Beyond Resumes: Why Personality Tests are a Game-Changer for Hiring

Ever heard that recruiters spend a considerable amount of time in the HR interview getting to know the personality of the candidates? But why? Don't worry you'll get your answer by the end of this blog!

What is personality and what is its importance?

Technical skills can be taught at different institutes but personality comes from within. As much as skills and grades affect the working of an organization, personality equally nourishes or spoils the culture of the organization.

It encompasses the upbringing of an individual, his surroundings, likes or dislikes, and their perspective of looking at things.                             

Personality tests and their importance in the recruitment process

Personality tests are the new addition to the hiring process! It is a form of assessment that recruiters utilize to help them screen candidates and find individuals with character traits that perfectly fit into their companies. It is designed to unveil certain aspects of a candidate’s behavior, skills, and personality and estimate the probability of how successful they will be in specific job roles.

Who takes the test?

Mostly HRs in the organization ask the candidates to take this test online or sometimes they assemble questions from different platforms and ask them during an HR interview.                                  

A survey from SHRM pointed out that ⅓ of HR specialists trust personality tests during the recruiting and interview process for executive positions.                                                            

Discussions of personality and personality tests in the interview

Usually, the personality test takes about 15- 60 minutes and its discussion in the HR interview takes more time, ranging from 1 hour to 3 or 4 hours.

Candidates are given particular tasks, for example:

1 - They are given situations

2 - They are asked questions

3 - They are asked for examples

4 - Dialogs are held

5 - Their reactions to certain conditions are observed

6 - Noticing how they handle certain situations

Different types of personality tests

Not all personality tests are suitable for recruitment. Companies are advised to proceed with caution when using personality tests for a candidate screening. If you use a test that is not psychometrically for employee hiring, you might end up making even worse decisions.

In search of an appropriate personality test for recruitment, you must consider its reliability and validity.

Criteria to pass the personality test

Every company has its own set of rules. Some prefer one trait over the other, probably according to the requirements of the role or company.

Understanding about candidates

The test provides you with a sense of how candidates manage their tasks, how they guide their team, and how successful they can be.

7 significant insights that you can learn about the candidate with the help of a personality test

1 - How the candidate can absorb the information: Knowing candidates’ process of formulating new understanding, knowledge, attitudes, and choices, would help employers make better decisions in selecting new additions to their company. ‍

2 - How will they take leadership under stress: Will they be able to take the team with them, help them manage their tasks, and make sure they meet the deadline? ‍

3 - What decision-making skills do they possess? Do they make more reasonable judgments given certain circumstances?

4 - Do they have the required organizational skills? Can they manage the given tasks?

5 - Focus and importance of time management: Personality tests can reveal which candidate has the ability to set transparent goals while maintaining focus on their tasks, as well as handling their time on a daily basis. ‍

6 - Problem-solving skills: When a concern arises, is the candidate able to efficiently navigate toward a solution? Do they find the best approach to resolve difficulties? ‍

7 - Socializing: Can the candidate engage himself in group activities? Or engage with other individuals?

Good to know the personality of the candidate in the interview, beforehand

The addition of personality tests gives employers a sense of their employee’s ability to fit into the organization. If they are a good fit, they are more likely to stay in the company for a long time, completely eradicating the time and effort needed to fill the position.

On top of that, you’ll be able to understand their soft skills and behavior better.

What can these tests tell you about candidates?

You don’t know them well, and it will take time before you begin to understand their traits. However, with a personality assessment, you can get a finer idea of their values, motives, and preferences. Interviewing candidates can give you a fair idea of how they might fit into your overall company’s culture, as well as what type of worker they are. A personality test can give you a deeper look into their work styles, skills, and abilities. You’ll be able to understand better what they can offer you as an employee.

Dealing with a candidate according to their personality:

After evaluating the candidate through personality tests and interviews, we become familiar with their preferences, so we can deal with them accordingly.

If an individual has a certain personality characteristic and sometimes hesitates to do a specific task, giving him time would help him, instead of pressurizing him. On the other hand, if we know someone is lazy, pressurizing or acknowledging him from time to time about deadlines will only work.

So, if a candidate is acting in such a way, we might know and understand his reasons and deal with them accordingly.

Personality tests helpful for the candidate too?

Yeah! you read that right, as the candidate:

1 - Also discovers his/her characteristics after finding out the results of the personality test.

2 - Understands their personality traits and attributes which is a great way to promote self-awareness.

Also, if the hiring team knows the personality type and traits of a particular candidate, they can plan their interactions with candidates in a better way making sure the candidates have a soothing hiring journey.

