Pre-employment Testing Employers find applications for personality tests both before and after the hiring process. Harris believes the majority of this testing, however, takes place before hiring. “You have to look at whymost companies do testing,” he says. “First, it’s to get a candidate who’s likely to succeed in the job.Second, to find a fit with the organization. Third, to find attributes that are likely in a good employeewho will stay.” According to Harris, profits can be influenced directly by hiring decisions that are based on pre- employment testing. “The retail industry has for a very long time used testing at the pre-employment level to measure a tendency among candidates to be less than honest. After all, one of the majorfactors that can ruin a retail business is internal theft,” he says. “That type of assessment hascontinued to be a strong part of the testing business.”