Top 10 Personality Tests for Employment and Their Benefits

Beyond resumes and interviews, understanding a candidate at their core is key to uncovering their true potential and fit for the role.

Employers are constantly seeking innovative tools to make recruitment more effective and accurate. One such tool is the personality test for employment, a method that has proven to enhance hiring processes and strengthen workforce management. By understanding an applicant’s traits, behavior, and work style, employers can better assess job fit, improve employee retention, and foster a productive workplace culture.

This article will explore the importance of personality tests for employment and provide a comprehensive list of personality tests to help you streamline your hiring process.

The Importance of Personality Tests for Employment

Personality tests are valuable tools in the hiring process, providing insights beyond traditional interviews. Here's why they are crucial for making informed employment decisions:

1. Improved Recruitment Accuracy: Assess traits like teamwork, communication, and problem-solving to ensure a better role fit.
2. Promoting Fairness and Diversity: Objective assessments reduce unconscious bias and focus on skills and personality.
3. Supporting Growth: Identify strengths and weaknesses to create tailored training and development plans.
4. Reducing Turnover: Aligning roles with personalities boosts satisfaction and retention, saving costs.
5. Spotting Leadership Potential: Assessments identify traits like communication and empathy for future leaders.
6. Enhancing Teamwork: Understand personality dynamics to improve collaboration and conflict resolution.
7. Increasing Self-Awareness: Insights into strengths and behaviors foster personal and professional growth.

List of Personality Tests for Employment

To help you select the right assessment tool for your hiring needs, we’ve compiled 10 popular personality tests commonly used in the workplace.

1. The Big Five Personality Traits (OCEAN)

The Big Five personality traits (OCEAN) have become a leading model for describing the core elements of personality. It evaluates individuals based on five core dimensions, offering insights into their behaviors, preferences, and potential role fit.

Openness to Experience reflects creativity, curiosity, and receptiveness to new ideas, with high scorers being imaginative and low scorers favoring routine. Conscientiousness measures organization, reliability, and discipline, where highly conscientious individuals are dependable, and lower scorers thrive in flexible environments.

Extraversion assesses sociability and energy, with extroverts excelling in group settings and introverts preferring independent tasks. Agreeableness evaluates compassion and cooperation, as high scorers prioritize harmony, while lower scorers lean toward competitiveness. Lastly, Neuroticism measures emotional stability and stress tolerance, with low scores indicating calmness and high scores reflecting sensitivity to stress.

Benefits:

• Well-researched model and used across many cultures.
• Helps understand how people are different and why people act in certain ways.
• Can be useful for things like building teams and predicting success in jobs or school.

Limitations:

• Might be too simple and miss some of the unique things about each person.
• Might not be useful in every situation, like in therapy.
• Might be biased towards some cultures.
• Relies on people describing themselves honestly, which is not always accurate.

2. DISC Assessment

The DISC assessment is a tool used to understand how people behave and communicate. It sorts individuals into four main personality types.

Dominant (D) people are focused on achieving results and goals. Influential (I) individuals are social butterflies who enjoy persuading others and are generally enthusiastic. Steady (S) personalities are patient, calm, and reliable. Conscientious (C) individuals are detail-oriented, organized, and analytical.

Benefits:

• Provides a more complete picture of a candidate's personality, work style, and potential team fit.
• Helps build teams with diverse personalities that work well together.
• Allows recruiters to ask targeted questions based on the candidate's personality.
• Provides a more objective way to evaluate candidates, promoting fairness and diversity.
• Can be used for employee development, helping employees understand strengths and weaknesses.

Limitations:

• Cannot perfectly predict job performance and may oversimplify human behavior.
• May not be accurate for people from different cultures.
• Candidates can try to manipulate results.
• Use in hiring raises privacy and potential discrimination issues.
• Implementing it can be expensive.

3. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)

The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator is one of the most popular personality tests available. Created by Katharine Briggs and Isabel Briggs Myers, it's inspired by the work of psychologist Carl Jung. The MBTI sorts people into 16 distinct personality types based on four key differences: how you gain energy (extraversion vs. introversion), how you gather information (sensing vs. intuition), how you make decisions (thinking vs. feeling), and how you approach the outside world (judging vs. perceiving).

Benefits:

• Uses simple terms to explain complex ideas about personality, making it easy to understand.
• Finds use in career selection, relationship improvement, and team building.
• Helps people learn about individual strengths, weaknesses, and preferences.

Limitations:

• May produce different results upon retaking, and descriptions are often vague and flattering.
• Oversimplifies personality by putting people into strict categories, while people are more complex.
• Labeling people can lead to unfair judgments.

4. Belbin Team Roles

The Belbin Team Roles framework identifies nine specific roles individuals can assume in team settings, categorized into thought-oriented, action-oriented, and people-oriented roles. Developed by Meredith Belbin through a study at Henley Management College, this behavioral assessment highlights the strengths and weaknesses of team members to foster balanced and effective collaboration.

The nine roles include: Monitor Evaluator, Specialist, and Plant (thought-oriented roles) for analysis, expertise, and creativity; Shaper, Implementer, and Completer/Finisher (action-oriented roles) for driving tasks forward, ensuring structure, and delivering high-quality results; and Coordinator, Team Worker, and Resource Investigator (people-oriented roles) for fostering collaboration, maintaining harmony, and building external connections.

