Workplace Personality Tests (questionnaires) For Hiring | 2024/25 Recruiters’s Guide

Are you looking for deeper insights into a candidate’s personality, work style, and motivations? Have you thought about incorporating a workplace personality test into your hiring process?

Personality tests (personality questionnaires) are a key pre-employment tool in modern recruitment, helping employers assess whether a candidate’s personality aligns with the role, work environment, and company culture.

As an experienced recruiter, hiring manager, or HR professional, you likely use a variety of assessment tools, such as online aptitude tests, game-based assessments, video interviews, and assessment centers, to quickly identify and hire qualified candidates. However, it is important to note that workplace personality also plays a significant role in job performance, affecting how employees interact with others, stay motivated, and approach challenges.

Through a personality test, you can gain valuable insights into candidates’ personality traits and workstyle preferences early on, ensuring you place the right individuals in roles where they can thrive and make long-term contributions. For organizations seeking to make informed hiring decisions and build productive, energized teams, these tests are a powerful tool. 

But how exactly do personality tests for hiring work, and what should you consider before using them?

In this guide, we will debunk common myths about personality tests for hiring, explain what they measure, and discuss the pros and cons of using them. You will also learn when and how these tests can seamlessly integrate into your recruitment strategy – just as countless other employers are already doing.

Whether you are an expert or just discovering workplace personality tests, continue reading to find out how they can help you select best-fit candidates for your specific role and organization. At Assess Candidates, our team of organizational psychologists and consultants are here to support you every step of the way!

Contents

1. What is a personality questionnaire?
2. The science behind pre-employment personality tests
3. How do personality tests work in recruitment and selection
4. Why do employers use personality tests when hiring?
5. At what stage are pre-employment personality tests used in the hiring process?
6. Best practices for integrating personality tests into your recruitment strategy
7. When to give candidates a workplace personality test?
8. What employers use personality tests for hiring?
9. Why top employers choose Assess Candidates personality test for hiring
10. Work-style Personality Questionnaire: Client application story

1. What is a personality questionnaire?

A pre-employment personality test, also referred to as a personality questionnaire, workplace personality test, or work personality test, is a type of psychometric assessment designed to identify a candidate’s personality traits and characteristics in diverse situations. Unlike other psychometric tests that measure cognitive skills or behavioral competencies, pre-employment personality tests focus on an individual’s inherent personality to predict whether they are a good fit for a role, team, and company culture.

Personality questionnaires are widely used in recruitment to screen candidates. Depending on the organization’s hiring needs, they can be administered online during the initial screening phase or in later stages such as before or during interviews. These questionnaires typically present candidates with statements related to personality and ask them to self-report how much they agree or disagree with each one, helping to create a profile of their characteristics and preferred work style.

What are the different purposes of a personality test in the workplace?

While this guide focuses on the use of personality tests for recruitment, it is important to recognize the broader applications of personality assessments in the workplace. Here are several ways in which they can be leveraged:

• Recruitment and Candidate Selection: Employers use personality tests for hiring employees to ensure candidates are well-suited to the role and work environment. Employees in positions that align with their personality are more likely to excel and experience long-term job satisfaction.

• Team Building and Development: Companies use personality tests for existing employees to gain valuable insights into each team member’s strengths, preferences, and areas for development. These insights can create deeper understandings within teams, improve collaboration and communication, and boost overall team productivity. 

• Career Transitions and Succession: Data-driven personality assessments can help identify employees for leadership potential, realign employees to more suited roles, and support decision-making for promotions.

• Self-awareness: Personality tests also empower employees to gain a greater understanding of their own workplace personality traits and preferences. This self-awareness drives personal growth, better communication, and improved job performance.

For recruiters and hiring managers, pre-employment personality tests can be a valuable tool in the candidate selection process. These tests offer deeper insights into candidates that cannot be easily extracted from CVs, LinkedIn profiles, or short interviews. 

The purpose of incorporating a personality questionnaire into your hiring process is not to filter out candidates like other psychometric tests but rather to learn more about them and their optimal working environments. This helps you to determine whether their natural traits align with what is expected for success in your role and within your organization. We recommend using personality questionnaires for all roles, especially those that emphasize social interactions and teamwork where personality plays a pivotal role. 

Continue reading to find out more about the different types of personality tests used for hiring, what they measure, the format of personality test questions, and how your organization can benefit from integrating these tests into your recruitment strategies.

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2. The science behind pre-employment personality tests

Pre-employment personality tests are rooted in the principles of psychometrics, the scientific discipline dedicated to objectively measuring psychological attributes such as personality, cognitive abilities, and behavior. For decades, personality tests have been used in recruitment and talent acquisition as a tool to provide reliable insights into a candidate’s workplace personality and character.

To assess these traits, personality tests in recruitment use two main scientific approaches: projective and objective measures.

1. Projective tests: Candidates respond to random ambiguous stimuli, like inkblots, to reveal subconscious characteristics. However, this method has now generally been considered unreliable in recruitment settings.

2. Objective tests: These tests are the most widely used in hiring. Candidates self-report their response to personality-related statements. This produces more accurate and objective answers, making it the preferred method for evaluating workplace personality.

What is workplace personality?

Workplace personality refers to an individual’s natural way of behaving and interacting in a professional setting. It encompasses a collection of traits, behaviors, work-style preferences, attitudes, and values that shape how an employee prefers to approach their work, overcome challenges, stay motivated, and engage with colleagues, clients, and their environment.

Measuring workplace personality during the recruitment process is important because it allows recruiters to identify candidates whose natural traits and preferred work style align with the role’s specific demands and the team and company culture. For example, a job that requires constant interaction with people would benefit from a candidate who enjoys socializing and communicating with people. When employees’ are placed in roles that fit their workplace personalities, it leads to happier staff, higher engagement, increased productivity, and overall organizational success. 

