HR and talent leaders comparing a pre employment personality test need to determine more than whether the product measures personality. They need to know whether the vendor can support its claims, whether the reports will help managers make better decisions, and whether the assessment can be implemented consistently within their hiring process.
Recruiters already have plenty of information. The harder problem is deciding which signals deserve attention, especially as resumes become more polished without necessarily becoming more informative. According to Kelly Services, 79% of job seekers now use AI for tasks such as building resumes and writing cover letters, which means the resume itself is telling recruiters less than it used to about how someone actually works.
A resume can still tell you where someone worked. It doesn’t tell you how well they performed, how they approached the work, or whether they can handle the demands of the next role. A useful personality assessment should help the recruiter prioritize, give the hiring manager a clearer interview plan, and show where uncertainty still remains.
Clarify what the assessment needs to improve
Before comparing vendors, identify the hiring outcome the organization wants to improve.
The more specific the problem, the easier it will be to evaluate the vendor’s recommendation. That might mean reducing early turnover in a particular role, creating more consistency across hiring managers, improving the performance of new hires, or reducing the time recruiters spend on candidates who are unlikely to qualify.
A broad goal such as “we want to make better hires” is still a reasonable starting point. What matters is how the vendor responds. A good vendor should ask what “better” means for the organization, how success and failure show up in the role, and what is distinctive about the work environment, expectations, or hiring process. Those questions help turn a general concern into a problem the assessment can realistically address.
For a deeper explanation of why personality assessments should be tied to the organization’s definition of success, read Why Personality Assessments for Hiring Should Start With Success.
The three questions that actually separate vendors
Buyers can spend an hour comparing trait libraries, dashboards, and integrations without learning whether a product will improve a hiring decision. The answers to these three questions tend to look very different depending on whether a vendor is diagnosing your problem or matching your job title to a template they already have.
1. How do you determine what success requires and how the assessment should support the decision?
Ask the vendor to walk through how they get from your hiring challenge to a clear approach for evaluating candidates, and how the assessment will actually factor into decisions once it’s in place. Who’s involved, what do you need to provide, and how long does it typically take?
The answer should tell you whether the vendor is defining what success requires for your organization, or just assigning a standard profile to a job title. Not every situation needs a lengthy engagement or a local validation study, but you should walk away understanding how the approach was built and what it’s meant to improve.
2. What evidence can you provide for this use?
Don’t stop at “the assessment is validated” or “bias-free.” Both sound reassuring and tell you almost nothing on their own. Ask what the assessment measures, how reliably, which jobs and populations were included in the research, whether subgroup differences and adverse impact were evaluated, and what the evidence actually supports versus where it falls short.
A personality measure can be reliable and still be the wrong tool for your specific job or purpose. Treat “validated” and “bias-free” as the start of a conversation, not the end of one, and ask how the vendor helps you review your own results after launch.
3. How will the results help our hiring team decide what to do next?
This is where you find out whether the vendor is delivering scores or delivering a decision-making tool.
Ask what the recruiter should focus on, what the hiring manager should dig into further, how scores should inform rather than dictate the call, what interview guidance comes with the report, what training managers receive, how it fits into your existing process, and how the vendor helps you review results over time. If a vendor can explain the report but can’t explain what a manager should do differently because of it, the report is not doing its job.
Verify what “customized” changes
“Customized” can describe anything from changing report terminology to conducting a detailed study of the organization’s roles.
Ask the vendor to identify exactly what will be different for your organization:
- The traits or competencies being measured
- The scoring or recommended ranges
- The language used in reports
- The interview guidance
- The assessment workflow
- The validation evidence
- The ongoing review process
Customization only matters when it improves relevance or usability. A different logo, a relabeled report, or a job-title template swapped in for yours is configuration, not a more appropriate assessment. The goal is not to build every solution from scratch. It is to know which parts were genuinely adapted, why, and what that adaptation is actually worth to you.
Look at the report before you buy
Many assessment reports hand the hiring manager a set of scores and leave the hardest work unfinished: deciding which result matters, how much weight to give it, and what to ask next.
Some reports may lean on psychological terminology the hiring team never uses day to day, or describe traits in the publisher’s language instead of the organization’s. A hiring report should not require a certification course before a manager can use it.
Ask to see a sample report during the demo. Then hand it to a hiring manager who was not part of evaluating the vendor and see whether they can tell what the result means, what it does not mean, why the trait matters for the job, where risk might remain, what to ask the candidate next, and how the result should factor into the broader decision. A guided demo shows how well the vendor can explain a report. Handing it to someone uninvolved shows whether the report can explain itself.
What happens when a manager disagrees
The first real test of an assessment usually arrives when its results raise a concern about a candidate the hiring manager already wants to hire. This is also where vendor relationships quietly break down, not because the assessment was wrong, but because nobody prepared the manager for what to do when it conflicted with their gut.
It’s common for managers to expect a tool to hand them a clear, black-and-white decision. That expectation is understandable, but, unfortunately, it’s also the wrong one. A personality assessment is one source of evidence, not a verdict.
