While academic qualifications, job history, and professional certifications remain essential criteria for evaluating a candidate’s eligibility for a specific job, it is clear that they are no longer the sole determining factors. Today, employers are also focusing on a person’s intangible qualities, such as soft skills, personality traits, cultural sensitivity, and perspectives, which often hold equal, if not more, significance in predicting their ability to thrive in the role.
Even if a business employs the most competent and experienced individual in their respective field, it can be challenging to make progress if the company’s aspirations and the leadership’s goals do not align. This situation is akin to moving a star footballer like Cristiano Ronaldo from the forward position to the center of defence. The fundamental concern is that the personal, professional, and cultural objectives of both parties must be in sync to achieve common goals. The complexity increases significantly while managing remote employees.
Personality tests are gaining ground within these boundaries as these assessments offer sophisticated and comprehensive procedures to determine the ways in which a person’s characteristics and qualities may be displayed in a specific work environment.
First introduced in 1943 by Katherine Briggs and her daughter Isabel Myers, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) is a psychological assessment based on the principles of Carl Jung. This test has become the gold standard for evaluating an individual’s personality, and its continued use for over seventy-five years attests to its enduring relevance and effectiveness.
In today’s remote work culture, companies are understandably turning to personality assessments as a critical part of their hiring process. Personality evaluations offer valuable perspectives into a candidate’s abilities and can assist employers in making informed recruitment decisions.
Completing a personality test can enable you to streamline your options, conserving your efforts, reducing time and alleviating stress. If you intend to construct a quiz, you may wish to utilise a quiz-building platform like Paperform.
Teams with similar working styles can be formed with the assistance of the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator (MBTI). It can aid in identifying potential recruits that complement the company culture and are well-suited to the team. Nevertheless, the credibility of personality tests as a criterion for determining a candidate’s capabilities and suitability for a role is a subject of considerable debate. The controversy surrounding the dependability of such assessments has intensified as their use has become more prevalent. Ultimately, each company must evaluate whether these tests support or impede their ability to identify ideal candidates and understand the intricacies of human behaviour.
What Qualities of an Employee’s Character Does Your Company Value the Most?
To provide the most fitting responses to these inquiries, it is imperative to evaluate the needs, goals, and values of your company. Doing so enables the identification of the critical attributes that a candidate should possess. The reliability of a personality test in uncovering these characteristics varies based on the type of evaluation deployed.
Does your company operate under tight deadlines that necessitate delivering high-quality outcomes promptly? If so, an aptitude test that evaluates an individual’s capabilities for efficient time management and stress tolerance should be conducted.
Our aim is to recruit team players who can make valuable long-term contributions to our company by conducting staff training or acquiring new customers through in-person interaction. The evaluation should extend to real-life scenarios, assessing the candidate’s openness, sociability, cooperativeness, flexibility, and empathy towards the needs and emotions of others.
Are you seeking a multi-skilled employee? Employing an evaluation that explores various aspects of a person’s cognitive abilities is necessary.
What is the Mechanism Behind these Personality Tests?
The Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator categorises an individual’s behaviours, thoughts, and traits into four major classifications. These classifications exhibit strong correlations with the Big Five personality characteristics, including extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. Answering the Myers-Briggs assessment can provide insights into the individual’s dominant personality type among sixteen distinct character types.
Taking a “personality test selfie” is akin to a public display of your inner self. The Myers-Briggs personality assessment employs four sets of opposing attributes to paint a portrait of your personality. Each question is designed to enable you to determine which of the two traits is more dominant among the given options.
Expressing oneself accurately can be challenging when presented with a wide spectrum of options. During the hiring process, personality tests that require individuals to imagine hypothetical scenarios and select from a few possible answers are often utilised. However, it can be difficult to choose the response that most closely reflects one’s personality when presented with three or more potential answers.
Some personality evaluations address this issue by offering two options – one that is more representative and another that is more challenging. This approach aims to assist in recognising one’s unique attributes without being overly precise.
If the presented options do not accurately reflect the situation, prospective employees might become displeased with this method. In reality, the answer deemed most accurate might fall short of the truth. Additionally, the least probable option may well have crossed the minds of those involved more than once.