What specific traits and characteristics do pre-employment personality tests measure?

The answer is – many!

Although there are many different types of personality tests used for hiring, each measuring different core traits, most assess a combination of the following key areas:

• Emotional State: How individuals feel and regulate their feelings and emotions in the workplace
• Communication Style: How they express themselves and interact with others
• Information Acquisition: How they learn and share information, including their eagerness to acquire new knowledge
• Sociability: How they build relationships and collaborate with others
• Empathy: How they understand and relate to the emotions of others
• Risk-taking: Their comfort level with taking risks and making decisions under pressure
• Handling Challenges: How they deal with stress and pressure to solve problems
• Motivations: What drives them to perform and stay engaged at work
• Morals and Values: Their personal principles and ethics
• Organization and Time Management: How they set goals, prioritize, and manage their time effectively
• Leadership: Their potential to lead and inspire others
• The Bright Side: Their strengths, talents, and positive personality traits
• The Dark Side: Potential weaknesses or traits that emerge under pressure
• Interests: What they are passionate about and enjoy doing
• Flexibility/Adaptability: How well they handle change

How do workplace personality tests predict job fit?

Workplace personality tests reveal how well a candidate will fit within the role, team, and company culture beyond their technical skills and capabilities. These assessments serve as reliable predictors of how candidates think, communicate, approach problems, handle change, interact with others, and demonstrate leadership. Whilst these characteristics typically emerge over the first few months of employment, personality tests for hiring offer recruiters an accurate glimpse before employment into a candidate’s potential job and cultural fit.

If you want to know whether your candidates possess the traits that align with success in your role, and whether they are likely to feel satisfied and engaged within your organization, then the importance of using a personality test questionnaire cannot be overstated. These scientifically-validated assessments provide a reliable data-driven method to determine whether a candidate is likely to excel in your role and organization.

Let’s now take a look at some of the different types of personality tests used for hiring. 

Types of personality tests for hiring

There are many different types of personality tests used for hiring, each offering a unique approach to evaluating candidates’ personality traits, which caters to the wide range of working structures, business models, work environments, and daily responsibilities.

Some personality tests are extremely popular and well-known, such as the SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ). Others, like cultural fit tests, focus on selecting talent that matches organizational culture and core values; others categorize candidates into specific personality types. 

Another example is the Assess Candidates Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ), based on the Big 5 (OCEAN) Personality Model, which has been developed in-house by chartered psychologists and scientists and is exclusively available through Assess Candidates.

Below you will find a comprehensive list of the different types of personality tests and learn how each one can help enhance your recruitment process.

• The 16 Personality Types Test

This method of pre employment personality testing classifies candidates into 16 distinct personality types to reveal their preferred work style and environment, how they make decisions, and how they relate to others. This helps employers to better match candidates to teams with compatible working preferences, limiting potential workplace conflict and fostering stronger professional relationships. This approach is particularly valuable for organizations that emphasize collaboration and teamwork in their culture.

The 16 Personality Types model is based on four basic dimensions: Extroversion or Introversion, Sensing or Intuition, Thinking or Feeling, Judging or Perceiving. Popular tests like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) are based on this framework. Typically, this personality questionnaire follows a closed-choice format, where candidates select answers that best represent their workplace personality.

• The DISC Personality Test

The DISC Test measures how candidates naturally behave, think, express emotions, and interact with others, placing them on a scale of personality traits rather than fitting them into rigid categories. This assessment provides employers with valuable insights into how individuals work best depending on their personality trait, making it useful not only for recruitment but also for existing employees to build effective collaboration strategies. Recruiters who have clear job descriptions and prioritize collaborative work will find the DISC test particularly beneficial.

The DISC assessment focuses on four primary personality traits: 

1. Dominance (D): Confident, assertive, and prefer leadership positions and decision-making responsibilities
2. Influence (I): Outgoing, people-oriented, and effective at persuading others and making them happy
3. Steadiness (S): Supportive, organized, reliable, and contribute to team stability
4. Conscientiousness (C): Detail-oriented, cautious, and focused on meeting company expectations.

Typically, one of these four traits is dominant, with the others complementing it. Candidates complete a self-reporting test, rating 48 personality statements on a scale from “very accurate” to “very inaccurate” according to how well each statement reflects their personality at work.

• The Enneagram Personality Test

The Enneagram Personality Test identifies nine distinct, interconnected personality types. Each is shaped by core motivations, fears, passions, and desires, and reflect different patterns of thinking, feeling, and behaving. Employers can use the Enneagram test to gain deeper insights into how candidates handle interpersonal relationships and navigate challenges, making it easier to identify individuals who are best suited for specific roles.

The test produces nine “enneatypes”, represented by a nine-point geometric figure that highlights the interconnectedness of personality types. For example, Type 1 is “The Reformer”, Type 4 is “The Individualist”, and Type 7 is “The Enthusiast”. Candidates answer a series of either-or questions and select the response that best aligns with their workplace personality. While the test suggests ideal jobs for each type, these recommendations merely offer guidance and other jobs may also be suitable.

• The Caliper Profile Personality Test

Backed by over 60 years of research, the Caliper Profile measures candidates’ inherent characteristics and motivations across 23 key personality traits, providing valuable insights into their job performance and potential for long-term success. The results can be applied throughout an employee’s lifecycle, from recruitment, development, promotion, and team building. Employers value this test for its resistance to manipulation and its measurement of both negative and positive qualities, making it difficult for candidates to skew their answers.