Benefits:

• Help identify individual strengths. This allows for better task assignment and increased productivity.
• Teams can use this to understand individual strengths and weaknesses. This understanding leads to better task allocation and improved performance.
• Facilitates a shared understanding within a team. It encourages appreciation of diverse contributions, leading to greater team cohesion.

Limitations:

• Sometimes oversimplify team dynamics. People often exhibit traits of multiple roles, and team roles can change over time.
• May not apply to all projects. Some projects require specialized skills not covered by the framework.
• Possible to limit flexibility in assigning roles. It relies on predefined roles that may not always align with individual strengths or project needs.
• Self-assessment in this framework can be biased. Individuals may not always have an accurate perception of their own strengths and weaknesses.

5. Keirsey Temperament Sorter

The Keirsey Temperament Sorter is a personality assessment tool that categorizes individuals into one of four core temperaments: Artisan, Guardian, Idealist, or Rational, with further classification into subcategories. Developed by Dr. David Keirsey, it's been widely used by individuals and organizations to gain insights into personality and behavior.

Benefits:

• Provides a comprehensive understanding of personality preferences and tendencies.
• Delivers a detailed report that can be downloaded and printed for future reference.
• Has a long-standing reputation and credibility in the field of personality assessment.

Limitations:

• Career recommendations provided by the assessment may be somewhat generic and limited.
• Lacks interactive elements and notable features found in some modern personality tests.

6. Predictive Index (PI) Behavioral Assessment

The PI Behavioral Assessment is a tool used to evaluate workplace behaviors by measuring four key dimensions: Dominance, Extraversion, Patience, and Formality. This assessment helps organizations understand how individuals might interact in a work setting and contribute to a team.

Benefits:

• Easy to use and understand.
• A practical tool that can help with hiring and building teams.
• Known for being fast and efficient, so you get results quickly.
• Often more affordable than other options.
• Focuses on workplace behaviors and avoids asking personal questions.

Limitations:

• Povides a basic overview of personality and doesn't go very deep.
• Not as useful for personal development or improving team relationships.
• May lead to stereotyping people based on their results.

7. CliftonStrengths

CliftonStrengths is a personality assessment tool developed by Gallup that helps individuals identify their top talent themes or areas of natural strength. It is based on the philosophy that people excel when they focus on developing their strengths rather than fixing their weaknesses. The assessment involves answering a series of questions about one's preferences and tendencies, resulting in a personalized report outlining the individual's unique strengths profile.

Benefits:

• Provides personalized insights into your natural talents and potential.
• Offers actionable items and feedback to help you leverage your strengths.
• Caters to various individuals, including students, professionals, and organizations.

Limitations:

• The full report can be expensive for individual users.
• Does not directly provide specific career matches or recommendations.

8. 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF)

The 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) is a psychometric assessment developed by Dr. Raymond Cattell in 1949. It evaluates 16 distinct personality traits to predict behavior, workplace performance, and interpersonal interactions. This tool is often used in recruitment to assess team fit, communication styles, and overall compatibility with organizational culture.

Benefits:

• Provides objective data to support hiring decisions, making them easier to justify.
• Increases candidate self-awareness regarding their workplace strengths and weaknesses.
• Helps narrow down the candidate pool by providing insights into personality traits.
• Allows for a more informed interview process by providing prior knowledge of the candidate.
• Supports building a desired workplace culture by identifying candidates with aligned traits.
• Facilitates hiring for team fit by identifying personalities that complement the existing team dynamics.

Limitations:

• May not be a strong predictor of job performance when used as the sole assessment tool.
• Results can be unreliable due to candidates potentially manipulating their answers.

9. Enneagram

The Enneagram categorizes individuals into nine personality types based on their core motivations, fears, and desires. It serves as a tool for personal and interpersonal understanding, making it particularly useful in workplace settings.

Benefits:

• Can provide recruiters with insights into a candidate's motivations and personality traits, leading to better hiring decisions.
• Can promote self-awareness in candidates by highlighting their strengths and weaknesses.

Limitations:

• The test results can be influenced by a candidate's self-perception, potentially leading to inaccurate assessments.
• Has limited scientific backing, raising concerns about its reliability.
• Reducing individuals to one of nine personality types can be an oversimplification of human complexity.

10. HEXACO Personality Inventory

The HEXACO Personality Inventory expands upon the Big Five model by introducing a sixth dimension: Honesty-Humility. This dimension assesses traits like integrity, sincerity, and ethical behavior, offering a more comprehensive evaluation of personality.

Benefits:

• Improves hiring by matching candidates to jobs and reducing bias.
• Teamwork is enhanced through the creation of teams with complementary personalities and by promoting conflict resolution.
• HR professionals can identify and develop future leaders.
• Employees benefit from personalized training and development opportunities based on their individual profiles.

Limitations:

• Ethical use of this test requires fairness, transparency, and protection of privacy.
• Cultural variations must be considered when interpreting the results.
• May not capture all aspects of personality and is susceptible to response bias.

Empower Your Hiring Process With Personality Test

Personality tests for employment offer a proven, data-driven way to identify the right candidates, foster growth, and enhance team dynamics. By choosing the right test and integrating it thoughtfully into your hiring process, you can build a more productive, satisfied, and aligned workforce.

Start exploring personality assessments to make smarter, more confident hiring decisions and unlock the true potential of your employees. Your team’s success begins with understanding who they are and how they work best.

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