What is a personality assessment?
A personality assessment identifies a person’s primary personality traits through a series of self-reported questions, third-party observation or interviews. Assessing an employee’s personality type can help identify their strengths and weaknesses and provide insight into how to improve their personal and professional skills. Employees also like understanding their qualities and traits and how colleagues and managers perceive them.
How HR teams can use personality assessments
HR departments can use personality assessments in the workplace in a few ways. If your company is considering adopting a personality assessment, consider how you can use them:
Inform hiring decisions
Personality assessments can be carried out while interviewing a candidate for an open position. During an interview, the primary aim is to gather as much information as possible by using probing questions. Hiring managers can assess a candidate’s personality type based on how they answer the questions. These are most helpful if the interviewer uses a standardized scoring system to compare candidates.
Learning and development
Many organizations invest in employee development to help develop talent and retain employees. Many professionals seek training and development opportunities where they work to grow professionally. Personality assessments can provide valuable insights into an individual’s behavioural patterns, strengths and areas for improvement to help them learn about themselves. Assessments can provide leadership with the information necessary to create personalized training, development and self-coaching programs.
Career progression
Employers and HR departments can use personality assessments to help talented employees progress to new roles within the company. Assessment results offer employees insights into how their personality traits can be leveraged to set development goals each year. Each employee has unique skills and strengths which can be developed for specific roles. Professionals who wish to earn a promotion can participate in training courses or mentoring opportunities to help prepare them for a management role or a position on the leadership team.
Professional development
Personality tests are diagnostic tools that can help promote personal and professional growth. Test results can highlight strengths and areas for development and offer pathways to greater self-awareness and self-improvement. This process creates a feedback loop where individuals learn about themselves, apply this knowledge to professional development, and continue to develop and grow throughout their careers.
Four personality assessment ideas to develop talented employees
HR departments can assess employee personality traits in several ways to help develop talent and create a personality assessment inventory. Below are four types of personality assessments used by HR departments, with an example of each:
1. Self-assessments
Self-assessments are reports or questionnaires that employees can complete and often score themselves. They come in many formats, often as a scale where they are asked to rank how closely each question describes their thoughts, feelings or behaviours.
These assessments are easy to implement and cost-effective for companies, and they can provide helpful insight into behaviour. An example of a self-assessment personality test is the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). The MBTI model expands on Carl Jung’s archetypal personality descriptions and has created a methodology to assess each test-taker and place them in a combination of various personality brackets. The model assigns personality traits based on the answers to ‘either/or’ questions, and each of the sixteen possible results is designated with a 4-letter acronym based on extroversion or introversion (E or I), sensing or intuition (S or N), thinking or feeling (T or F), and judging or perceiving (J or P).
2. Behavioural observation
Another method of personality assessment often used on the job is behavioural observation. This method entails someone observing and documenting a person’s behaviour while they work. This method requires a dedicated and trained staff member to observe each employee and record their findings, which can be resource-heavy and expensive. For some companies, this method can be effectively used alongside self-assessments to provide an external glimpse at behaviour and determine if observations match the self-assessment. An example of behavioural observation can be an HR manager shadowing an employee while they work.
3. Interviews
HR departments can conduct workplace interviews to determine an individual’s personality type. The interviews aim to gather as much information as possible using probing questions. Responses to these questions are best recorded and scored based on a standardized system to create an unbiased observation. An example of conducting interviews to assess personality is widely used when evaluating a candidate for a job and comparing them to other candidates.
4. Projective tests
These tests are used less often in the workplace as they are difficult to score due to their interpretive nature. Depending on the industry and job description, these tests can still provide insight into a person’s psychology and way of thinking. Individuals are presented with an abstract or vague object, task or activity which requires them to describe what they see. The test is intended to evaluate an individual’s first impression and reaction to what they observe. An example of a projective test is the Rorschach inkblot test. The test consists of 10 symmetrical abstract inkblot images where the test-taker is asked to state what they see. These slides are shown in the same order to help compare the responses of various individuals.
Considerations when implementing personality assessments
While various methods of personality assessments can provide data about an employee, they are also subject to the test-taker not answering truthfully or adjusting their responses based on what they think the company wants to hear. When a third party applies assessments through observation or interviews, unconscious biases can lead to inaccurate assessments. Each method of personality assessment used may have a degree of inaccuracy that is best considered before implementing a practice within your HR department.
When applying a personality assessment in your organization, it is advisable to test various methods first to determine their usefulness and accuracy. Finding the most reliable personality assessment tool can help your company better develop training and career advancement opportunities for your talented employees.