Some core attributes assessed by the Caliper Profile include leadership, risk-taking, aggressiveness, assertiveness, and time management. The test presents a variety of questions where candidates must choose the statement that best or least agrees with their workplace personality as well as abstract reasoning questions to assess problem-solving abilities. These responses generate a score that employers can use to compare individuals’ results – the higher the score, the greater likelihood of exhibiting certain traits and behaviors relevant to the job.

• The Predictive Index Personality Test

The Predictive Index (PI) assessment measures candidates’ personality, intelligence, and work-related skills to create a well-rounded candidate profile. It focuses on four primary personality traits – formality, dominance, patience, and extraversion – and two secondary traits – decision-making and response level. This short personality questionnaire, lasting only 10 minutes, asks candidates to choose the words that best describe themselves and how they believe others expect them to behave. The results offer employers quick insights into how candidates think, behave, and fit within a given role. If you’re looking for an efficient, fast-paced personality test, the Predictive Index is ideal.

• The SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ)

With over 30 years of use, the OPQ test is one of the most popular personality tests in recruitment for evaluating a candidate’s preferred work style and determining job performance and cultural fit. The OPQ presents candidates with 104 questions, each containing four behavior-based statements from which they must select the one that is “most like” and “least like” them at work. This test is versatile, making it suitable for candidates at all levels, from entry-level up to management and executive positions. Employers rely on the OPQ to gain deeper insights into how candidates may perform and thrive within specific roles and organizational environments.

• The Big Five (OCEAN) Personality Test

Developed by Costa and McCrae in 1986, the Big Five, or Five Factor Model (FFM), is widely regarded as the most scientifically validated personality assessment. Unlike the other tests, it measures five core personality traits, that are integral to workplace behavior, to create a comprehensive profile of a candidate’s personal and emotional tendencies. This test helps predict how individuals think and behave, particularly in challenging situations, and their compatibility within the team and organizational culture. Rather than categorizing candidates into fixed personality types or relying on right-or-wrong logic, the Big 5 test uses a percentage scale system to reflect where candidates sit across the five traits. 

Whilst individuals tend to lean more strongly toward one trait, the Big 5 test measures the following five dimensions, forming the acronym OCEAN: 

1. Openness to Experience: Reflects a candidate’s creativity, curiosity, and enthusiasm for new experiences versus a preference for routine and structure
2. Conscientiousness: Indicates how careful, organized, self-disciplined, and responsible a candidate is versus disorganized, spontaneous, and adaptable to change. Conscientiousness is widely recognized as the strongest predictor of job success, especially for roles of low to moderate complexity.
3. Extroversion: Measures a person’s sociability, creativity, and energy in group settings versus their reservation, considered approach, and comfort in their own company
4. Agreeableness: Shows a candidate’s compassion, cooperativeness, and empathy to the needs of others versus being more self-interested, independent, and target-driven
5. Neuroticism (Emotional Stability): Assesses emotional resilience, calmness, and optimism in contrast to anxiety, stress, and negative thinking 

The Big Five test uses a Likert scale (degree of agreement scale) to ask candidates to rate how strongly they agree or disagree with various statements. The Big Five model underpins tests like the Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ), making it a valuable tool not only for recruitment but also for employee learning and development programs and promotion strategies.

With all this knowledge, how can you determine which personality assessment is the best fit for your organization? While each of these personality tests offers valuable insights, selecting the right one is your decision and depends on your role’s specific requirements and your recruitment objectives. You must also consider the reliability of the test and whether it has been scientifically-validated by professionals. Using a personality assessment not designed for candidate screening and recruitment could lead to misguided hiring decisions.

Let’s now take a look at an example of a personality test and its format.

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3. How do personality tests work in recruitment and selection?

As we have seen, personality tests for recruitment can vary significantly depending on the provider and employer. Most tests are untimed questionnaires, with the number of questions ranging from 20 to over 200. The lenient time limits allow candidates to focus on completing the questionnaire and answering each question as honestly and accurately as possible. These questionnaires can be administered with pen and paper or via an online assessment platform, providing flexibility for both candidates and employers.

So, what are personality test questions?

Personality test questions are designed to assess a candidate’s natural personality traits and work preferences. The format typically involves candidates self-reporting their responses to personality-related and behavior-based statements. Common response formats include: 

• Selecting the statement that is “most like” or “least like” them at work from a set of four options.
• Choosing words that best describe themselves and how they believe others expect them to act.
• Rating their agreement with statements on a Likert scale, from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree”.
• Selecting the response that best aligns with their workplace personality from either-or questions
• Rating how accurate each statement is, from “very accurate” to “very inaccurate”.
• Choosing answers that best represent their personality at work from closed-choice options.

All these formats help build a detailed profile of candidates’ workplace personality, which can be used to predict how they might perform, stay motivated, and interact with others within a specific role and work environment.

What is the format of the Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ)?

The Assess Candidates Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ) is an untimed assessment designed as a series of short statements in which candidates are required to indicate how much they agree or disagree with each one in terms of how it describes themselves. It uses a five-point Likert scale with one being “strongly disagree” and five being “strongly agree”. 

The WPQ is grounded in the Big Five Personality Traits, focusing on the following dimensions:

1. Introversion versus Extroversion
2. Easy-going versus Conscientiousness
3. Emotional versus Emotional Stability
4. Conventional versus Openness
5. Self-focus versus People-focus

Importantly, there are no right or wrong answers in the WPQ, as it is intended to capture a candidate’s natural personality traits and behavioral tendencies rather than technical skills. It is essential that recruiters reassure candidates of this to encourage honest, authentic responses. Nonetheless, some candidates may attempt to manipulate their answers to align with what they think employers want to hear or give the same safe answers to each question. 

To address this, the WPQ incorporates a sixth dimension: the Social Desirability Scale. This examines whether a candidate has responded in a socially desirable way – overly-favorable or overly-critical – rather truthfully. Most individuals will score in the middle of this scale, however, both unusually high or low scores must be reviewed with care. We recommend exploring these answers further in interviews, where a candidate’s more spontaneous reactions can be compared with their questionnaire responses.

