEs). The SMEs for this study consisted of senior leadership (e.g., Commandant, Command Sergeant Major) and instructors at the Recruiting and Retention School at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. These individuals reviewed the existing scales and provided feedback on the content. Although the SMEs agreed that the dimensions assessed by the existing scales were still relevant in the current recruiting environment, they did suggest revisions to the content and wording of several items. Based on their feedback, the final Army Recruiter Performance Rating Scales included the following dimensions: 1) Locating and Contacting Qualified Prospects; 2) Gaining and Maintaining Rapport; 3) Obtaining Information From and About Prospects and Making Good Person-Army Fit; 4) Counseling/Mentoring Skills; 5) Future Soldier Training Program; 6) Establishing and Maintaining Good Relationships in the Community; 7) Organizing Skills/Processing Skills/Time Management; 8) Supporting Other Recruiters and USAREC; and 9) Overall Performance.

Within each performance dimension, statements describe behaviors that reflect performance that is “very effective”, “effective”, “needs some improvement”, and “needs considerable improvement” to anchor these four effectiveness levels on the scales. Raters were asked to compare observed recruiter behavior with the statements on each dimension to provide recruiter job performance ratings. On each dimension, raters could indicate they had not had the opportunity to observe the recruiter’s performance instead of providing a rating.

An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of the performance rating data indicated that the rating scales were represented well by a unidimensional factor structure. In addition, a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) also indicated that a single factor model fit the data adequately (RMSEA = .11; CFI = .98; SRMR = .02). For these analyses, the RMSEA was likely inflated due to the skewed distributions of the ratings (Nye & Drasgow, 2011 ). Based on these results, we summed the nine performance ratings to form a single variable and examined the validity of the NSAB scales for predicting this performance rating composite.

We combined the peer and supervisor ratings into a single score for these analyses. However, we also examined the prediction of each of these ratings separately. Although there were some small differences in the results for these ratings, these differences could have been due to the relatively small sample size for the supervisor ratings when matched to the NSAB scores (N = 109). Therefore, we focus on the combined peer and supervisor ratings here. In addition to the larger sample size for the prediction analyses, combining ratings from these sources also provides a more comprehensive evaluation of the Recruiters in our sample (Oh & Berry, 2009 ).

Recruiting life questionnaire

The Recruiting Life Questionnaire (RLQ) is a self-report measure that contains demographic and background information items, as well as recruiter job satisfaction, recruiting job fit and affective commitment, Army affective commitment, satisfaction with recruiting training and development opportunities, and recruiting career continuance items. Participants responded to the items using a five-point Likert-type format (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree).

To make the RLQ useful for selection purposes, we examined a reduced set of criteria by creating composites of the RLQ scales to reflect important work outcomes. To do so, we used a rational approach based on researcher judgments to group the RLQ items into four scales based on the item content: Army commitment, recruiter-job fit, recruiting stress, and training and development satisfaction. Scale reliabilities for these four criterion composites ranged from .81 to .94. Together with the peer and supervisor performance ratings, we used these four RLQ criterion composites as additional dependent variables in our analyses.

To identify the personality predictors of recruiter performance and attitudes, we used both correlation and regression analysis. Table 1 shows the correlations between the NSAB scales and each of the criteria in this sample. As shown in Table 1 , several NSAB scales were strong predictors of these criteria. Achievement, Optimism, and Sociability were three of the strongest predictors for many of the criteria. Optimism had the strongest correlations across all of the criteria. However, Sociability had the largest correlation (.40) with Recruiting Fit.

These results also illustrate the importance of examining personality facets rather than broader traits. For example, Achievement, a facet of Conscientiousness, had a strong positive correlation (.27) with performance ratings. However, Order (another facet of Conscientiousness) had a correlation of only .06 with this outcome. Similarly, the validity of the facets of Extraversion also varied for some outcomes. Sociability had a correlation of .27 with Army Commitment but Dominance was only correlated .02 with this same outcome. Again, these results illustrate the benefits of examining the narrower facets of personality rather than the broader traits in the prediction of work outcomes.

