Can Personality Tests Help Employers in the Recruitment and Hiring Process?
Personality tests have been used in the recruitment and hiring process for over one hundred years, beginning during the First World War, as a way to measure a potential army recruit’s ability to withstand stress.
In more recent times, personality tests have been used in the workplace to understand more about the interviewee. They can help understand a wide range of attributes, including a person’s values and ethics, what motivates them, their tolerance to change, their communication style, their ability to follow instructions, and their leadership qualities.
Personality tests have become more prevalent in the workplace in recent years. In fact, personality tests are expected to be a 6.5 billion dollar industry by 2027, and over 80% of Fortune 500 companies use personality tests when hiring. With so much focus on this recruitment and hiring method, it’s essential for employers to fully understand the pros and cons of personality testing before deciding whether to utilize them in recruitment efforts.
What are the pros of personality tests?
Hiring efficiency
Personality tests can speed up the hiring process in two significant ways. Firstly, by helping the hiring manager to understand how well someone will be able to perform their job duties and fit into the organization. Secondly, suppose you are hiring multiple people for similar roles, e.g. service staff, accountants, sales representatives, or office administrators. In that case, you may find that those who are successful in their positions have similar personality test scores. This data can help you to match future candidates against this score. However, it’s vital to weigh this up against the benefits of building a diverse workforce before sticking too closely to similar scores.
Employee retention
Knowing what motivates your employees can help you to reduce employee turnover and improve retention. This information can help managers, and HR teams better understand how to enhance the workplace, what benefits or rewards to offer, and how best to manage teams and individuals.
Improve productivity and team morale
Hiring candidates with the right skills and attitude for the job is critical to ensuring that you have a productive, happy workforce. Personality tests can help leaders and team members to understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses or areas for development. Forbes identified five key characteristics of teams that meet their goals, work well together, and are engaged in their work. These teams are often referred to as ‘high-performing teams’. The five characteristics are comprised of the following:
- Trust
- Clear communication
- Defined roles and responsibilities
- Engaged leaders
- Shared goals
Provides a different perspective
Personality tests can give hiring managers a new perspective on the candidate. Interviews can be nerve-wracking environments, and the potential employee may not make the best first impression. Utilizing the candidate’s CV alongside a personality test can help ensure you don’t overlook excellent candidates.
The cons of personality tests?
They can’t predict the future
Personality tests are only an indicator of certain traits. This does not always mean they are 100% accurate, and they should be one of many methods used to hire new employees. Recruiters should use personality tests alongside other skills assessments, which could include interviews, tests, or mock scenarios.
Relies on the data collected
Similar to job interviews, and depending on the test, some candidates may be inclined to answer what they think you want to see, not what is accurate. While it’s much harder to ‘trick’ a personality test vs an interviewer, this can lead to unusual or incorrect results. However, research suggests that candidates are more likely to answer truthfully on a personality test.
Test bias
When hiring skilled and unskilled workers from places such as India, Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, ensuring that any personality test you use has no western or cultural bias is crucial. Cultural bias means that the personality test contains questions that the candidate cannot easily understand based on their background.
It’s also important to remember that the test is an indicator only – it doesn’t determine skill or IQ. Therefore employers should avoid using the results to permanently ‘label’ their employees.
Overall, personality tests can provide invaluable insights into potential candidates. While they can be a powerful tool for Hiring Managers and Recruiters, it’s vital that they are used alongside other interview techniques and information from the applicant.
EduPloyment’s personality test is based on the Big Five personality traits. These five traits cover a candidate’s openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
EduPloyment tests asks candidates to rate themselves on a simple scale in relation to 40 key statements. For example, “I respect others”, “I enjoy thinking about things”, “I make people feel at ease”, or “I am the life of the party”.
In addition, the EduPloyment app is available in the candidate’s native language to ensure accurate understanding of the test for the candidate and reliable results for potential employers.
About EduPloyment
As a social impact enterprise, EduPloyment is a global online recruitment platform empowering skilled and unskilled staff with English and fair work, thereby uplifting them and their dependents into a lifetime of upskilling and employment.
We know that when an underprivileged person is educated, employed, and empowered, they will be uplifted from their current economic state. Their family members and dependents, which number seven on average, are also uplifted and have a better chance of breaking the cycle of economic struggle. EduPloyment’s purpose is to deliver this empowerment to every Candidate and perpetuate this ripple effect to their communities.
EduPloyment helps Candidates gain English language and soft skills and connects them directly with employers providing fair work, safe working environments, and fair pay.
For Employers, EduPloyment addresses recruitment challenges of time-consuming processes, Candidates not meeting job requirements, and expensive placement fees while providing a direct and tangible social impact.
Are you ready to be part of our community? Sign-up and accept the EduPloyment Pledge.
