Nadia Anzani

According to the experts, a person's handwriting constitutes a key to his or her personality and professional analysis can reveal in a reliable way a person's capacity to shoulder managerial responsibility. The process is known as graphology, a method initially developed in the 17th century and perfected over the centuries.
In the recent times the "graphotest" has been created and is primarily used as a means of judging scholastic development and in family counseling and psychotherapy. Test results have been admitted as evidence in legal cases and widely applied in hiring and promoting personnel especially by managements .in North America, Northen and Central Europe and Israel.
"When we write, our nervous systems send to the hand guiding the pen nine impulses a second and 550 a minute", said Agata Geraci, phychologist and grapholologist at the Milan Center for Psychological Studies. "Those impulses can not be fully guided by reason or will power and, for that reason, handwritting has the same value as fingerprints".
A slant to the left or right of the pen strokes, the roundness of letters, the height and size of the characters and many other elements show whether the writer has a strong personality, with capacity for leadership or is a creative and introverted type. Several personality traits can be detected and interpreted through graphology, some of which can be embarrassing, such as indications of sneakiness, a propensity to lie or low level of capacity for work.
Major corporations and leading consultancy firms in the field of personnel regularly use the technique in managing resources because it is capable of yielding better results than those supplied by standard aptitude tests and classic job interviews.
The approach reduces the probability of error in hiring or promoting personnel because it not only indicates aptitude but also the psychological character of a candidate. The result is a more profound analysis than is provided by other technique.
Graphology is particularly valid in selecting managerial personnel, although is difficult to apply, according to Romolo Datei, an engineer and expert graphologist who as served as corporate manager and is now an executive headhunter for a major consulting company.
"Rarely do you find graphologists who have corporate experience" he said.
"That's a problem because graphology must be backed by a precise knowledge of corporate organization."
The question then is why is graphology so little used by Italian companies.
"Graphology is not considered a science". Ms Geraci said. "On the basis of my experience, I can say that the recourse of handwrittintg analysis is linked primarily to the economic cycle.
When companies are growing rapidly, they pay little attention to the selection of personnel because they are convinced that a bad investment can be remedied by hiring someone else. When times are difficult, however, as they are now, choosing personnel gains in importance. Companies can't afford errors, especially in hiring managers. So they want a technique that reduces the margin of error to the minimum. The price to be paid for the wrong choice is proportional to the importance of the role to be filled.
The diffusion of graphological analysis is limited above all by the lack of corporate experience by most experts in the field and the fact that the tests used to date are not sufficiently standardized to assure their scientific value.
"Most Italian graphologists come from the field to research and their studies have little application to the corporate world", Datei said. "They usually do not understand the industrial sector, its language, its roles". "To assure the scientific value of the tests, there should be sample of the least 200 persons involved in the same profession and successful in practicing it", Datei said. "Each would have to be interviewed and handwritting sample would have collected and analyzed to identify traits that are common to the sample".
Those values, arranged statistically, can then serve as a field of reference in assessing the characteristics manifested in their handwritting by candidates for positions in the same profession or category, he added.
In the absence of such a field of reference, further application of the graphology method would be extremely difficult or impossible.
Datei noted that there is a definite pattern in the characteristics of the handwritting of persons who are active in the same sector.
He mentioned architects whose style of writting is highly distinctive, since a great deal of weight is given to artistic and esthetic values.
However, accumulating and analyzing the necessary reference material requires a great deal of time. Recently the work of the graphologist has been greatly simplified and speeded up by the development of computerized programs for application in the area of handwritting analysis.
"The Graf System, a collection of programs that originated in the United States, gathers, files and elaborates specific data in the field", said Daniele Malaspina, managing director of the Milan Center for Psychological Studies.
"Use the computer has greatly reduced the time and costs required for analyzing handwritting.
It is an extremely simple system. The handwritting sample is entered in the computer through use of scanner.
The initial valuation, which was once done manually by the graphologist, is now carried out by the computer, applying mathematical formulas and models".
The quality of the initial phases of analysis has therefore been improved through use of the computer. The result is that the specialist's role can be reduced to interpretation of the data supplied by the computer.
At the moment, Italian companies tend to confine their testing to assessments of aptitude.
"Such tests are adapted above all to the selection of personnel of a low to medium level", Ms Geraco said. "They permit assessment of a candidate's mental capacity and attitude in respect to the performance of a specific job but it doesn't predict success in a managerial role. There are personality tests as well but they have been abandoned by most companies".
Tests that provide the basis for projections "represent a serious method of inquiry and have their predictive value but only if the person giving them is a highly qualified professional," Datei pointed out. " In addition it is a long and laborious process, which constitutes the tests' principal defect and has resulted in their limited application".
The future of the graphotest will depend to a great extent on the training of qualified personnel. "If account is taken of the limitations of the current system and adequte adaptations are made, it is probable that the graphological testing will gain ground", Datei added. "Some movement is already under way.
I have personally given many graphology course in companies.
There is, then, a large number of graphologists with corporate experience, people who have seriously studied the method and are aware of its strenghts and weakness..
The next step is to work on the statistical aspect so that the graphology can make the passage from a human to an exact science.

Italian version