HighMatch Guides

What is a work personality assessment?

Personality assessments are used to evaluate an individual’s personality traits and behaviors. These assessments are often included as part of a larger pre-employment assessment to assess how likely an individual is to succeed in an organization.

The following guide will explore the benefits of personality assessments, how they work, potential use cases, and some commonly measured traits.

Benefits of personality assessments

• Reduced turnover
• Better hiring decisions
• Increased employee engagement
• Lower training and replacement costs

How personality assessments work

An employment personality test works by providing a series of statements about thoughts, feelings, or behaviors to the individual being evaluated. The individual then chooses how strongly they identify with each of these statements. The responses are then measured; the result is a list of traits and the degree to which those traits are present in the individual.

A work personality assessment does not provide a comprehensive view of an individual. Personality assessments should not be used as the sole basis for making decisions about an individual. Additionally, a work personality assessment should only be written by trained psychologists who understand the limitations and potential bias of a personality assessment.

Use cases for personality assessments

• Reduce turnover: Personality assessments help identify candidates whose innate traits are a good match for the position. This results in employees that stay longer and perform better.
• Improve hiring efficiency: For high volume jobs with many applicants, assessment test results can be used early in the process to filter out poor-fit candidates, freeing up recruiters to focus on candidates with the highest potential.
• Avoid costly hiring mistakes: Hiring the wrong employee can result in a significant amount of training, replacement, and error correction costs. Using pre-hire testing reduces the number of hiring mistakes which saves your organization money.
• Raise red flags early: Candidates often present the best version of themselves, making it difficult to assess risk factors. Assessment tests identify where and how much a candidate may struggle on the job.
• Increase productivity: Assessments outline where a candidate will naturally excel and where they may require extra support. Managers can use this information to get new hires up to speed faster and develop them further.

Commonly measured personality traits

• Assertiveness
• Collaboration
• Competitiveness
• Leadership
• Reliability
• Independence
• Rule-consciousness

Summary

A work personality assessment is a helpful tool for evaluating an individual’s personality traits or behaviors. These assessments can help inform hiring decisions, reduce turnover, and improve hiring efficiency. In order to get a comprehensive view of a candidate, personality assessments should be used alongside other tools or assessments.

Pre-Employment Testing Buyer’s Guide

With all of the assessment platforms out there, it can be difficult to suss out which one is the best fit for your organization.

Learn what you should consider when evaluating assessment vendors with our Buyer’s Guide.

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