As the labor market becomes more competitive, the pressure to hire the right people and engage them within the company’s culture has amped up. Companies have sped up their recruiting process to avoid missing strong job candidates and many interviews are being conducted remotely. Employers are finding it hard to get a feel for a person’s personality traits, strengths and weaknesses. That has resulted in personality tests becoming a more common practice in the recruiting process.
Personality tests help determine someone’s skill level in several areas – leadership, critical thinking skills, communication style and work ethic. If understood and used properly, this information can be a good tool to determine someone’s fit in a company.
Along with hiring benefits, companies are also seeing personality tests are effective team-building tools for current employees.
The biggest advantage to using a personality test in the pre-employment process is to identify candidates who are not a good fit for company culture. Employers know the type of candidate they want to recruit for specific positions in their company, and a test can show if they feature those character traits.
Some pre-employment tests, like the Predictive Index assessment, can predict how a candidate will perform on a certain job. Learning more about a person’s strengths and weaknesses can be more informative than looking at a resume that has been meticulously prepared.
The Five-Factor Model test is another pre-employment test that can help employers in interviews. By focusing on the five most-studied personality traits – conscientious, likable, unconventional, extroverted and stable – employers can gain more insight into the candidate and generate more meaningful interview questions.
Knowing a person’s personality traits and character tendencies can be extremely useful to ensure a new hire is a long-term fit for a company. More long-term hires mean less need for new employees, reducing the added expenses of training and onboarding processes.
The usefulness of personality tests is not limited to the hiring process. Having current employees take one can help a company identify future leaders and form more productive teams.
While vocal leaders are easy for companies to identify, a test can dip deeper and unveil employees with undiscovered potential. There may be employees whose traits line up well for leadership positions and the personality test exposes this untapped talent. Employers can take this opportunity to coach this group so they reach their potential.
Every employee has strengths and weaknesses, not just leaders. By using a personality test to further understand an employee’s traits, employers can evaluate a work group’s collective balance of motives, conflict and strengths. Managers armed with this information can tailor their leadership approach for each team member, which will impact employee morale and productivity.
Sharing the results of a test with an employee – including leadership – can help them develop greater confidence within their roles.
The CliftonStrengths, DiSC and Strength Deployment Inventory are strong personality tests for a company to assess their employees’ potential. When used as a development tool, the tests can lead to greater job satisfaction and higher employee retention.
Business leaders need to carefully evaluate their options when using personality tests. Along with the added cost, there is the potential to put too much weight into the results of the test and not trust the established recruiting process.
The use of the tests can also make the hiring process difficult for potential candidates. If a test is too long or hard to access, it could cause candidates to opt out.
However, potential positives from a personality test usually outweigh the negatives. Proper research on each test and vendor is imperative to ensure it is a good fit for the company.
Eric Cormier is a manager of human resources services in Rhode Island for Texas-based Insperity Inc., which provides human resources and administrative services.