A useful vendor explains what a result means without treating it as automatic, shows why a concern might matter, and gives the manager something specific to ask the candidate to resolve it. During the buying process, ask how the vendor prepares managers for a result that conflicts with the interview, a candidate who scores outside the preferred range, or a report that flags risk without a clear reason to reject someone.
The assessment shouldn’t make the hire, and a manager shouldn’t wave off a result just because it conflicts with a first impression. The strongest vendors help build a consistent way to work through that tension instead of leaving each manager to sort it out alone.
Evaluate the implementation process
A strong assessment can still fail if implementation is unclear or heavier than advertised.
Ask the vendor to walk through what your organization needs to do before launch: which stakeholders need to participate, what job and performance information you need to provide, whether incumbent or employee data will be collected, how long setup usually takes, what the vendor owns versus what you own, how candidates receive the assessment, how results reach recruiters and managers, what integrations exist, and how managers get trained.
Push for specifics here. “Easy to implement” often means the software itself activates quickly. It does not necessarily mean the assessment has been configured for your roles, that managers are actually prepared to use it, or that the workflow has been tested with real candidates moving through it.
Check whether the assessment fits your hiring workflow
An assessment should support the hiring process, not become a parallel process managers quietly stop using.
Ask where the assessment typically sits in the funnel and why. That answer should depend on your applicant volume, recruiter capacity, the cost and length of the assessment, the role’s minimum qualifications, the outcome you’re trying to improve, candidate drop-off risk, and how much information you need before an interview. A high-volume employer might screen for eligibility first and add personality testing second. Another organization might use it before a recruiter spends time on a call. There is no universally correct stage, but there is a correct answer for your workflow, and the vendor should help you land on one and apply it consistently.
Also ask how the assessment connects to your applicant tracking system. Recruiters and managers are far less likely to use results consistently if they have to jump between systems or manually match a report to a candidate.
Ask what happens after launch
Selection does not end when the product goes live. Roles change, applicant pools shift, and managers sometimes use an assessment differently than intended once it’s actually in their hands.
Ask what ongoing support looks like: usage reviews, manager training, help interpreting reports, workflow adjustments, analysis of post-hire outcomes, review of subgroup differences, recalibration when a role changes, and local validation studies once enough data exists.
What’s easiest to overlook
Of everything on this list, implementation and post-launch review are the two categories buyers most often give the least attention, and it’s not hard to see why. Neither one shows up in a first demo. A trait library and a sample report are easy to evaluate in an hour. What happens six weeks after launch, whether managers actually use the interview guidance, whether the workflow holds up once real candidates are moving through it, is much harder to picture before you’ve bought the product.
That’s exactly why it deserves more scrutiny during the buying process, not less. The vendor relationships that go sideways rarely fail because the assessment measured the wrong traits. They fail because nobody planned for the operational and change-management work required to actually get value out of it. Ask the vendor to be concrete about what the first ninety days look like, who is responsible for what, and what they do when a manager stops using the tool the way it was intended.
How HighMatch approaches a personality assessment
These are also the questions HighMatch expects buyers to ask.
HighMatch’s I/O psychologists work with employers to understand the hiring problem, examine the roles and working environment, and identify the characteristics relevant to the decisions the organization needs to make. Results are presented in language hiring teams can understand, with interview questions and practical guidance managers can use.
HighMatch also works with clients after implementation to review results, evaluate how the assessment is being used, and make adjustments when necessary. For organizations that need additional evidence and have the required data, HighMatch can conduct local validation studies examining relationships between assessment results and outcomes such as performance, retention, and training success.
For Spot Inc., HighMatch identified the sales traits associated with longer tenure and stronger performance, contributing to a 47% reduction in turnover. In a separate study with a national telecommunications company, HighMatch identified which service technicians were most likely to stay and succeed in the role, helping the organization save $5.8 million.
Frequently asked questions
Employers can use personality tests in hiring, but the assessment and its use must comply with applicable employment laws. The EEOC advises employers to use properly validated, job-related selection procedures and to examine whether those procedures disproportionately exclude members of protected groups. Employers should consult qualified legal counsel regarding their specific hiring practices and obligations.
Candidates may be able to identify the preferred response when a question has an obvious good and bad answer. Better-designed assessments ask candidates to choose between two equally positive statements, making the preferred response less obvious and encouraging a more genuine answer. No personality test should be described as impossible to influence. Ask vendors what design methods, response checks, and interpretation safeguards they use.
It depends on your role, applicant volume, recruiter capacity, candidate experience, and the problem you’re trying to solve. A high-volume employer might screen for eligibility first and add personality testing second. Another organization might use it before a recruiter spends time on a call.
It depends on your role, applicant volume, recruiter capacity, candidate experience, and the problem you’re trying to solve. A high-volume employer might screen for eligibility first and add personality testing second. Another organization might use it before a recruiter spends time on a call.
There’s no universal schedule, but review it when the role, applicant population, business priorities, or performance expectations change, or when hiring outcomes stop improving, managers stop using the reports consistently, or subgroup differences raise a concern.
See how HighMatch evaluates your hiring needs
See how HighMatch determines which personality traits matter for your roles, supports implementation, and turns assessment results into practical hiring guidance.