We also estimated the relative criterion-related validity of the NSAB scales using regression analysis. Table 2 shows the standardized weights for the NSAB scales that were significant predictors of each criterion. Again, Optimism and Tolerance were the most consistent predictors across criteria. Achievement also predicted most of the criteria (except for Recruiting Stress) and several other NSAB scales were related to multiple criteria. In fact, although there were a few minor differences in the predictors of each outcome, the results shown in Table 2 suggest that many of the predictors of these outcomes were relatively consistent. Given these results, the personality dimensions assessed by the NSAB appear to be useful for predicting the performance of Army recruiters. Therefore, we next examined the extent to which the NSAB scales could be used to select Soldiers for recruiting duty.

Standardized regression weights for the NSAB scales that are significant predictors of each criterion in the sample of experienced recruiters.

We first combined the criteria into a single variable by creating a criterion composite using unit weights for RLQ Army Commitment, RLQ Recruiting Fit, and RLQ Recruiting Stress, and double weighting performance ratings. Unit weights were chosen to provide equal weight to each of the RLQ dimensions and based on previous research showing that unit weights often perform as well as or better than empirical weights (Wainer, 1976 ). However, performance ratings were given a higher weight in the criterion composite due to their perceived importance to the Army and a desire to emphasize these ratings in the development of a selection composite. By combining these scales into a single outcome for prediction, a composite of NSAB scales could be developed to help identify individuals for recruiting duty who will be more satisfied with and successful in this role. In addition, combining these outcomes into a single variable is practically useful in that it allows a single composite of NSAB scales to be identified that can predict all of these outcomes and be used to make selection decisions in the Army.

We then regressed this criterion composite onto the NSAB scales and estimated the regression weights 1 for each scale. Based on these analyses, we identified the NSAB scales that were significant predictors of the criterion and used these scales to form a composite for recruiter selection. The multiple R for this model was .48 and the adjusted multiple R was .47, suggesting that these personality scales were strong predictors of the criterion.

Using the NSAB scales and the weights estimated in the regression model, we calculated an NSAB composite score for each individual in the sample. Table 3 shows the significant zero-order correlations between these predicted scores and the various criteria measured in this dataset. Overall, the NSAB composite was a relatively strong predictor of the criteria for experienced recruiters. The highest correlation for this composite (.44) was with recruiting fit, suggesting that high scores on the NSAB predictor composite are associated with better fit between the Soldier and his or her job as a recruiter. Individuals with high scores on the NSAB composite were also likely to be more committed to the Army, satisfied with the training and development opportunities that they receive, and receive higher performance ratings from their peers and supervisors. In other words, the composite developed here was associated with a number of important criteria for recruiter performance.

Significant correlations between the criterion measures and the predicted scores on the NSAB composite.

The sample sizes for these correlations range from 504 to 670.

Figure 1 illustrates the practical importance of the relationships shown in Table 3 . This figure shows quintile plots predicting Army commitment, recruiting fit, recruiting stress, and performance ratings using the NSAB composite described above. On the X-axes of these plots are the quintiles of recruiters based on their NSAB composite scores (i.e., the 20% of recruiters with the lowest NSAB composite scores are in the first quintile, etc.). On the Y-axes are average scores on the criterion variables. The Y-axes for these plots are scaled to range from ± 1 standard deviation from the mean of the criterion.

Quintile plots of the relationships between the NSAB composite and army commitment, recruiting fit, recruiting stress, and the performance rating composite.

As shown in Figure 1 , the NSAB composite was useful for identifying high performing recruiters. For example, test-takers in the top 20% on the NSAB composite were more committed to the Army, experienced less recruiting stress, were rated as higher performers by their peers and supervisors, and had higher perceptions of fit with their job than those in the bottom 20%. Thus, the validities reported above can have important practical implications for selecting recruiters.

The goal of the present study was to examine the validity of personality facets for predicting recruiters’ performance, fit, and attitudes about their jobs. Although past research has demonstrated that recruiter personality is related to recruiting outcomes (Chapman et al., 2005 ), this research has generally been conducted in civilian contexts and has focused on the effects of recruiters’ personality on applicants’ attraction to the organization and/or intentions to pursue a job and accept a position (Darnold & Rynes, 2013 ). In contrast, research in the US military has provided some initial support for the relationship between personality and recruiter performance (Halstead, 2009 ). However, more research is needed to identify profiles of personality traits that will help recruiters to be successful on the job and to explore the utility of a new personality assessment that was designed for high-stakes testing with recruiters. The results of the present study help to address both of these issues and provide additional evidence for the importance of individual differences for predicting recruiter success.

