Summary: Personality tests evaluate a person's common traits. Learn about their benefits and how they are used in hiring.
Personality Tests
Personality tests are an important tool for determining whether an individual has the personal characteristics required for a particular task. These tests are particularly common in recruitment and HR functions. It is usually distinguished from a skills test.
How Personality Tests are Used in Hiring
A personality test is a psychological tool for evaluating an individual’s common traits, emotional responses, and behavioral tendencies.
Using the test, employers can gain valuable insight into their employees’ preferences, predict their responses, and identify their motivations. This information can support employers in hiring and training employees, ensuring they are placed in positions where they can most add value.
Personality tests are usually carried out in one of two ways: as self-report inventories or as projective tests. A self-report inventory is often standardized and requires the individual to answer the listed questions themselves.
Conversely, a projective test is usually conducted in person and monitored by the employer. This test involves the individual answering questions about a specific hypothetical scenario. Employers can use the projective test to gain a more thorough understanding of how the employee would react to and deal with certain situations.
There are several different types of personality tests.
The type of test chosen will depend on what the employer/analyst hopes to achieve and the individual they are assessing. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) and the Hexaco Personality Inventory are two tests commonly used by psychologists and employers.
The former test will group individuals into one of 16 personality types.
Test takers are assessed using four different scales, including extraversion (E), introversion (I), sensing (S), intuition (N), thinking (T), feeling(F), Judging (J), and perceiving (F).
Upon completing all 94 questions, the individual will be given a four-letter classification corresponding to the aforementioned scales. Many businesses use the MBTI to help cultivate a collaborative company culture.
Companies can strategically match employees to improve their engagement and productivity by identifying specific personality traits. Moreover, the test can help companies identify candidates with the potential to fulfill critical leadership roles. By highlighting candidates with high communication skills or strong intuition, companies can better tailor their learning and training programs to facilitate career development and, by extension, company productivity.
The MBTI can equally be used to support team-building activities and prevent conflicts or divides within the organization. Insight into personality types allows employees and employers better to understand their colleagues and their particular communication styles. This knowledge helps companies foster an environment of inclusivity and understanding, essential to improving employee retention.
An additional test used by employers is the Hexaco Personality Inventory. This test analyzes an individual’s cognitive skills in honesty, humility, emotionality, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness to experience.
Using the test, companies can improve interpersonal dynamics and better identify individuals with key business skills such as detail orientation, decisiveness, and determination.
When combined with an employee interview, personality tests can help employers better understand their employees’ skills and abilities and determine whether they are suitable for both their job role and the company itself.
Benefits of Using Personality Tests
Having gained insight into employee behaviors, motivations, and emotional responses, companies can better predict employee job performance. Companies can then use these predictions to inform their placement decisions, ensuring that employees are placed in the role best suited to their personality.
By comparing personality test results with those of existing candidates in similar positions, companies may also be able to recognise patterns regarding performance and productivity.
Businesses can then adjust the criteria of their personality tests and hiring process to ensure that only candidates with traits conducive to top performance are identified and hired. Once selected, these recruits will help companies increase the efficiency and productivity of their operations.
Moreover, personality tests are equally important in evaluating whether a candidate suits the context of the job and the job itself.
To cultivate a collaborative and inclusive work environment, companies must ensure that their employees fit well into company culture. Although diversity is crucial to business development, selected recruits should share the same company values.
Personality tests allow employers to discern better what matters to their employees. Ensuring that the preferences and motivations of employees align with the company’s core values is crucial to fostering an inclusive and collaborative work climate.
It is unrealistic to expect all employees within an organization to work well together.
Although employers can improve employee collaboration through team-building exercises and diversity training, there is likely to be some friction between certain members.
As this friction can hinder employee productivity, companies must implement measures to reduce organizational disharmony.
Using personality tests, companies can gauge a better understanding of individual traits and tendencies and match these with people of the same or similar working styles. When paired with individuals who share their preferences and values, employees will be more inclined to want to collaborate and communicate with their colleagues. As a result, personality tests play a key role in facilitating healthy interpersonal dynamics and employee satisfaction.
When using personality tests, employers must be cautious in ensuring that all questions asked in the test are non-discriminative and in compliance with EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) laws.
By asking questions that unfairly screen out qualified employees based on their background, education, or physical state, employers risk jeopardizing their brand image and employee value proposition (EVP). It is, therefore, crucial that the questions posed account for a diverse pool of applicants, including those with mental illness and disability.
Moreover, companies must also consider the ability and likelihood of candidates skewing their test results. Feeling that their job position may be compromised, employees might adjust their answers to suit what they believe the employee finds desirable.
By creating customized tests and ensuring that test results are reproducible, companies can help mitigate these risks.
Notably, during the hiring process, employers should use personality tests in addition to interviews and hard skills tests rather than as a determining factor.
Ensuring employees are assigned appropriate roles based on their personality type is crucial to optimizing company efficiency and productivity.
Suppose employees feel better equipped to perform specific job tasks and can do so by collaborating with other like-minded individuals. In that case, they are much more likely to want to stay and contribute to the organization’s success.
As a result, companies can reduce employee turnover rates, saving them the time and money needed to identify and hire recruits. Moreover, understanding employee preferences and cognitive abilities will allow companies to tailor their learning and training programs better to enhance employee skills.
Equally, personality tests may aid employers in identifying weaker skill sets. As a result, companies will be better informed when structuring their training programs, focusing on enhancing existing abilities and providing extra support for underdeveloped skills.
Companies need to make fast and informed decisions when hiring new recruits.
Fortunately, personality tests provide them with the means to identify employees whose cognitive skill sets align with those needed to fill the vacant position. Companies can then use the personality tests to narrow down the selection of candidates they will interview based on their motivations, preferences, or communication styles.
This ensures that companies hire the candidate most suited to company culture and the job position.
Additionally, personality tests are a valuable tool in improving team dynamics. By matching employees based on their traits and tendencies, companies can ensure that employees feel connected to their department and, thus, the organization. Equally, companies can pair individuals who differ in skill sets, allowing each to benefit and learn from the abilities of the other.
Moreover, employees must understand and respect their colleagues to relieve tensions and promote a healthy work environment.
By learning about differences in communication styles, emotional responses, and motivations, companies can help encourage inclusivity and compassion between colleagues.
As so many conflicts are caused by a lack of understanding or ignorance, personality tests are vital in educating employees about differences and diversity within their organization.
A Final Word About Personality Tests
Personality tests provide employers with valuable insights into the cognitive skills and motivations of their workforce.
Using this knowledge, companies can better structure their learning programs, strengthen the placement of their employees, and support career development.
Though personality tests are crucial to employee training and development, companies must be careful when using them to support accurate hiring. Questions that unfairly screen out employees or do not account for mental illness or disability should be reviewed and removed to comply with EEO (Equal Employment Opportunity) laws. However, personality tests can significantly increase employee engagement and retention rates when used effectively and compliantly.
By enhancing the employee experience and supporting employee development and career growth, companies can cultivate a workforce whose activities, values, and goals align with those of the company.
Authors:
Marcel is an experienced journalist and Public Relations expert with an honours degree in Journalism and bylines with a range of major brands.