The creator of the Myers-Briggs personality assessment may not have access to all the answers since they are too complex and concealed. Direct conversation and thought-provoking questions that go beyond the queries found in personality questionnaires may shed more light on an obscure image.
Challenges Faced in Personality Evaluations
The Information They Provide May Not Be Dependable
When dealing with the intricacies of human interactions, generic solutions may not be adequate to address all conceivable scenarios and ramifications of a sensitive situation. Intricate issues necessitate thoughtful solutions, and it may not always be reasonable to simulate real-life situations with a computerised test and predetermined responses. This could restrict potential candidates from demonstrating their skills and competencies fully.
Employees may feel that their individuality is not just suppressed but also actively discouraged, a scenario that most people would not consider a job perk.
Identification with One’s Own Personality
One of the most common criticisms of personality assessments is the use of questions that attempt to assess the individual’s own character. For instance, some evaluations may request the candidate to rank from one to three their strongest, weakest, and median traits.
On one hand, presenting oneself as a highly creative, emotionally attuned, and enjoyable personality can be beneficial. However, on the other hand, representing oneself as a preoccupied, sluggish, and procrastinating individual may create an unfavourable impression on potential employers and could be deemed as a potential risk.
It is not feasible to provide a more detailed response that would illuminate one’s personality and the added value they could bring to the position. It is impossible to justify how tardiness is one’s most prominent challenge; at the same time, asserting that self-awareness is one’s most potent attribute that drives them to improve.
There is no need to be concerned about being viewed as a sinister character or having one’s actions scrutinised like in a psychological thriller when using this technique. The majority of personality assessments merely attempt to classify individuals into general categories, although some are more detailed in their methodology.
Both have advantages and drawbacks that become more evident at various stages of the recruitment process.
Altering Results, Both Good and Bad
It is highly probable that one can sway the outcome of a job application. By acquainting oneself with the job description and the organisation in question, it is not arduous to ascertain the most promising responses. The difficulty level of any personality tests that may be part of the application process is determined by how broad their scope is.
It is crucial to emphasise that altering results is not inherently unethical. Creating a study guide for an exam can be compared to developing a strategy; contemplating potential questions and devising solutions can be advantageous in enhancing one’s comprehension.
The same reasoning can be applied to evaluating a candidate’s personality through tests. If the candidate can adapt their responses to align with the principles and atmosphere of your company, it demonstrates the effort and thought they have invested in comprehending your organisation.
Attaining a Satisfactory Compromise
It is of utmost importance to achieve a reasonable compromise when dealing with something as intricate as the human experience. The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator has been a real breakthrough; it has enhanced not just the job search process but also our daily lives.
Personality assessments can be invaluable in determining which candidates to recruit, as they can offer insight into how well an individual might integrate with a company’s beliefs and goals. Conducting a personality test can provide valuable information about a candidate’s disposition and any possible challenges they may encounter in a job setting. Additionally, utilising a personality test can limit the pool of potential recruits, conserving time, effort, and easing the burden of reaching a final decision.
Personality assessments can be advantageous during the recruitment process, but should not solely dictate a successful hire. They serve as a beneficial aid in making decisions, yet they should not be the final determinant. Instead, personality tests can initiate deeper exploration. By having transparent and genuine conversations, recruiters can obtain a better comprehension of the candidate by posing queries that are relevant to the position and that genuinely gauge their abilities, motivations, and history.
The assortment of technologies accessible to hasten application and interview procedures is continuously increasing and ameliorating. Nonetheless, it is critical to keep in mind that inappropriate usage of these technologies can render them ineffective and may even have an adverse impact on your enterprise. Particular equipment should only be operated by individuals with appropriate training and qualifications.
At Works, we are committed to assisting your organisation in finding the finest remote freelancers. We comprehend the significance of securing dependable professionals who can contribute efficiently to your business’s expansion. That is why we conduct rigorous screening procedures for all applicants to guarantee that you are presented with the most pertinent candidates only. If you have any queries or would like to learn more, please feel free to contact us. We are eager to assist you.
