I’m sure by now you’ve all heard of personality tests in businesses. Their popularity keeps on rising, and they are quite the innovative way to get to know the candidates in front of you, without really knowing them.
After all, we already interview them to try and get to know them, but sometimes, that’s not enough. These types of assessments based on personality can be beneficial to recruiters, but only if you understand how to put them to good use. Otherwise, it can get nasty!
We’ve got you covered; read this article and you’ll be ready to assess your future hires in no time.
Pick The Best Personality Test For Hiring
“And how do I do that with the multitude of tests available out there?” you might wonder. The most important aspect to consider when choosing personality tests for hiring is for the assessments to be valid and reliable.
There are tons of free personality tests out there, but you have to be careful! Most of them were made out of the blue, without scientific validation whatsoever.
You wouldn’t base your next hire on an interview made out of questions that aren’t reliable and valid, would you? It should be the same for your personality assessments.
Picking a personality test, a behavioral assessment, a psychometric evaluation, or whatever the term might be must respect that essential criteria.
Then it’s up to you to figure out what you need to assess, exactly:
- Is it specific skills such as those required to fill an upper-level executive job?
- Do you need to evaluate a salesperson’s closing skills?
- Do you want to evaluate your next hire’s management style?
- Make sure the test fulfills your needs!
Be careful: have other means handy in your recruitment process (interviews, background checks, technical tests, etc.). Personality tests alone are not enough and should ever be the only strategy you use to hire your next all-star.
Combine Personality Tests With Interview Guides
Let’s say you are looking to hire your next project manager.
You ask your candidate if they are organized, if they can give you an example to describe their organisation level, why they think they are indeed organized, how they would react if people continuously gave them spontaneous and unplanned last minute tasks.
Do you really think someone who is naturally built to be spontaneous would give you an honest answer to that? Maybe. But we all know what when someone is trying to get hired, there’s a certain level of truth twisting.
Not only can the personality test reveal the level of organization in your candidate, but it’s even possible to personalize an interview guide based on their own personality!
Picture this: an extremely spontaneous candidate would get a certain question while the unyielding organized one would get a different one so you can learn more about their natural reflexes on that specific personality dimension.
And both questions would always lead to the same conclusions. We don’t want recruitment bias now, do we?
Admit it; it’s a great way to simplify your life as a recruiter. Half the job’s already done!
Get Insights By Mashing Up Personalities
Ever saw an awesome candidate who turned out to be a disaster?
Know this: some hiring mistakes aren’t solely caused by the person you offered the job to. Sometimes, it’s about a misfit with their team, with the position’s requirements, or with the person that manages them.
Personality tests go beyond the hiring process and can provide useful insights on employee relations, job fit, corporate culture fit, and team fit, to only name a few.
I can’t think of a better example than to tell you about the relationship I have with my manager.
There are so many aspects of our personalities that clash: he’s very spontaneous; I’m extremely organized. He’s particularly adaptable while I have a tendency to be highly conventional and traditional. He’s conciliating, and I’m (often too) assertive. I’m a very anxious person while he’s naturally calm.
Yet, because we know these opposite aspects of our personalities, we always try to meet each other halfway. This way, we can have compatible personalities, rather than clashing ones.
Get A Great ROI By Adopting Personality Tests For Hiring
There are many benefits to using psychometrics or personality tests for hiring, and one of them has a direct impact on your bottom line. Yes, personality tests will give you a great return on investment.
You’ll be able to identify the problem, whether it has to do with a dreadful hiring process or high turnover and find tangible solutions to solve them.
And finding the RIGHT candidate now will have long term benefits. Not only can bad hires be extremely costly, but it can also have a negative impact on your current employees.
Personality tests have great ROI because they will pinpoint the aspects that are fit to meet the requirements and responsibilities of a job, the fit with the team’s dynamics, the personality traits that will benefit the organisation and those you will have to look out for.
Go Beyond The Hiring Process
While we use a majority of them for hiring purposes, the benefits of personality tests don’t just end there.
Remember my manager earlier? We completed our personality assessments after working together for three years, yet were still able to see the benefits beyond the recruitment process!They will help you understand other people’s behaviors and natural reflexes, and ultimately, get better team collaboration.
Don’t miss that opportunity. Assess your entire workforce, even past the hiring stage!
If you are trying to find a new way to get to know your candidates, hiring the right person for the right job, making smart hires based on their fit with the culture and the team, then personality tests for hiring might just be for you.
There are just too many useful insights to voluntarily leave personality assessments out of the equation. If you’re a little skeptical, perhaps you should give them a try?