Using the WPQ in the hiring process

The WPQ should not be used as a standalone tool for final decision-making but as part of a wider recruitment strategy. Relying solely on it risks eliminating candidates who may still thrive and succeed in your organization. Similarly, making hiring decisions based purely on technical skills can overlook crucial aspects of role and cultural fit. 

For the best results, we recommend combining our workplace personality test with other psychometric assessments, such as logical reasoning tests and situational judgement tests, along with other selection methods like video interviews and assessment centers. This integrated approach provides a holistic view of a candidate’s technical skills and suitability, ensuring informed hiring decisions based on multiple data points. 

Can you customize the WPQ?

At Assess Candidates, we recognize that one-size-fits-all does not apply to personality assessments. That is why we offer the option to customize your WPQ scoring and reporting to align with the specific requirements of your role and company culture.

Simply send us your personality framework and we will tailor the WPQ to produce a customized job-fit score. This will include the development of red danger zones to accompany the amber and green zones on candidate reports, helping to quickly identify which candidates most align with your organization’s culture and work-style preferences.

While the red danger zones highlight potential areas of concern, it is important not to disregard candidates purely based on this. Instead, use the report and insights for further exploration during interviews to understand why they may have scored in these zones and whether they can still be a good fit for your organization.

Pre-employment personality test example

Now let’s take a look at an example of a personality test question:

This personality test example presents a series of behavioral statements. Candidates must read each statement carefully and state how much they agree or disagree with the statement, for example “I get on with everyone”, using the Likert scale as below:

1. Strongly Disagree
2. Disagree 
3. Agree nor Disagree 
4. Agree 
5. Strongly Agree

Explore more personality assessment examples or connect with our experts to discuss bespoke solutions.

In the following section, we dive into the pros and cons of including a pre-employment personality test in your recruitment process.

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4. Why do employers use personality tests when hiring?

Pre-employment personality tests have become a key tool for employers in the candidate selection and screening process, especially with the rise of online assessments. These tests offer objective, reliable insights into candidates’ personality traits, work preferences, and behaviors, which are critical factors in determining role fit, cultural fit, and team performance. By providing a more well-rounded understanding of each candidate, personality tests ultimately empower employers to make more informed hiring decisions.

In this section, we explore the pros and cons of integrating a personality questionnaire into your recruitment process, focusing on how they can save time and money, improve the quality of hires, and reduce biases and discrimination in decision-making.

What are the benefits of using pre-employment personality tests for hiring?

1. Improving the Quality of Hire

When implemented effectively, pre-employment personality tests can significantly enhance the quality of hires. These tests are scientifically validated to accurately assess candidates’ suitability for a role, their place within the organizational culture, and their potential for long-term success. This leads to more precise and well-matched hires. Unlike CVs, which can be easily manipulated, personality assessments for hiring provide a more reliable prediction of whether a candidate is a good fit, not just on paper, but in how they naturally think, act, and collaborate in a professional environment.

Employees whose workplace personality aligns with the role’s demands, the company’s values, and the team’s working style are more likely to feel energized, satisfied, and engaged at work. This often translates into higher job performance and staying longer at the company, which in turn creates a more positive work environment for all employees and fosters higher retention rates – an important factor for industries that struggle with high staff turnover and, as a result, poor productivity.

2. The Stability of Personality

Personality tends to be more stable than behavior. Whilst individuals can change or adapt their behaviors over time to form new habits, personality – rooted in inherent values, traits, and mechanisms – remains relatively consistent. In new or unfamiliar situations, personality is more likely to shine through naturally, while behavior may shift based on external factors. Think of behavior as the tip of the iceberg, just visible above the surface, while personality is everything below which is often unseen during the hiring process unless revealed through a workplace personality test.

3. Saving Time and Money

Hiring the right candidates can be a lengthy, costly, and complex process. Integrating automated online personality tests at scale helps streamline and speed up the recruitment cycle. Instead of manually reviewing hundreds of resumes, a personality assessment can efficiently screen thousands of candidates within minutes, delivering instant results with a single click. Combined with results from aptitude tests and other pre-employment assessments, hiring managers can quickly create a shortlist of qualified candidates who meet the criteria before starting interviews, saving valuable time. 

Additionally, hiring personality tests reduce the high costs associated with large-scale recruitment. Administered online and typically priced per test or through a flat fee, these assessments offer a low cost per candidate, making them a cost-effective solution. Moreover, candidates in positions that do not match their personality traits often show lower engagement and performance, leading to higher turnover. Ensuring candidates are the right fit from the start minimizes the needs for costly rehiring and retraining, further optimizing recruitment budgets.

4. Producing Reliable, Data-driven Results

Personality tests are invaluable for organizations that prioritize data-driven hiring decisions. These assessments provide accurate, actionable insights into candidates’ workplace personalities and role suitability, enabling employers to confidently identify those who align with the position and company culture. This approach helps reduce the risk of costly hiring mistakes and mis-hires. For example, if a candidate demonstrates a strong preference for finding new ways to solve problems and an ability to manage stress, they can be placed in a strategic leadership role with greater confidence in their potential for success. 

5. Reducing Bias

Workplace personality tests are designed to help minimize both conscious and unconscious biases in the hiring process. By focusing solely on candidates’ workplace personality and predicted job performance without the interference of subjective factors such as background, education, age, gender, ethnicity, or race, these tests ensure hiring decisions are objective and fair. 

