Finding the Perfect Fit: 5 Personality Tests for Hiring Process

In the contemporary hiring landscape, where culture fit is paramount, personality tests provide invaluable insights into candidates' behavioral tendencies, facilitating more informed recruitment decisions. By assessing traits such as communication style and emotional intelligence, these tests help companies build cohesive teams and foster long-term success.

What is a pre-employment personality test?

A questionnaire that prospective employees fill out to assist recruiters in pinpointing pertinent and valuable personality traits. This questionnaire evaluates different facets of a candidate's character and abilities, including their communication, social skills, and how they manage stress.

Why Personality Tests are Crucial in the Hiring Process?

Various kinds of personality tests exist, all aimed at pinpointing traits in candidates that can enhance the hiring process. To optimize outcomes, it is recommended to integrate personality tests into pre-employment skills assessments, conducted before candidate interviews.

This approach furnishes actionable insights into applicants' traits, skills, and behavior, facilitating an initial screening and enabling more meaningful interviews.

Leveraging personality tests during recruitment yields numerous benefits:

• Mitigate turnover rates

High turnover adversely impacts productivity and business performance, and personality tests serve as a means to mitigate this issue. They enable the selection of applicants whose personalities align well with the roles being filled.

• Facilitate data-driven decisions

Data enhances the decision-making process, and personality tests provide actionable insights for recruitment purposes, contributing to more informed choices.

• Reduce bias

Personality assessments offer a lens into a candidate's traits free from the influence of unconscious bias. Similar to data-driven decision-making, they enable objective evaluation.

• Enhance candidate understanding

Accurately assessing personality and behavior is pivotal in determining job fit. For instance, in sales roles, a personality assessment can gauge persuasive abilities, offering valuable insights into candidates' suitability.

• Facilitate candidate comparison

Personality tests can differentiate between similarly qualified candidates. When faced with comparable qualifications, personality assessment tests aid in identifying the most suitable candidate.

• Optimize time management

Recruiters often face time constraints. Leveraging personality and skills tests streamlines the process by generating a shortlist of candidates that meet criteria and expectations.

• Develop succession planning strategies

When hiring, considering an individual's growth potential within the company is crucial. Personality tests aid in assessing suitability for future roles and promoting upward mobility, facilitating effective succession planning.

The Limitations of Personality Tests

• Potential for misuse or over-reliance
• Not customizable or applicable to every role
• Some candidates can try to cheat or not answer truthfully to present themselves in a better light

5 Types of Personality Test

1. The Big Five Personality Test

Also known as the Five Factor Model (FFM), comes in various forms and is designed to conceptualize human personalities, particularly for hiring purposes.

As a pre-employment assessment that can be swiftly completed, the Big Five test employs a scale system rather than a binary right-or-wrong approach. It consists of 60 questions aimed at gauging a candidate’s personality across five key psychological dimensions relevant to work environments. Instead of categorizing candidates into singular personality types, this assessment provides a percentage score for each of the following categories:

• Extraversion: Measures the extent of a person's outgoing nature and openness to new experiences.
• Agreeableness: Evaluates the level of compassion and cooperativeness vs. antagonism and coldness.
• Conscientiousness: Assesses the degree of carefulness, responsibility, and organization vs. disorganization and laxness.
• Neuroticism: Examines the level of vulnerability vs. stability and security.
• Openness to experience: Considers the level of imagination and curiosity vs. adherence to routines and narrow-mindedness.

This pre-employment assessment is suitable for most companies seeking effective recruitment strategies. It proves particularly useful in evaluating compatibility between prospective recruits, managers, and existing team members. By exploring the Big Five traits, it enables the prediction of job performance and anticipation of potential interpersonal dynamics within the team. Additionally, its online accessibility and time efficiency make it a popular choice. Employers often rely on the Big Five test to assess candidates' mental stability and their capacity to handle stress.

2. The DISC Personality Test

The DISC test aims to assess where candidates fall on a spectrum of personality traits rather than assigning them rigid labels.

As the acronym suggests, the test comprises four components represented by the letters D, I, S, and C. Each letter corresponds to a distinct personality trait:

• D (Dominance): Candidates with a high D score typically gravitate towards leadership roles and enjoy involvement in decision-making processes. They are proactive individuals who drive projects forward.
• I (Influence): Candidates with a high I score excel in persuading others and prioritize maintaining positive relationships. This trait is particularly relevant in environments such as sales.
• S (Steadiness): Candidates with a high S score excel in organization and contribute to team stability, especially in dynamic environments where other team members may take risks.
• C (Compliance): Individuals with a high C score are detail-oriented and strive to meet company standards.

This personality assessment is valuable for evaluating whether a candidate's preferred working style aligns with the demands of the job. Matching individuals with tasks that suit their natural tendencies increases the likelihood of long-term satisfaction and retention. By providing clarity on job requirements and fostering collaborative work environments, this test enhances hiring decisions and promotes employee longevity.

3. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

This profiling method focuses on 16 distinct personality types. The test illuminates how individuals interact with others and what they seek in their environment.

It encompasses four fundamental dimensions:

• Extroversion (E) or Introversion (I)
• Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
• Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
• Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

This assessment aids in identifying a candidate's preferred working style and relational dynamics, optimizing their performance. It not only offers insights into an individual's preferred work environment but also facilitates conflict mitigation in the workplace by ensuring compatibility among coworkers' preferences. While personality type tests have seen reduced usage in recruitment due to insufficient scientific backing, understanding these types can still assist in recognizing factors contributing to job satisfaction or dissatisfaction and improving team communication. The 16 Personality Types test equips employers with valuable insights into each candidate's preferred work methods. Companies fostering a collaborative culture stand to gain significant insights from this assessment, enhancing productivity and fostering positive professional relationships among team members.

4. The Dark Side Test

It focuses on predicting candidates' reactions in ambiguous situations, where the course of action is unclear.

This situational personality assessment presents candidates with scenarios featuring obvious positive outcomes alongside harmful consequences. Candidates' responses illuminate their moral compass, revealing their tendencies in navigating ethical dilemmas. Employers then evaluate whether candidates' reactions align with the company's values and standards.

As a unique addition to traditional pre-employment assessments, the Dark Side test targets decision-making and problem-solving skills in high-stress scenarios with multiple variables. It is well-suited for roles within complex working environments where tough decisions are commonplace, offering valuable insights into candidates' suitability for such positions.

5. Enneagram

The Enneagram Personality Test is a comprehensive and intricate assessment designed for employment purposes, evaluating individuals across nine distinct personality types according to their fundamental motivations, fears, and aspirations. Each type exhibits unique patterns of cognition, emotion, and behavior, along with specific areas of personal growth and stress.

The nine Enneagram personality types are as follows: 

1. The Reformer: Principled, purposeful, self-controlled, and at times perfectionistic
2. The Helper: Demonstrative, generous, can be people-pleasing
3. The Achiever: Adaptive, excelling, driven, image-conscious
4. The Individualist: Expressive, dramatic, can be temperamental
5. The Investigator: Perceptive, innovative, secretive
6. The Loyalist: Engaging, responsible, suspicious
7. The Enthusiast: Spontaneous, versatile, distractible
8. The Challenger: Self-confident, decisive, willful, confrontational
9. The Peacemaker: Receptive, reassuring, agreeable, can be complacent

Enneagram tests provide distinct personality insights and perspectives that aid in charting a course for personal growth and development. Specifically, comprehending the interactions among predominant personality types can enhance communication skills and facilitate conflict resolution.

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