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Background Checks Human Resources

Handwriting Samples–Revelations of the Pen

I was reading where Thomas Jung Type Indicator is offering employers its writing samples so that the employers may bring a more diverse and better balance of personalities to the work place. As part of its pitch, TJTI offers the following…

The self-knowledge gained through understanding your “true” personality type can enrich a current career experience, or may be the stepping stone to a new rewarding work life. In an employment setting, understanding co-workers improves communication, fostering a healthy work environment. Building project teams around “The Principle of Diverse Personalities” guarantees diversity of thought, enabling work groups to creatively solve problems and innovate. Differing opinions and points of view can stimulate groups to explore divergent views, enhancing the number and range of options that a group may be willing to consider.

Having interviewed several handwriting experts over the years we can well understand how examining personalities through their handwriting samples can reveal quite a bit about job candidates and those who are presently employed. Better insight should indeed assisting in developing a better working environment. And while the handwriting test is simple enough, we can see how the final sample can be very revealing about someone’s character.

While we see the handwriting test as effective, we don’t begin to see how it can ever replace a background check. A smart employer or human resources executive may want to conduct both the handwriting sample and a background search to really understand the full personality and actual behavioral history of the job candidate. Considering the cost of firing and hiring someone else is, overall, something like seven times the person’s salary, most tangible preventative measures are cost effective. Factor in the liability issues regarding sexual harassment and violence in the workplace, drug and alcohol abuse, theft of sensitive proprietary information, and the few bucks initial outlay starts to look like a regular bargain.

Handwriting tests are not hocus pocus. In fact they are far from it and are used by most federal law enforcement agencies as a tool in fighting crime. Pre-employment background checks will tell you who and what you are looking at, before there is any damage. So if you are one of those companies that still believes pre-employment screening, in all its forms, is not worth the money, you had better think again.

By Gordon Basichis

Gordon Basichis is the Co-Founder of Corra Group, specializing in pre-employment background checks and corporate research. He has been a marketing and media executive and has worked in the entertainment industry, the financial, health care and technology sectors. He is the author of the best selling Beautiful Bad Girl, The Vicki Morgan Story, a non-fiction novel that helped define exotic sexuality in the late twentieth century. He is the author of the Constant Travellers and has recently completed a new book, The Guys Who Spied for China, dealing with Chinese Espionage in the United States. He has been a journalist for several newspapers and is a screenwriter and producer.