Not only is it difficult to accurately assess personality in a short interview, but different interviewers may paint varying pictures of the same candidate’s workplace personality. Personality tests, however, provide a consistent and standardized evaluation of a candidate’s traits, ensuring all are judged on the same criteria. This promotes a more equitable hiring process that aligns with company values and legal policies.

6. Enhancing Diversity and Inclusion

Online pre-employment personality tests expand the applicant pool by making the application process accessible to candidates who may be unable to attend in-person interviews or assessments. By customizing personality reports, like on the Assess Candidates WPQ, hiring managers can focus on targeting specific personality traits and thinking styles that complement or enhance their existing team. This approach promotes a more diverse and inclusive workforce, contributing to a positive and collaborative work environment.

7. Ensuring a User-friendly Candidate Experience

Workplace personality tests are designed with accessibility and ease in mind, ensuring a smooth and engaging experience for candidates. The straightforward nature of the personality test questions, coupled with the fact that many individuals enjoy exploring their own preferences, helps maintain candidate interest throughout. Additionally, the encouragement that there are no right or wrong answers reduces stress and anxiety, creating a positive and relaxed candidate experience. 

8. Enhancing the Interview Process

Personality questionnaire results provide employers with valuable insights to tailor interview questions specifically to each candidate. By understanding a candidate’s traits and behavioral tendencies beforehand, interviewers can ask more targeted questions during the interview and gain deeper insight into how they might handle various workplace situations. This approach allows for a more personal, meaningful conversation to help assess overall suitability for the role. Interviewers may also seek to clarify any areas of concern raised by the personality test results.

Integrating a pre employment personality test into your hiring process enables you to confidently identify and shortlist candidates who are the best fit for your role, team, and company culture. This leads to a more productive and engaged workforce whilst also boosting employee retention.

While we have explored why you should use personality assessments for hiring, it is important to also acknowledge that they can be controversial. Understanding potential drawbacks will help you make well-informed decisions.

5 things to consider before using personality tests in your hiring process

1. Limited Predictive Validity: While a work personality test provides insights into a candidate’s traits, it does not capture the full picture and may be less valid predictor than other methods such as cognitive ability tests, work simulations, or assessment centers.

2. No One-size-fits-all in Personality: Individuals are complex and can excel at the same job for different reasons. For example, top engineers may have vastly different personalities and characteristics. Relying too heavily on rigid personality categorizations risks excluding talented candidates who don’t fit a specific mold.

3. Cheating Concerns: Since personality tests for hiring rely on self-reported answers, candidates may intentionally or subconsciously manipulate their responses to appear more socially desirable or politically correct. This leads to misleading results and inaccurate personality profiles.

4. Test Anxiety: Like any assessment, completing a personality test for recruitment can cause stress and anxiety, especially if candidates feel the questions are unnecessarily invasive or perhaps don’t understand the need for a personality assessment.

5. Legal Risks: Personality tests for hiring can raise concerns about potential discrimination, particularly against individuals with mental health illnesses or disabilities. For example, a question like “I experience mood changes throughout the day” might unfairly target individuals with bipolar disorder or depression.

Now that we have a better understanding of the pros and cons of personality tests in the hiring process, we will move on to discuss where and when personality tests should be used for recruitment.

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5. At what stage are pre-employment personality tests used in the hiring process?

Personality assessments can be integrated at different stages of the recruitment process depending on the role’s level and the organization’s size. However, they are most impactful at an early stage, typically after initial screening. By inviting candidates to take a pre-employment personality test early on, employers can quickly gain insights into candidates’ workplace personality and assess their potential fit within the role and company culture.

Where to incorporate personality tests in the hiring process?

Let’s say you are hiring for a new role and have received 1,000 applications. Instead of manually reviewing resumes, you can streamline the process by first inviting candidates to take psychometric assessments, such as a numerical, verbal, logical reasoning test and/or a situational judgement test. This method allows you to quickly and accurately evaluate candidates’ cognitive and behavioral abilities. And by setting a clear pass threshold, you can easily filter out those who don’t meet your criteria. 

For the best results, we then suggest following up with a workplace personality test. This helps you learn more about candidates’ workplace personality before moving to the next assessment stage – whether an in-person or video interview, or an assessment center. Personality tests also provide actionable insights to create meaningful follow-up interview questions that explore key areas flagged up in the test. Workplace personality tests should inform interviews, not replace them.

Below is a detailed explanation of the purpose and role of workplace personality tests at different stages of the recruitment process:

Incorporating pre-employment personality tests at various stages of the hiring process empowers organizations to assess candidates’ suitability for the role and company culture early on, reduce bias, enhance the candidate experience, and tailor onboarding and training to each employee’s unique strengths – before they even start. Personality tests are also widely used internally within companies for evaluating employees for promotions to leadership roles or adjusting roles to better align with employees’ work preferences. Use a personality questionnaire at the assessment stage that works best for your recruitment strategy!

Beyond hiring, personality tests are also a valuable diagnostic tool for in-house development and team building. Employers can use these assessments within teams to objectively identify personal work preferences, strengths, and growth areas for both new hires and existing employees. Whether the goal is improving collaboration, strengthening communication, or fostering stronger team dynamics, the insights gained from personality tests serve as a solid foundation for designing and implementing targeted development programmes to ensure team productivity and cohesion.

What is a personality assessment test for a job interview?

If you choose not to administer an online personality test early in the hiring process, integrating it into the interview – whether in-person or a video interview – is also a viable option. However, keep in mind that conducting a personality assessment during the interview may be less efficient, as rather than being aware of each candidate’s personality traits, strengths, and work preferences beforehand, the interviewer is required to evaluate responses and results in real time.

Even so, this approach reduces the risk of mis-hires by better predicting a candidate’s job performance and potential for success within the role, team dynamics, and organizational culture. The primary goal of a personality test job interview is to give employers deeper insight into how candidates naturally think, behave, interact with others, and stay motivated in the workplace. 

