Using personality tests for hiring can offer valuable insights on culture fit, work style, and other factors that define the right candidate. But are they reliable tools? We’ll explore the benefits and drawbacks of using personality assessments for hiring and share some of the top employment personality tests that hiring managers can rely on.
What is a Pre-Employment Personality Test?
A personality test is a technique for measuring various human characteristics and behavior patterns. Its origins date back to the 18th century when a method called phrenology was used to link personality traits to a person’s skull shape.
Thankfully, today, you won’t see an employer running their hands over a candidate’s head to learn whether the person is a hard worker. But you might see them give a pre-employment personality test. In hiring, a personality test is meant to give a quantifiable value to traits that are usually hard to measure, like customer service aptitude or level of patience.
Employers tend to be split on whether personality tests are helpful in hiring–some sing their praises, while others are quick to point out their potential shortcomings. However, appropriately incorporating personality tests into your hiring process can be a worthwhile tool to predict a candidate’s propensity for success. Think of them as one more weapon in your overall strategy to be as competitive and accurate as possible in your recruiting efforts.
Why are Personality Tests Included in the Hiring Process?
Since recruiting and training new employees is expensive for companies, attracting the right candidates for specific opportunities is important for an organization’s productivity and bottom line. Personality tests are valuable tools for recruiting, hiring, and retaining exceptional talent. Personality is a proven indicator of job performance; therefore, assessing a candidate’s behavioral tendencies in the workplace helps recruiters and headhunters determine if he or she will thrive in the open job and fit into the employer’s company culture.
Personality tests in recruitment offer insight into important yet intangible information about prospects, such as their characteristics, values, and work preferences. Research shows that when employees are placed in positions that do not match their respective personalities, this often leads to discontent, which results in low productivity and high turnover.
With the current unemployment rate and the talent shortage in most industries, it is understandable why companies want to do everything possible to increase the chances that new hires become valuable, long-term team members.
Pre-employment job personality tests are typically delivered online and processed immediately. Results are verified and compared with other candidates. This accelerates the hiring process and increases the likelihood that prospects are compatible with the specific opportunity and the company.
A typical interview may not give recruiters enough insight into a candidate’s personality. Behavioral assessments offer a deeper dive to discover a prospect’s strengths, weaknesses, and predilections.
Related: How to Use Pre-Employment Assessments to Make Better Hires
How Many Employers Use Personality Tests When Hiring?
Personality tests are fairly common, especially when hiring for leadership roles. The Society for Human Resource Management reports that 32 percent of HR professionals use personality tests to assess prospective executives, while 28% use them when hiring for middle-management positions. Eighty percent of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests to identify employee coaching and development opportunities.
When used alone, personality and behavioral assessments may not effectively project a candidate’s potential performance. Combined with other data and tools, they can serve as a powerful resource for recruiters.
Pros of Personality Tests for Hiring
Culture fit
Personality tests can be a good way to determine whether a candidate is compatible with a company’s culture. A strong culture fit is linked with higher job satisfaction and lower turnover.
Team dynamics
Personality assessments can give hiring managers a more comprehensive understanding of a candidate’s traits, which allows them to fill gaps and build teams with complementary skills.
Objectivity
Personality is hard to assess objectively. Humans are prone to judge someone based on whether we like them rather than taking a bias-free look at their characteristics. Personality tests help assess traits with an objective measuring stick rather than relying on personal analysis.
Predictive insights
With the added features of artificial intelligence, personality tests can accurately predict job performance. For example, someone who scores highly in attentiveness will likely perform well in a detail-oriented role like office administration or project management.
Related: Is Predictive Analytics the Future of Hiring?
Development opportunities
Personality assessments can highlight areas where additional development could improve a candidate’s capabilities. This can be useful if you really like someone for a job but they’re lacking a few key skills.
Cons of Using Personality Tests When Recruiting
Accuracy
Not all personality tests are backed by science. Relying on poorly designed tests can lead to inaccurate assessments and hiring mistakes.
