Use the professional personality test to find quality candidates
Can a professional personality test help you recruit the ideal candidates?
As a human resources manager or recruitment officer, you're interested in understanding the type of person you're dealing with.
You want to understand not only their knowledge and know-how (their business skills), but also their interpersonal skills. Indeed, interpersonal and behavioral skills can reveal the applicant's fit with the company's culture, as well as his or her ability to work within the future team.
Have you tried including personality tests in your recruitment process, to complete an application file or compare your applications?
What are the different types of test and their objectives? How do you read their results?
Why use a professional personality test?
In recruitment, to find the ideal candidate, professional personality tests are analytical tools designed to predict an individual's professional behavior with a certain degree of accuracy. They are essentially used to:
- 😊 assess relational qualities: how the person will behave with others, within a team → his/her potential for collaboration and rapid integration into your company ;
- ✊ detect motivations: what stimulates your candidate at work? Remuneration, security, the need for recognition or a good work-life balance? → his/her potential for investment in his/her missions;
- 👐 identify soft skills: depending on the position to be filled, various "soft skills" may be sought in your candidate, such as empathy, creativity, perseverance, all assets to be included in your recruit's portrait-robot ;
- 🧘♂️ understanding emotional management: in a pressurized professional context, what will be the applicant's ability to control his or her emotions or react to an urgent or conflictual situation?
💡 These tests enable you to decide between two candidates, when two profiles appear to be of equal quality. Over and above their similar skills and experience, assessing their personality at work can help you determine your choice by focusing on interpersonal skills.
[FOCUS] 4 popular professional personality tests
The Big Five or OCEAN test
🎯 Objective: the 5 personality factors test, also known by its acronym OCEAN, is well known in psychology. It is used to precisely define a person's character, according to the following dimensions:
- O for openness to experience
- C for conscientiousness
- E for extraversion
- A for agreeableness
- N for neuroticism
These aspects reveal the personality traits and, in particular, the strengths of the candidate. Derived from empirical psychological tests, this test offers a comprehensive approach and high reliability.
👉 In practice: a self-assessment questionnaire is proposed to the candidate, inviting him or her to choose the answer that most corresponds to his or her opinion, on a scale of values (from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree").
It presents statements such as "I trust others"; "I complete my tasks successfully"; "I'm ambitious" or "I tell the truth".
🔎 How to interpret it?
The result of this test is a personality score that places the individual on a scale for each of the five major personality traits.
You'll quickly appreciate whether he or she fits in with the company's culture. The results will be used more judiciously after a feedback interview, which will serve to qualify, invalidate or, on the contrary, confirm them.
The MBTI test ( Myers Briggs Type Indicator)
🎯 Objective: imported from the USA, this free personality test is also very comprehensive, with the aim of identifying a candidate's psychological dominants. It is mainly used for management positions involving decision-making and responsibility.
👉 In practice: this test exists in six different versions, with the number of questions on offer varying from 93 to 222. The person being tested can choose between two options, and selects the one that best suits his or her needs.
🔎 How to interpret it?
This test reveals 16 personality types based on two possible preferences in each of the following four aspects:
- energy orientation: extraversion or introversion ;
- information gathering: feeling or intuition ;
- decision-making: thinking or feeling;
- mode of action: judgment or perception.
Depending on the personality this test reveals, you can determine the candidate's affinity for the position and his or her potential for development within your company.
The PAPI ( Personality and Preference Inventory) test
🎯 Objective: widely used by recruiters in France, this test aims to assess an individual's behavior and motivations in the workplace, based on 10 needs and 10 professional roles.
👉 In practice: there are two types of test:
- the classic test, PAPI-I (ipsative, i.e. forced-choice), which consists of 90 pairs of statements related to the professional environment. The candidate chooses between two sentences, which are not necessarily related.
For example: 1) I make decisions very quickly or 2) I plan things carefully. - the normative test, PAPI-N (normative, i.e. with comparison of results with a standard population), which submits 126 statements to the candidate. Candidates place their answers on a scale of values, from "Strongly disagree" to "Strongly agree".
🔎 How to interpret it?
A graph is formed with 22 scales divided into seven major orientations:
- dynamism,
- professional awareness,
- authority and charisma,
- search for personal results,
- temperament,
- sociability,
- open-mindedness.
You are provided with an assessment of the candidate's needs and motivations (such as the need for support from superiors or belonging to a group), as well as behavioral preferences at work (such as planning, leadership, etc.).
After the test, the results can be analyzed with the candidate, to give him/her a chance to react and provide concrete examples based on real-life work situations.
The SOSIE test
🎯 Objective: the primary ambition of this test is to create the candidate's professional "look-alike": it provides information on an individual's personality, values and sources of motivation.
👉 In practice: the questionnaire consists of 98 items grouping 20 dimensions, themselves divided into three categories. During the test, the candidate chooses two answers from three or four statements: the one that corresponds most closely to him or her, and the one that is furthest removed from his or her personality.