But what are some personality test questions for an interview?

Here are some examples of personality test questions for a job interview:

1. Work-style Preferences: These questions explore how a candidate naturally approaches their tasks, responsibilities, and interactions in the workplace.

2. Stress Management: This category assesses how candidates might handle stress and high-pressure situations in the workplace.

3. Adaptability: These questions evaluate a candidate’s ability to adjust to change or new environments.

4. Leadership Style: For leadership roles, questions can assess a candidate’s natural approach to leading and motivating teams.

5. Problem-Solving Approach: These questions help to understand how a candidate navigates complex situations and their approach to solving problems.

In the next section, we outline step-by-step the best practices and the dos and don’ts for incorporating a personality test into your hiring process. Ready to dive in?

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6. Best practices for integrating personality tests into your recruitment strategy

To ensure successful integration of a workplace personality test into your recruitment process, it is crucial to adhere to several best practices. Here, we have outlined three straightforward steps as well as key dos and don’ts to guide you in effectively screening and selecting the right candidates first time. These steps ensure that your hiring decisions are accurate, data-driven, and aligned with the role’s specific demands, team dynamics, and your company culture.

1. Create your personality test campaign

• Do choose the right type of personality test that aligns with your role and organizational needs. Conduct a comprehensive analysis of the job you are advertising, team dynamics, desired values, and the kind of insights you aim to gather. For example, is the role more collaborative or independent? Is the team creative? Does the company value a “can-do” attitude? Ensure that the personality test reflects both job-specific and organizational traits to maximize its relevance.
• Do create an ideal candidate’s personality profile. List the desirable personality traits for the role and team and traits that are less suitable. This provides a clear benchmark to compare candidates against and helps guide the interview process.
• Don’t rely on personality alone. Decide in advance what other pre-employment tests to pair with the workplace personality test. We recommend combining it with a numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, logical reasoning, situational judgement test, and/or video interview to improve predictive accuracy and provide a comprehensive overview of candidates’ cognitive abilities, behaviors, and personality traits. This multi-assessment approach also mitigates bias in the recruitment process.
• Do maintain consistency. Set clear deadlines for all candidates to complete the personality test and ensure the format (number of questions, time limits) remain uniform. This guarantees that all candidates are assessed under equitable conditions, promoting fairness and objectivity and improving the reliability of the results.

2. Invite candidates to your work personality test

• Invite candidates in a single click to complete your personality test by individual email, CSV file upload or public link. 
• Do be honest with candidates. Explain why you are using a personality test for hiring. This will reassure candidates that you are not using it to filter but to learn more about candidates, encouraging more honest and accurate answers.
• Do ensure your personality test is accessible for all candidates.

3. Analyze results and shortlist candidates

• Track candidates’ progress in real-time as they take the pre-employment personality test and access automatically-generated reports immediately upon test completion.
• Don’t rely on personality test results to pass or fail candidates. Personality tests should be one part of a larger selection process to select the best candidates. Using them alone as the sole deciding factor risks introducing bias or inadvertently excluding highly qualified candidates 
• Do use personality test results to understand candidates better. Use the results to consider whether candidates’ personality, behaviors, and preferred work style fit in with your role, team, and company culture. Leverage these insights to prepare more focused interview questions which delve deeper into candidates’ personality and any potential areas of concern.
• Don’t rigidly categorize candidates. While personality tests offer valuable insights, they are not the sole indicator of success in a role. Keep an open mind and leave room for flexibility. For instance, although introversion isn’t normally associated with sales roles, many introverts might excel within sales due to other important characteristics such as empathy and active listening and they should not be blanket eliminated.
• Do ensure your hiring team is trained to interpret personality test reports effectively. At Assess Candidates, we offer in-depth training for recruiters and hiring managers, teaching them how to accurately analyze and utilize results to make informed hiring decisions
• Don’t ignore candidate feedback. If many candidates find your personality test intimidating or disengaging, you might need to reconsider whether it is the best tool for your hiring process or if adjustments need to be made.

By adhering to these best practices and dos and don’ts, you can make informed hiring decisions with confidence. Remember that a recruitment personality test is a tool to understand candidates and their preferred work environments better and should not be used as a final decision-maker. Explore our personality tests for hiring to discover how they can help you identify candidates that will thrive in your role and organization. 

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7. When to give candidates a workplace personality test?

Personality tests for recruitment are an increasingly popular tool due to their adaptability and broad applicability. These assessments can be tailored to assess candidates’ suitability for a wide range of roles, from entry-level positions such as apprenticeships and graduate schemes to more experienced managerial and executive roles, as well as those making career transitions.

In this section, we explore how workplace personality tests are effectively utilized across different types of recruitment and identify which roles benefit most from integrating these tests into the hiring process.

2 examples when employers should use personality tests for recruitment

1. High-volume recruitment: Recruiting for high-demand roles that attract hundreds or even thousands of applications can be overwhelming. In these high-volume scenarios, using pre-employment personality tests alongside other psychometric assessments is highly effective. While other psychometric tests quickly sift through large pools of candidates based on technical skills, the personality assessment provides deeper insights into their workplace personality. 

By using these tools together, recruiters can streamline the process, identifying standout candidates who excel in both technical abilities and alignment with the role and organizational culture. This combined approach is both cost-effective and time-efficient, ensuring that only the most suitable candidates advance to the interview stage.

2. Medium-volume and low-volume recruitment: For medium-sized businesses in sectors like consulting, finance, or the public sector, personality assessments are a crucial tool in the hiring process. When dealing with a moderate volume of applicants, these assessments shift focus to a deeper evaluation of each candidate’s workplace personality and whether they are a good fit for the role, team, and organization.