The results presented here indicated that several personality traits were relevant predictors of recruiters’ attitudes and performance. In particular, Achievement, Optimism, and Tolerance seemed to be the most consistent predictors across the five criteria examined. However, results also demonstrated the potential utility of examining facets of personality rather than the broader traits investigated in previous research on recruiter characteristics. For example, Ingenuity was negatively related (β = − .09) to Army Commitment in Table 2 , but Tolerance was positively related to this same outcome (β = .10). Because these are both facets of the broader trait labeled Openness to Experience, aggregating these two facets together for prediction could have canceled out these effects, resulting in a nonsignificant relationship for Openness to Experience. As such, there is value in using narrower personality facets for predicting performance and attitudes.

The results presented here suggest that personality has utility for predicting recruiter outcomes and, therefore, may be useful for selecting high potential Soldiers for recruiting duty assignments. In addition to relatively strong validities for predicting the individual outcomes, a composite of personality scales also showed substantial validity for predicting the overall performance of recruiters. These validities also indicated sizeable practical importance. When these results were plotted, the differences between the lowest and the highest scoring individuals on the NSAB composites were sometimes nearly half a standard deviation. Although these effects seemed to be strongest for predicting fit with the recruiting position and commitment to the Army, the effects were also strong for other criteria. This is particularly important given that the RLQ scales were self-reported and collected concurrently with the NSAB personality scores. In contrast, peer and supervisor ratings were collected the month after the final personality scores were collected and would be less affected by common method variance than the relationships between the self-reported measures. Therefore, these results suggest that personality is still useful for predicting outcomes that are not self-reported and that are collected over time. Again, this finding is important for understanding the potential utility of the NSAB for identifying successful recruiters.

Limitations and future directions

Although these results suggest that personality traits may be useful for recruiter selection, more research is needed to understand these relationships more fully. For example, as noted above, one limitation of this study is that several of the outcomes examined here were collected at the same time as the personality scores and would have been influenced by common method variance associated with self-report measures. Although the results did indicate that personality traits predicted performance outcomes that did not have the same limitation, more research is needed to examine a broader range of outcomes in a longitudinal design.

In addition, all of the personality scores presented here were collected from incumbent recruiters under research conditions. As such, it is unclear how the validity of personality would be affected under operational conditions where individuals are motivated to distort their responses to get a job. Given the concerns over faking on personality assessments (Mueller-Hanson, Heggestad, & Thornton, 2003 ; White, Young, Hunter, & Rumsey, 2008 ), this may be an important limitation to the present study. However, the NSAB used here was specifically designed to be resistant to faking, and past research has demonstrated that scores on this measure are not substantially affected by faking and that the validity of this assessment still holds under operational conditions (Stark et al., 2014 ). Nevertheless, more research is needed to evaluate the NSAB and these results under operational conditions. If future research finds that faking does influence NSAB scores, it may be worthwhile to explore which items maintain their validity under these conditions, given that past research has shown that some items may be more susceptible to faking than others (White et al., 2008 ).

Finally, another limitation of this study is that we did not examine applicant outcomes such as attraction to the job, job pursuit intentions, job choice, or post hire outcomes of the recruitment process (e.g., applicant performance and turnover). Instead, we examined the effects of personality on recruiters’ attitudes and behaviors. Results showed that personality traits can help to identify recruiters who are rated as better performers by their supervisors and peers, perceive themselves to be a better fit for the position, and are more committed to the Army, among other things. These outcomes are more proximal direct outcomes of recruiter behavior and will be less affected by the myriad other factors that can influence applicants’ intentions, choices, and success on the job. Nevertheless, future research should examine the effects of recruiter personality on applicant outcomes as well.

Funding Statement

This work was supported by the Army Research Institute for the Behavioral and Social Sciences [W91WAW-09-D-0014].

1. Due to sensitivity concerns, detailed results about the actual weights used for this composite cannot be presented here.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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