Personality Testing in The Workplace Pros and Cons According to HR Experts

Are you ready to learn more about the pros and cons of personality testing in the workplace and whether or not this type of assessment will be beneficial for your company’s hiring process?

We have interviewed dozens of HR professionals to bring unbiased and comprehensive data to you.

If so, you’ve come to the right place. In our latest guide on employment personality tests, we have talked about various personality tests, why companies use them, and whether or not they might be beneficial for you.

Today, we are going to talk more about personality tests in the way of pros and cons. If you missed a previous blog post, be sure to visit back with them before moving on. There’s a great deal of information you might want to consider before deciding whether or not to add personality testing to your current hiring procedure.

Here, you will find several advantages you will benefit from when implementing personality testing into your overall hiring process, especially if you choose to have the candidate do the testing before an interview takes place.

You will also learn more about the downsides of personality assessments and what you should pay more attention to when choosing the ideal one.

Here’s a quick overview of the pros of personality testing in the workplace:

  1. Gaining a deeper insight into the candidate’s core values and preferences
  2. Personality tests can also benefit the candidates
  3. Improving the company culture and employee productivity
  4. More effective interview process
  5. Consistent hiring

And here are the cons:

  1. Costs
  2. Time-consuming
  3. Candidates can lie
  4. Not all tests are suitable for all situations

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Why do personality testing in the workplace?

Having a candidate do a personality test before the interview is a great way to be more specific during the meeting. You’ll be able to understand their soft skills and behavior better. Then, you can tailor the questions during the meeting to their overall characteristics.

The same can be said for your current employees. If you have decided to start implementing personality testing in your hiring process, you should determine the personality of your current employees.

This will help you understand their essential characteristics and match the new candidates accordingly to create functional and effective teams.

There are significant pros and cons when it comes to personality testing that shouldn’t be taken lightly.

When deciding whether to use this pre-employment method and which one, you should dig deep and consult the HR experts at the end.

Here we will list the most important pros and cons we have gathered by interviewing HR experts from various industries.

Pros of personality testing

Gaining a deeper insight into the candidate’s core values and preferences

Understanding the values and preferences of candidates is difficult. You don’t know them well, and it will take time before you begin to understand these factors. However, with a personality assessment, you can get a better idea of their values and motives.

Interviewing candidates can give you a good idea of how they might fit into your overall company’s culture, as well as what type of worker they are. However, a personality test can give you a little deeper look into their work styles, skills, and abilities. You’ll be able to understand better what they can offer you as an employee.

Personality tests can also benefit the candidates

As we mentioned in our guide on pre-employment personality assessments, personality tests can also help candidates, whether they get the job or not.

Understanding their personality traits and characteristics is a great way to promote self-awareness.

Sometimes, our weaknesses hold us back. However, if we understand that it is due to our personality, we can learn to cope with these weaknesses and turn them into strengths. Realizing that your personality is a big part of who you are and how you interact is critical in the workforce setting.

Improving the company culture and employee productivity

Your overall goal as a recruiter is to find top talent and enhance the culture of your company through employee satisfaction and productivity. Using a personality test to do just this is a great way to make sure you can improve your overall culture and keep employees happy.

More effective interview process

Good pre-employment personality tests can help you determine the right questions to ask each candidate or, to put it simply: they will allow you to easily create a personalized interview experience for each candidate based on the data from the tests.

They can also help you write off the candidates that don’t have the needed traits for a specific position. That way, you won’t waste time interviewing inadequate candidates.

These tests can also help you be more objective, as you won’t rush to judge good candidates that display the right skills and personality traits for the job position just because they got anxious and scared during the interview.

This holds especially when hiring introverts.

Consistent hiring

Consistency is vital in hiring, and personality assessments can help recruiters hire the right individuals time over timer over time.

This can improve the whole organization, company culture, employer brand and make the employees more satisfied and productive in the long run.

Candidates lie, and that’s a fact. Everyone does.

The good thing about personality assessments is that they show you what candidates might actually do and how they might actually perform, instead of what they have said to you during the interview.

Maybe the candidate is great at what they do, but they have low emotional intelligence or anger issues, which can harm the overall team and ruin their happiness and make them resent the workspace.

While you can’t figure that out from the interview, you can see it in the personality assessment.

Cons of personality testing

Of course, there are also disadvantages to personality assessments. Below, you will find what they are.

Costs

Personality tests can be pretty expensive if purchasing a system to help you find results. Frequently, smaller companies cannot find room in the budget to buy the software.

Candidates can lie

Sometimes, questions can be answered in the wrong way. Because this discredits the test, it might be challenging to weed out those who are not responding honestly. Some applicants might choose the answer they feel will be most pleasing for the interviewer.

There will be many candidates that do honestly answer test questions. However, that might not mean that they are a good fit for the available position. This is why using a personality test only to gauge the value of a candidate could be a bad idea.

Time-consuming

Some of the most popular assessment tests are very time-consuming. Because of the effort it takes to complete all of the questions; some applicants might opt to move forward in the application process.

Not all tests are suitable for all situations

Not all personality tests are suitable for hiring, and even those that are, aren’t suitable for all companies.

In our guide on employment personality tests, we have gone over most 8 common personality tests used by employers:

  1. DIY tailored questionnaires – This consists of you creating your own test by asking the questions you find important. However, if you aren’t skilled and ask the wrong questions, you will get false or biased insights.
  2. HEXACO – Hexaco measures six different personality dimensions, but it is very long and time-consuming.
  3. 16 Personalities – while used very often in hiring, this is not the most suitable pre-employment personality assessment, as employees can easily lie to get the desired outcome. If they are honest, it can help you learn how they might behave in certain situations and interact with the other team members.
  4. SHL/OPQ32 – this is an assessment more suitable for hiring, and it allows you to compare candidates against each other.
  5. Predictive Index Behavioral Assessment – This test evaluates the cognitive abilities and behavioral tendencies of employees.
  6. DISC – This test is overused in hiring, but it is not suitable for candidate evaluation, but more as a temperament test. That being said, it can give you an insight into overall personality traits but can’t compare candidates against each other.
  7. The Caliper Profile – This is an excellent pre-employment assessment as it reveals the skills of a candidate within a workforce. It helps you determine what drives candidates in careers and find the best roles for them based on the assessment results.
  8. MBTI – This is probably the most popular and well-known personality test; however, it is well stated on their website that this is not a suitable assessment for hiring decisions.

Conclusion

Personality Testing in The Workplace Pros and Cons

As you can see, there are many advantages and disadvantages of using a personality test to help you with the hiring process.

Take time to consider every point.

Hopefully, you can make the right decision for you and your company; between this article and the information you’ll find in our previous blog posts you can make the right decision for you and your company.

If you’ve learned anything, be sure to remember that personality tests should not be used as the only tool in your procedure. It should be a supplemental way to get a better idea of behavior and personality.

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More useful resources:

Employee onboarding guide

Candidate experience guide

Building an effective recruitment plan

 

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