How to Assess the Personality Traits of Your Potential Employees?

Last Updated: January 9, 2025
Author: sajoki

Table of Contents

Hiring the right people is not only about technical skills. Understanding personality traits is important for profiling whether candidates fit your company culture and get along with others.

So, How to assess the personality traits of your potential employees? Most employers utilize personality tests, structured interviews, and behavioral evaluations for this purpose. All these assessments give an all-rounded vision of each candidate’s personality. For example, their communication style, resilience, and teamwork. This helps the organization in finding candidates who are the best fit for the position and corporate culture. 

Continue reading to learn some of the more valid approaches to personality assessment. You can also understand how the insights can lead to better hiring and team fit. 

Why Personality Assessment Matters in Hiring

Understanding personality traits helps create a cohesive, productive workplace. Research has demonstrated that the assessment of such traits can lead to better employee retention, engagement, and performance. Different jobs will favor different profiles. For example, extraversion and resilience might serve the salespeople. On the other hand, analysts want high conscientiousness and attention to detail. Personality trait assessment of employees enables a company to place candidates in positions where they best fit, based on their strengths. It offers them greater satisfaction and a performance boost.

Personality assessments support diversity in hiring as well. It highlights those candidates who add to the variation in qualities and perspectives that exist within the team. When used effectively, they are bound to build an inclusive work environment. Such a place where individual strengths are valued.

Key Personality Traits to Assess

Trying to assess a candidate’s fit for any given position depends upon a few, important personality characteristics. Some of the most useful or relevant of such traits are described below:

Conscientiousness 

Conscientiousness gives a clear glimpse of the level of one’s responsibility and attention to detail. A person possessing a high range of conscientiousness is often rated as good in organizational skills. They are also said to be able to meet deadlines time after time.

Extraversion

Talkative, energetic, and enthusiastic are some general characteristics of extroverted individuals. This factor or dimension proves immensely helpful in occupations. Especially the ones that include frequent social contact. Job roles like customer service or sales require this the most.

Openness to Experience

Candidates having a higher range of openness indicate individuals who can easily adapt to innovation. This identifies employees who are always ready for new ideas and changes.

Agreeableness

This trait points out how much a person is cooperative, empathetic, and willing to work in a team. The essence of this trait is demanded in those roles that require collaboration and interaction with clients.

Emotional Stability

Emotionally stable people are usually calm, resilient, and can resist stress easily. This characteristic is highly welcome in workplaces. Especially in very demanding roles and senior leadership positions.

These attributes have come to be known as the “Big Five,” which provide a multidimensional profile of personality. It has become very popular in employment testing. Because of its validity in forecasting job performance.

Common Personality Assessment Tools and Their Uses

Several commonly known tools can measure these personality traits; each provides different insights:

Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

MBTI puts individuals into a combination of one of 16 personality preferences. For example, like introversion versus extraversion. This is quite popular for team-building. But it doesn’t have much strong scientific backbone to help with hiring.

Big Five Personality Test

The Big Five personality test uses several decades of psychological research as its backbone. It is considered one of the most valid tests. It assists in judging an individual’s personality based on their traits of openness, conscientiousness, and emotional stability. Hence, it delivers a holistic profile of an individual.

DiSC Assessment

DiSC predominantly focuses on four main styles of behavior. They are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness. It is especially useful in understanding the style of communication and teamwork.

Hogan Personality Inventory

The applications of Hogan’s tests are usually related to leadership. It assesses how a person’s personality will affect his or her performance in the workplace environment. Especially when he or she is under stress.

Each instrument has its strengths and shortcomings. Therefore, choosing an appropriate test is totally dependent on the requirements of a specific role and company culture. All of these tools, in combination with interviews and other testing methods, will lead to getting closer to the candidate’s personality.