This approach is especially valuable for managerial positions, where it is essential to determine if a candidate’s personality and work preferences complement the existing team dynamics and work culture. Additionally, it helps predict their potential to lead and contribute effectively within the team.

Which industries and roles benefit most from using personality tests for hiring and why?

The short answer: all industries and roles! 

Workplace personality plays a significant role in all employees’ job performance, affecting how they think, behave, interact with others, and approach challenges. However, pre-employment personality tests particularly benefit certain jobs that require high levels of employee engagement, creativity, or interpersonal interactions with colleagues, customers, or the public – for example positions in customer service, creative fields, and industries that emphasize a strong collaborative culture.

In these contexts, using a personality test for recruitment is not just helpful but essential for selecting individuals who are well-suited to meet the role’s demands and thrive in their work environments. This leads to happier employees, improved performance, and ultimately, a more profitable business. 

Industries that use personality tests in recruitment include: 

• Consulting: In client-facing consulting jobs, being outgoing, highly motivated, flexible to change, and confident are key personality traits associated with typical success. Employers that use pre-employment personality tests to screen candidates include the Big Four (Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG) as well as smaller, specialized consultancies such as McKinsey and Bain.

• Finance: Personality questionnaires are used in finance jobs to assess whether candidates’ are detail-oriented, organized, a strong leader, emotionally intelligent, etc. – all typical personality traits for finance. Leading employers using personality tests include Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, and Citibank.

• Public Sector: Personality assessments for hiring are welcomed for public professional roles to determine whether candidates are diplomatic, people-focused, problem-solvers, and emotionally stable. Some employers that implement pre-employment personality assessments are NHS, Police, The Red Cross, and Fire and Rescue Service.

• Sales: Personality tests are used for sales roles as hiring a candidate who can confidently interact with others, show empathy, and actively listen is key. Some companies who use these assessments for recruitment within their sales departments are M&S, Walmart, Siemens, and Marriott International.

• Technology: Pre-employment personality tests are frequently used for highly technical roles to assess candidates’ adaptability, teamwork, ethics, communication, and curiosity. Some companies who have integrated these tests into their recruitment processes are Samsung, Google, Amazon, IBM, INTEL, and Microsoft.

Broadly speaking, the industries mentioned have successfully leveraged workplace personality tests to identify and hire best-fit talent. Neglecting to consider a candidate’s personality traits, role fit, and cultural fit can lead to costly mis-hires and impede business success. By integrating personality tests into your wider recruitment strategy, you can ensure you select the right candidates who not only align with the role’s demands, but also will thrive in your company’s culture and remain engaged.

Jobs that use personality tests for hiring include: 

• Customer Service Agent
• Sales Representative
• Consultant
• HR Manager
• Social Worker
• Project Manager
• Marketing Manager
• Nurse
• Financial Analyst
• Software Developer
• Teacher
• Management Trainee

If you are an employer that after reading through this information is still unsure about whether using a personality questionnaire is the right fit for your organization, click here to learn more or contact us for a free analysis tailored to your recruitment needs. 

Next, we will share some examples of leading employers who have successfully integrated personality tests into their hiring process.

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8. What employers use personality tests for hiring?

In recent years, pre-employment personality tests have become an integral part of the recruitment strategies of leading global corporations. More recently, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) and startups have also realized the value of these assessments for making more informed, objective hiring decisions and improving overall team dynamics. Below are some of the top employers leveraging the best personality tests for hiring: 

• Deloitte 
• PwC
• Goldman Sachs
• JP Morgan
• Citibank
• EY
• KPMG
• Microsoft
• INTEL
• M&S
• The Red Cross
• Marriott International 
• Hilton Hotels
• Siemens
• Walmart
• IBM
• NHS
• Tesco
• Transport for London

So, who are some of the top candidate assessment software providers that provide these employers with their pre-employment personality tests?

The top 10 candidate assessment software providers

When choosing a candidate assessment provider for your recruitment personality test, it’s crucial to evaluate both the validity of the personality test and the overall functionality of the assessment platform. To ensure you select the right solution, consider the following critical questions: 

• Does the candidate assessment software streamline and speed up the hiring process?
• Can I assess multiple candidates’ workplace personalities simultaneously and effectively?
• Is there easy, one-click access to candidate insights and reports?
• Does the workplace personality test provide an objective evaluation of a candidate’s personality?
• Have scientists and psychologists validated the personality test for hiring to predict the desired outcomes?
• Can I customize the personality test reports to align with my specific role and company culture?
• Is the talent assessment platform user-friendly and does it ensure an engaging candidate experience?

By considering these factors, you can confidently select a candidate assessment platform for your workplace personality test that meets your objectives and enhances your hiring process, making it more efficient, insightful, and fair.

Here are some leading pre-employment screening providers that specialize in workplace personality tests and psychometric assessments, ensuring you can assess candidates’ workplace personality and fit for your role, team, and company culture:

1. Assess Candidates
2. SHL
3. Criteria Corp
4. HireVue
5. TestGorilla
6. Hogan Assessments
7. TalentSmart
8. Harver
9. Berke
10. Veroe

How does the Assess Candidates Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ) differ from the SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire?

Both the Assess Candidates WPQ and the SHL OPQ are trait-based personality questionnaires designed to evaluate a candidate’s workplace personality and preferred work style. The results are interpreted in line with the role’s behavioral expectations and company culture to predict job performance and cultural fit. However, there are key differences in their design, length, and focus areas.