🔎 How to interpret it ?
At the end of the test, a psychological profile emerges, highlighting nine personality traits and 12 values.
The strong points that emerge are presented in a balance sheet, which can be used as a basis for an interview to discuss the results with the candidate.
[BONUS] 6 tips for recruiting with a personality test
Tip 1: Use a candidate tracking tool
Using a dedicated application management tool helps you refine your recruitment process and make it more efficient.
With an Applicant Tracking System, you can avoid any loss of information, especially when your process involves many steps.
👉 Some examples of software :
- Bizneo ATS helps you optimize your candidate data management and develop an up-to-date talent database. In particular, you can record all results, feedback and opinions after an interview or personality test.
- DigitalRecruiters centralizes and manages your recruitment processes, while integrating personality tests via partners. This comprehensive ATS offers features such as multi-channel job posting and real-time candidate tracking, optimizing the selection and cultural fit of candidates with your company.
- monday.com HR is an open, flexible platform for centralizing and managing all your applications, once you've passed the tests. All your staff have access to centralized information and can make decisions as a team, simply and at a glance.
- Softy is more than just an ATS software package, as it goes beyond just managing applications. In fact, it natively integrates unlimited recruitment tests. These tests (around twenty in all) are divided into three categories: personality, cognitive and technical.
Tip 2: Put test results into perspective
Numerous external factors can interfere with, or even distort, the results of a personality test, such as the conditions in which it takes place or the candidate's subjective interpretation of the statements.
👉 Use the results with hindsight and a critical eye. Candidates are also subjective in their own judgments. You can check the consistency with other information received from the candidate, and keep in mind the importance of the results in relation to the position to be filled.
Our advice: centralize your application, the test documents, your notes and those of your colleagues, your comments on a profile, etc. in a recruitment software like Taleez. This gives you a 360° view of an application when evaluating a recruitment test.
Tip no. 3: value human interaction
If you've had qualitative exchanges, whether in interviews or on the phone, why not give them their full weight? Tried and tested and scientifically approved though they may be, tests are no substitute for human contact.
In fact, isn't your choice usually made before you decide to have a test carried out?
👉 During your exchanges, whether it's the debrief after a test or beforehand when you conduct your interview, demonstrate empathy and active listening yourself.
👉 To foster a real bond with a potential talent, even at a distance, it's important to be able to rely on a tool that really assists you and helps you make the right choices. Especially if that tool is one of the market leaders, like Zoho Recruit! Awarded for its ability to reduce the number of candidate drop-outs, this software demonstrates great value in setting up the best possible hiring process.
Tip 4: Don't overlook fair and inclusive skills testing
Fair and CV-free skills tests enable companies to assess candidates' skills objectively, without being influenced by their previous work experience or training.
With the same objective as personality tests, non-intrusive skills tests can also help companies identify hidden talents that might not be visible on a traditional CV.
☝️Ils help reduce bias in the recruitment process by focusing on candidates' skills and abilities, rather than subjective criteria such as age, gender or ethnic origin.
This is exactly what the People In platform enables you to do. A truly innovative and intuitive recruitment software, it offers a fairer and more inclusive method of pre-selecting candidates without resorting to CVs, thanks to ultra-personalized skills tests accessible directly from the job advert. The tests are 100% anonymous, designed by educational engineers and take the form of situational scenarios with 100% automated follow-up. What's more? The software can be connected to your existing ATS and offers all the basic functionalities, such as application management, address book and bulk e-mailing.
Tip 5: Believe in potential
A professional personality test sheds light on an individual's strengths and weaknesses. If the results reveal that expectations are not 100% fulfilled, this doesn't mean that the application shouldn't get your attention.
👉 Don't be afraid of atypical profiles. They may surprise you with their different backgrounds or singular personalities, but prove to be real driving forces bringing a fresh perspective to existing processes, or even a new source of motivation for the team.
Tip no. 6: opt for collaborative recruitment
Finally, as a recruiter, you can decide to involve other people in the process, whether they be other managers or future colleagues of the person aspiring to the position.
Whether for their expertise or their business vision, their participation will enable you to better appreciate the candidate.
👉 To facilitate this collaborative approach, a recruitment solution such as Flatchr allows you to centralize your applications on a single platform and give access to all stakeholders.
👉 Similarly, Recruitee enables you to manage all your recruitment in collaborative mode , and track the status of each application for several people.
In short, personality tests to manage career development
Also used internally, for professional assessment or mobility within the company, personality tests are proving to be interesting tools for monitoring employees and consequently for:
- 💪 reveal an individual's strong points, margins for progress or any difficulties encountered, as part of a skills assessment for example;
- 👭 test a person's compatibility with a new team during a transfer or professional mobility ;
- 🏅 take into account each person's individual values to plan personalized training;
- 🤝 accompany employees towards professional development, promotion, a position of greater responsibility, etc.
Do you have any other advice? How important are professional personality tests to you? Have you incorporated any into your recruitment process?
Article translated from French