Potential for bias
Though personality tests are designed to reduce bias, the quality of the test and the data used in modeling are crucial. If a test is designed using data that favors one personality or type of candidate over others, it can skew the results.
Overemphasis on personality
While personality is an essential factor in job success, it may not be the most important one. Recruiters must avoid emphasizing personality over other influential factors like a candidate’s skills and experience.
Candidate reluctance
Though awareness is growing about the usefulness of personality assessments, they still have a stigma. Some candidates may view them as bunk science, while others may have concerns about how their data will be used.
Compliance concerns
Administering personality assessments requires careful attention to legal and ethical guidelines. It’s crucial to clearly communicate what data will be gathered, how the data will be used, and what will be done to keep it secure.
Common Career Personality Tests
The Caliper Profile
This test measures how a candidate’s personality traits correspond to his or her job performance. TopResume.com reports that the Caliper Profile differs from other assessments because it studies positive and negative qualities, which is intended to offer a full picture of the prospect.
The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
Most Fortune 100 companies use the MBTI as part of their hiring process, according to CPI, which is the test’s publisher. The MBTI is designed to determine if a job seeker’s personality is more geared to one of two tendencies in the following groupings: “Extraversion vs. Introversion,” “Intuition vs. Sensing,” “Thinking vs. Feeling,” and “Judging vs. Perceiving.” Candidates who take the MBTI fall into one of 16 personality types. There is a website called 16Personalities.com that offers free assessments as personal development tools. The MBTI is frequently implemented to see if a prospect would be an effective cultural fit for an organization.
The SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire
This assessment provides firms with an indication of how certain behaviors impact a prospect’s work performance. Candidates are evaluated in three areas: “Relationship with People,” “Thinking Style and Feelings,” and “Emotions.” They are given four statements and must select which statement best and least describes them.
The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)
This test has been validated on more than 200 occupations, according to TopResume.com, which further described the HPI as a consistent and reliable tool to evaluate a person’s temperament and how that temperament matches the requirements of a specific role. The test studies seven primary scales and six occupational scales (“Service Orientation,” “Stress Tolerance,” “Reliability,” “Clerical Potential,” “Sales Potential,” and “Managerial Potential”) along with 42 subscales.
The DiSC Behavior Inventory
This model has existed since the era of Hippocrates, around 400 B.C., and it is available in multiple versions. The four basic DiSC factors are “Dominant (D),” “Influential (I),” “Steady (S),” and “Compliant (C).” Companies use the DiSC to learn about a prospect’s professional behavior style and ability to work as part of a team. Like the MBTI, the DiSC is a popular assessment many companies use.
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Tips for Using Personality Tests When Hiring
Avoid labels
One of the biggest criticisms of pre-employment personality tests is that they unfairly force people into predetermined boxes. After all, candidates are complex humans that a single list of questions can’t define. Avoid using personality tests to broadly assign labels to candidates (like’ extroverted’ or ‘introverted’) and instead focus on tendencies (‘this candidate is likely to prefer working closely with others rather than working alone’).
Use data
The best tests are those that are designed with a specific role, team, or company in mind. Draw upon your historical data to learn what traits or tendencies make candidates most likely to succeed, and then focus on questions that will help you identify those characteristics.
Related: How to Leverage Data to Improve Your Recruitment Process
Get the timing right
The right time to administer a personality test during the hiring process will vary based on your goals. If you want to rule out ill-fitting candidates and create a tighter shortlist for interviewing, administering the test during the screening phase is ideal. If you’re using a more lengthy test to drill down into the nuances between your top finalists, giving the test as one of the last steps before you make a decision may be more appropriate.
Also consider the length of your chosen assessment. If it’s too long, giving the test early in the hiring process may deter busy applicants.
Don’t rely on the test alone
Pre-employment personality tests shouldn’t be graded on a pass-or-fail scale. Instead, they should be just one factor out of many considered in the hiring process, not the deciding factor determining who you’ll ultimately select.
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