1. Test Structure and Format: 

• WPQ: This consists of 90 questions, making it quicker to complete compared to the SHL OPQ. The WPQ dives deep into the Big Five Personality Traits—openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and emotional stability—providing insights into how a candidate fits the role, team, and organization.
• OPQ: The SHL OPQ offers three formats:
  • OPQ32n (Normative): Candidates respond to 416 behavioral statements rated on a scale of 1 to 5, requiring 45-60 minutes to complete.
  • OPQ32i (Ipsative): This version has 104 questions, where candidates must choose the “most like” and “least like” them from four statements. This format discourages distortion and takes about 30 minutes to complete.
  • OPQ32r (Short Ipsative): The most widely used version, containing three statements per question, where candidates select the “most like” and “least like” them. This is faster, requiring less time than the OPQ32n and OPQ32i.

2. Core Dimensions:

• The SHL OPQ focuses on three core areas:
  • Relationships with People (e.g., communication style and team interaction),
  • Thinking Style (e.g., problem-solving and decision-making),
  • Feelings and Emotions (e.g., emotional resilience and stress tolerance).
• The WPQ, in contrast, emphasizes a more detailed evaluation of all Big Five traits, which gives employers a broader understanding of how candidates will adapt to different aspects of a role, such as leadership potential, collaboration, and cultural fit.

3. Time Efficiency and Candidate Experience:

• The WPQ’s 90-question format is designed to be quicker and more user-friendly, making it an ideal option for both candidates and recruiters seeking an efficient assessment process.
• The OPQ, while more comprehensive in the number of questions, may be more time-consuming depending on the version used (up to 416 questions). However, the closed-choice format in the ipsative versions minimizes candidates’ ability to manipulate answers, providing a more accurate reflection of workplace behavior.

4. Social Desirability and Consistency Scales:

• Both the WPQ and OPQ include social desirability scales (also called consistency scales in the OPQ). These are crucial for detecting when a candidate may be answering questions in a way they think is more favorable rather than being truthful.

Now let’s explore why employers are using Assess Candidates’ WPQ to select best-fit talent for your role, team, and company culture.

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9. Why top employers choose Assess Candidates personality test for hiring      

At Assess Candidates, we offer a comprehensive range of psychometric tests, including our flagship Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ). In addition, we provide bespoke solutions to tailor your personality questionnaire reports and recruitment campaigns to meet the specific needs of your business.

Here is an example of our campaign reporting dashboard, available through the Assess Candidates platform. This user-friendly tool is designed specifically for hiring managers and HR professionals, offering in-depth insights and advanced reporting and filtering functions to streamline candidate evaluation and enhance the overall selection process.

Here are the top 4 reasons why you should choose Assess Candidates’ Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ) for your hiring needs:

1. Designed and Scientifically Validated by Experts: The Assess Candidates Work-style Personality Questionnaire is developed by a team of Chartered Scientists, Psychologists, and Psychometricians with decades of experience creating assessment tools for leading organizations such as SHL and IBM Kenexa. The WPQ is rigorously tested and validated to ensure it accurately measures key personality traits that determine a candidate’s suitability for specific roles. Our assessments have helped businesses across diverse industries consistently identify and hire top talent that aligns with their needs.

2. Professional Reporting: Our user-friendly platform enables hiring managers to access detailed personality reports, allowing for a deeper analysis of each candidate’s workplace personality and behaviors. You can easily rank and compare candidates using customizable criteria, simplifying the selection process. For an even more efficient workflow, our talent assessment platform can seamlessly integrate with your existing ATS, ensuring a smooth and streamlined recruitment experience.

3. Engaging Candidate Experience: The WPQ is designed with the candidate in mind, featuring an intuitive interface that is accessible from any device. The test offers a seamless experience with clear instructions and minimal navigation, ensuring candidates remain engaged throughout. The platform can be fully branded, ensuring a professional and positive experience that candidates associate with your company’s brand during the assessment process.

4. Candidate Accessibility Support: We prioritize inclusivity by ensuring our assessments, including the WPQ, are fully accessible to candidates with disabilities. Our platform offers additional time, zoom functionalities, accessible color schemes, and is compliant with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), ensuring compatibility with screen readers and other assistive technologies.

Assess Candidates is a trusted assessment provider of end-to-end hiring solutions, catering to small, medium, and large employers alike. We ensure that you can successfully hire top best-fit candidates first time. Why not explore our Work-style Personality Questionnaire and start hiring today!

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10. Work-style Personality Questionnaire: Client application story

Client Problem Statement:

A prominent consulting firm is struggling to identify top talent for key client-facing roles. Despite attracting a large number of qualified applicants and assessing their problem-solving skills through a logical reasoning test, the current recruitment process lacks a focus on cultural fit and personal motivations. Questions like whether a candidate will fit with the firm’s strong collaborative culture, grow within the company, and align with its core values are not adequately addressed. As a result, they often hire candidates who struggle with the firm’s team-oriented culture, are unsatisfied, and eventually seek jobs elsewhere. The organization needs a solution to assess both candidates’ technical skills as well as their cultural alignment with company values to ensure they can excel in consulting roles and contribute positively to the firm’s culture.

Assess Candidates Proposal:

At Assess Candidates, we recommend implementing our Work-style Personality Questionnaire (WPQ) to complement the logical reasoning test and support the consulting firm’s recruitment process. Based on the Big Five Personality Traits, the WPQ provides rich insights into how candidates think, behave, adapt, and interact with others to identify who naturally aligns with the firm’s commitment to collaboration and integrity. Along with the results of the logical reasoning test, hiring managers can focus on individuals who are not only technically skilled but also culturally aligned.

Result:

By incorporating the WPQ into the hiring process, this consulting firm will be able to better assess candidates’ fit with their strong values and team-driven culture. This approach will lead to hiring candidates who are more aligned with the firm’s expectations, building a stronger, more cohesive work environment and enhancing team productivity. As a result, the firm will benefit from higher retention rates, increased employee engagement, and long-term success in both client satisfaction and internal operations.