Structured Behavioral Interviews for In-Depth Insights

Behavioral interviews give insight into the personality traits of candidates in action. An employer can ascertain how one handles certain scenarios through different questions. They could most often start by asking the candidate to describe their past experiences. For instance, questions like “Describe a situation where you have had to meet a tight deadline and how you managed to meet it” may provide insight into the problem-solving skills of a candidate, their resilience, and time-management skills.

Interview questions should be open-ended. It ensures that your results are as valid as possible. And it’s also representative of the characteristics in which you are interested. As a general rule, behavioral interviews work best in combination with other forms of assessment. Because they allow candidates to give real-world examples of how they apply their skills and traits into practice.

Incorporating Psychometric Testing for Objective Results

Psychometric tests add a scientific touch to recruitment. It objectively measures personality and cognitive abilities. Since the measures utilized in these tests are standardized, it is rather easy to make fair comparisons among candidates. Some common psychometric tests include the following:

Cognitive Abilities Test

This is a test designed to test the candidate’s critical thinking. It detects his problem-solving ability as well as his learning ability. This test can give an idea of just how quickly a candidate might learn new skills.

Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs)

These tests present a number of hypothetical scenarios that may take place in the workplace. And then ask how the applicant would act in a situation like that. It helps detect qualities such as empathy, decision-making, and integrity.

Psychometric tests help organizations reduce bias in hiring individuals. It allows us to rely on quantifiable data, thus making it easier to select an appropriate candidate for the position.

Creating a Bias-Free and Inclusive Assessment Process

Although the personality test provides very important information, it can be discriminatory if handled in the wrong manner. For instance, linking pre-defined characteristics with job suitability tends to result in discrimination. To construct a non-discriminatory and all-inclusive assessment testing process, the following can be of assistance:

Use Standardized Testing

Standardized forms of testing ensure that applicants are treated alike.

Implement Blind Assessments

Applicant’s personal information should not be present in assessments. Such as their names, educational background, and so on. It ensures the elimination of unconscious bias.

Involve Diverse Hiring Panels

Diversity brings about multiple opinions. It goes a long way in reducing the chances of biased decisions.

Transparency allows candidates to know what the personality tests are. And also get an idea about how the test is being conducted in an attempt to trust honest responses.

Reviewing and Combining Assessment Results for Informed Decisions

Once you have personality test scores, interview feedback, and psychometric data in hand, it is time to take a look at the results as a whole. Find patterns where you will take a look at how each particular trait would fit into the role requirements. For example, if the job requires somebody who can stand very high resilience and composure, people with high emotional stability will turn out to be strong contenders.

Merging these findings into other hiring criteria, such as competence and experience, will yield a far more complete candidate profile. You will be in a better state to make comprehensive hiring decisions. These will help reduce employee turnover while fostering team cohesion.

Related Questions

Why is personality assessment important in hiring?

Personality assessments help predict a candidate’s fit for the role and alignment with company culture.

Which personality traits are most valuable in employees?

Traits like adaptability, communication, teamwork, and accountability are often highly valued.

Can personality assessments improve employee retention?

Yes, hiring candidates who align with company values and culture can increase job satisfaction and retention.

How accurate are personality assessments in predicting job performance?

While not foolproof, personality assessments can provide valuable insights into a candidate’s potential success in a role.

How do personality tests aid in team building?

They reveal communication styles and strengths, promoting cohesive teamwork.

Conclusion

Personality testing of employees forms one of the strategic steps in team building done with deliberation. Personality tests, structured interviews, and psychometric tests are some of the tools that assist an organization in getting insight into the way a candidate is likely to perform and thrive at work.

An open and nondiscriminatory assessment test in itself guarantees equal hiring opportunities. It ensures success for the organization in the long run. Personality assessment, if used thoughtfully, can build stronger, more resilient teams. Which would provide every employee with an opportunity to thrive as well.

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Lukas Müller

HR Manager, TechCorp

SAJOKI made hiring easier by providing clear insights into candidates' soft skills, helping us find the right fit every time.

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