Personality tests in the workplace

If you haven’t introduced a personality test in your recruitment process, you can still organize a personality test annually at your workplace. As it’s important to be sensitive to your employees’ needs and feelings. It will be beneficial in many ways:

1 - It will help all employees get a better sense of culture, values, rules, etc.

2 - It gives you an understanding of how your employees communicate best. Do your employees prefer a hands-on communication style or work best with regular communication from administration or managers? Do they work best with particular communication tools?

3 - It helps your employees become more self-aware of their abilities. Personality testing for employees will give them a more profound insight into their abilities and shortcomings.

4 - You get to know the strengths and weaknesses of your employees and help them cover their flaws by developing training programs, which can target the potentially weaker areas of your employee and help them deal with them in different ways.

How personality affects the working and growth of an organization

It is apparent that personality tests are now a critical part of the hiring process. The overall goal as a recruiter is to find top talent and enhance the culture of your company through employee satisfaction and productivity

It can have some good and some bad impacts:

1 - It can improve or even destroy the company culture

2 - It can increase or reduce employees’ productivity

3 - A leader with good personality traits can transfer them to other individuals, resulting in growing together as a team.

4 - Personality assessments can help recruiters in consistent hiring. This can improve the whole, company culture and make the employees more satisfied and productive in the long run.

How personality can destroy an organization's culture

Research from leading institutes reveals that an employee who is placed in a role that does not fit his/her character traits could lead to lower engagement. Consequently, low employee engagement results in over 20% lower productivity and roughly, 40% higher turnover.

Traits that a person with a certain personality transfers to other individuals

Different individuals transfer some major and some minor traits of their personalities to other individuals and it can have a positive or a negative effect.

For example: If an individual is an extreme wallflower and avoids socializing, does not take part in team activities, and is not confident enough to deliver presentations will have a major effect on other co-workers as well, probably resulting in the cancellation of the presentation.

Major personality traits that have a great impact on other co-workers

So, your product designer candidate has an impressive resume and considerable experience. But are they team players or solo go-getters? Do they fit the social requirements for the role? Can they lead when an important deadline looms over the entire team?

Personality changes with time

When you work with a group of individuals that have different personalities, it does have a relatively positive or negative impact on other co-workers. You sometimes start thinking like them, you try to fit into their shoes too, and try to understand their behavior.

If you compare the outcomes of the personality test of an individual at the time of hiring and probably after a year you will notice some changes.                                                             

Effect of good personality and bad personality in a workplace

Following is one example of how a good personality trait is useful and how a bad personality trait is unhealthy.

A good personality characteristic

A person for whom time is of utmost importance becomes the leader of a group of individuals that assume that time is important only to some extent. The leader will ensure the delivery of the end result is timely, no matter how lazy his team members are, creating a sense of responsibility and inculcating the importance of time in them. So, it shows how a good trait can be transferred to a team because of a good leader.     

A bad personality characteristic

A person who is not confident enough to deliver the assigned topic and makes excuses for it while working with a group of people who are dependent on him to introduce the topic will lower the morale of others and they’ll try to make excuses as well.

Not including personality tests in the recruitment process?

As mentioned above, how important it is to have a personality test in the recruitment process, as it tells you most of the insights of the individual beforehand, skipping it would not help you know your new hires, and you won't have any idea how to deal with them in different circumstances, leading to bad communication between the new hire and an old employee.                                                                    

A personality test is sometimes not cost-effective and is time-consuming

1 - Personality tests can be pretty expensive. You have to purchase a system sometimes to help you find results. Usually, smaller companies cannot find room in the budget to buy the software.

2 - Some of the most popular assessment tests are very time-consuming. Because of the effort it takes to complete all of the questions, some applicants might choose to move forward in the application process.

Candidates can hide and lie

Some applicants might choose the answer they feel will be most pleasing for the interviewer, just to get the job done. However, it will affect them and the organization in the long run because they’ll be faking their personality all the time, which will be difficult for them as well.                                                 

Some personality tests are not helpful

Not all personality tests are suitable for hiring, and even those that are, aren’t suitable for all companies. Some tests cannot give you important information. They can sometimes mislead you, and you cannot judge an individual merely on the basis of a personality test. For example, you think you know that this candidate needs to be dealt with in a certain way in some situations but the candidate expects to be treated in another way and you might end up ruining the situation.

Postface:

As you can see, there are many advantages of using a personality test but they do come with some disadvantages. They help you a lot with the hiring process, but you need to be very careful while choosing the test and spend time researching which test will be the best fit according to your company or the role you are hiring for. Be sure to remember that personality tests should not be used as the only tool in your process, rather take time to communicate and personally understand the candidate to make the right judgment.