Guest Contributor
Trending

Personality Tests All HR Managers Should Use

By | Aurelian Luke

Personality tests can be extremely useful when hiring new employees. These tests will let you learn about the behavior and temperament of applicants so that you can determine whether or not they’ll be a good fit for your company culture and the work that you do.

In other words, personality tests can give you deeper insights than what you would gain from a normal job application, resume, or even an interview.

Nowadays there are many personality tests that HR managers in different companies use. However there are a few that are the most popular, and that you should definitely try out:

  • DISC Behavioral Assessment

The DISC assessment asks a series of questions to characterize a person’s behavior and beliefs into 4 main types: Dominance, influence, steadiness, and conscientiousness. It may not be the deepest of tests, but it can help you gauge how employees will communicate and give general expectations as to their potential behavior.

The results can also provide information regarding their value to your team, ideal environment and job role, fears, motivation, desires, and growth areas.

  • California Psychological Inventory (CPI)

One of the most lauded personality tests is the California Psychological Inventory. It consists of a series of 434 true-or-false questions designed to score potential employees across 20 ‘folk’ scales that are broad personality themes. Because of this trait, the CPI is viewed as an easy to understand and relatively universally-applicable test.

It should be noted that a key feature of the CPI is that it can identify applicants who falsify their responses to a certain degree in an effort to improve their results.

  • Caliper Profile

The Caliper Profile attempts to identify strengths, weaknesses, and the potential of employees across 25 different personality traits. Because of that it is one of the more comprehensive personality tests and allows HR managers to understand the personality traits of potential employees that may be either an advantage or drawback to their work.

  • Myers-Briggs Test

Although its effectiveness is often debated, the Myers-Briggs test remains one of the most popular options. It is used to evaluate the psychological preferences of applicants then classify them into four categories:  Introversion or extraversion, sensing or intuition, thinking or feeling, judging or perceiving.

The result of the Myers-Briggs test is then depicted using a letter from each category, e.g. ISTJ, or EIFP. That will let you know how suitable applicants are based on the needs of your company.

  • Gallup Strengths Finder

As its name suggests, the Gallup Strengths Finder focuses on the strengths of potential employees as opposed to their weaknesses. It is aimed to allow HR managers to see how employees may benefit the company by highlighting their 5 best attributes (out of a possible 34).

Despite being not that comprehensive, the Gallup Strengths Finder test is well-liked as its attributes are very relevant to workplace success. Some also view its positive-focus as more valuable as it will allow employees to grow into their strengths rather than fixate on their weaknesses.

As you can see each of these personality tests is unique in its own way, yet all can help provide HR managers with useful information that enables them to hire employees who fit their company perfectly. While you could engage professionals to come up with these tests, it is possible to create them in-house by using a good test maker.

Keep in mind that none of these personality tests are absolute, and each has a certain degree of error. At the end of the day they are best used as a reference when hiring, as well as for employees to understand their personality traits better and gain insights into potential personal growth areas.

Show More

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Back to top button