Title: Is it wrong to hire employees based on personality?

Speaker: Postdoc Joona Räsänen, CEPDISC, Aarhus University

Abstract: Sometimes employers use personality tests in hiring or are looking for candidates with features of certain personalities (social, outgoing, active, extrovert etc.). They thus hire, at least partly, based on personality since they use personality traits as criteria on whom to hire for a job. Is the practice of hiring based on personality morally permissible? I argue that it is not. People generally believe it is not permissible to hire based on sex and race. A plausible explanation for the wrongness of hires based on sex or race is based on two widely accepted principles. 1) the relevance principle and 2) the fairness principle. The relevance principle says that hiring should be made based on what is relevant for the job performance. The fairness principle says that hiring should be made based on features that people can themselves control. Since hiring based on sex or race violates the relevance and the fairness principles it is wrong. But as I will argue, hiring based on personality violates the same principles and is thus morally wrong as well.

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