Using Personality Tests in the Hiring Process

Personality tests get a bad reputation, and with good reason. So many of them are little better than those online quizzes promising to answer deeply meaningful questions like “What fungus are you?” or “What color Power Ranger is your soul?”

But personality testing—the reputable variety based on our best understanding of behavioral science, not the quizzes on the back of teen magazines—can be a valuable part of the hiring process.

Why worry about personality?

If hiring decisions were best made based exclusively on quantifiable skills, then computers could handle it automatically. Qualified new hires would always be ideal, as they’d have the skills needed to get the job done. For better or worse, though, we’re still humans working in human environments, and skill is only one part of the recipe that makes up a successful hire.

Janice and Jackson both have identical skills when it comes to making spreadsheets. Janice likes to focus on one task at a time, putting on headphones and plowing through any challenges with single-minded intensity. She’s intensely critical of her own work and reviews it repeatedly for mistakes before sharing the products of her efforts with others. She’s friendly when socializing, but gets aggravated when people interrupt her or mess with her groove.

Jackson, on the other hand, is intensely collaborative. He likes to get everybody’s input on how he should go about finishing his product, even if he knows more about the process when they do. He often jumps from one project to another as inspiration strikes. He’ll experience a flash of intuition about the solution to a problem and finish quickly, then send it out for everyone to review. There are inevitably some mistakes, but he relies on people with fresh eyes to catch them so he can tidy them up. Two heads are better than one, he always says. When he’s not inspired, Jackson will procrastinate until the last minute. But he does seem to meet his deadlines, even so.

Who’s the better employee here? Neither. Or both. It depends. Jackson might be thrilled to work at a startup with open seating where everyone wears multiple hats and jumps on new opportunities as they arise. Janice might love creating reports at an accounting firm where impeccable attention to detail is required and an account manager handles the communication side of things.

Based on skills alone, that startup might find themselves with a miserable Janice instead of a satisfied Jackson. This is where personality testing really shines.

What you need to know when using personality tests.

• Understand the role. If you’re hiring for a position you don’t interact with on a terribly regular basis, or you’re adding a new role, you might not understand the needs of the position as well as you think. Not all programmers need to be introverts, and not all salespeople need to be aggressive. Talk with the people who surround the role. How does the team operate, on a day-to-day basis? What are the priorities of the job in question? The answers might surprise you.

• Understand the difference between “suitable for this job” and “suitable for hanging out with me.” It’s easy to get caught up in looking for people you understand. After all, you’re successful in your organization. Therefore, others who are like you should also be successful, right? But having a diversity of personality types is actually better for productivity. Know that you don’t need to be buddies with someone for them to be a valuable part of your team.

• Know that you’re working with a good assessment system. There plenty of assessments out there that are based on bad or outdated science. Even more of them are rooted in reality, but are so oversimplified as to be next to useless. A good assessment program should have both solid underpinnings and sufficient complexity.

Our take on testing.

SelectOne’s job suitability testing covers over a hundred different variables and measures them against the needs of the job in question, providing you with areas to dig into more deeply when interviewing. We believe strongly that good fit is just as important as the right skills, and our data bears this out: 90-95% of our recommended hires are successful in their role.

Interested in learning more about hiring done right? Get your free copy of The Benefits of Scientific Hiring and see what kind of different a little cognitive science can make for your next hire.