When you’re hiring, you want to find the best candidate. To do that, you study applications and resumes. You interview candidates and talk with references. But the most important step is the use of a personality test for hiring.

What is a Personality Test?

The American Psychological Foundation defines a personality test as “any instrument used to help evaluate personality or measure personality traits.” Personality encompasses the behaviors individuals exhibit as they interact with the world. Psychologists categorize these traits using models such as the Big Five, which includes: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness.

Another widely used assessment, DiSC, provides HR leaders with valuable insights, boasting a “highly consistent metric of predictability in human behavior.” However, while informative, personality test results alone do not provide a complete picture for making the best hiring decisions.

Limitations of Personality Tests in Hiring

Relying on a single personality test in the hiring process risks using an incomplete view of a candidate. Some analysts criticize the Big Five model for potentially “oversimplifying the complexity of human personality.”

What are the Benefits of Using Personality Tests for Hiring? 

Using a personality test allows employers to streamline hiring. 43% of businesses rank hiring at the top of their list of challenges. They need candidates with the right hard and soft skills. And they strive to hire an applicant with the right fit for the manager and the team.

Managers know that bringing in the wrong employee can negatively impact motivation. And in some cases, an employee’s toxic workplace behavior generates conflict and reduces productivity. “Research shows that organizations employing personality assessments report a 30% increase in team satisfaction and a 25% reduction in workplace conflict.”

What is a Psychometric Assessment?

While personality tests provide useful insights, psychometric assessments go further. Beyond measuring skill levels, these assessments offer deeper insights into how a candidate will function within an existing team—a crucial factor for hiring managers focused on maintaining productivity.

Advantages of Psychometric Assessments

When using psychometric assessments that include a personality test for hiring, interviewers have more data to review. 

Data for Informed Decisions

Psychometric assessments, when combined with personality tests, provide interviewers with comprehensive candidate profiles. Requiring candidates to complete these assessments before interviews can streamline the hiring process.

Predefined Score Thresholds

Managers can set minimum score requirements to filter candidates, ensuring that only those meeting the necessary criteria move forward in the process.

Tailored Interview Questions

In addition, they can study the assessment results before the interview. They can prepare interview questions to probe areas of interest. With a platform like TeamTrait^TM, they’ll also receive a list of suggested questions based on the psychometric assessment results for each candidate.

Understanding Candidate Motivations

TeamTrait also includes motivations and values assessments. It’s important to understand the type of behavior a person will display at work. It’s even more important to know about the motivations that drive those behaviors.

Ensuring the Right Fit for the Role

Emma Burleigh reports for Fortune that some candidate attributes are nearly universal in their desirability. Every manager hopes to find an employee who will be conscientious, dependable and on-time.

But other aspects of work behavior and personality can be matched to a specific job. These attribute areas can be revealed through psychometric testing.

For example, a tour guide should be enthusiastic and outgoing. Great accountants are typically detail oriented. If a top candidate for a web design position scores low for self-​reliance, they may not have sufficient motivation to create a unique design – even if they have a high score for creativity.

Team Fit

Team fit is another important metric for managers to consider when hiring. Research shows “employee retention improved by 20% when team compatibility was emphasized through assessments.”

Final Thoughts

It may be tempting to use a simple personality test for hiring. But today’s organizational design is complex and requires teamwork. To understand how a candidate will contribute to a team and excel at their job, managers should take the extra step of using a psychometric assessment.

Photo by Mart Production on Pexels.