How to use personality profiles to improve the recruiting process

It’s no wonder that personality profiles have become a standard assessment tool in the hiring process for many companies. Hiring managers and recruiters are well aware that resume screening, interviews, and reference checks are not very reliable or objective means of making hiring decisions. Recent surveys of HR executives show that up to 80% of organizations now use personality profiles to improve hiring decisions. The same surveys also list performance management and succession planning as top priorities for these organizations. This indicates that personality profiles are also being used for hiring decisions and employee development.

All of that said, some organizations continue to struggle with hiring, even though they use assessment tools in their hiring decisions. The most likely reason is simple: any tool, be it an appraisal tool or a hammer, needs to be in the right hands to get great results. Used incorrectly, both tools can hurt you. Personality profiles are complex tools. And the information they provide is deep and not always easy to interpret. We humans are deep and complex creatures. To make their tools easier for HR professionals to use, tool providers have simplified the computer-generated reports to improve readability. However, the downside of simplicity is that simplicity diminishes the depth of information and the power of the tool. Less granular means less detail. This often creates challenges in drawing useful and accurate conclusions that are useful in the workplace.

The answer is that HR should work with a skilled assessment professional who has extensive experience interpreting personality profiles and who can effectively impart valuable learnings to HR staff. appraisals to intern candidates and employees makes all the difference in the world. They must be certified in the use of the assessment tool and must have experience in imparting information and value. The intern creates a reliable candidate profile or an effective action plan for employee development. Some assessments provide many raw scores, some of which may or may not contradict other scores on the same assessment. A certified assessment professional will know how to address some of the superfluous information in the computer generated report. In addition, they will be familiar with the trends and patterns that indicate certain strengths or blind spots in the individual. Most importantly, two people with very different personality profiles can succeed in the same role. The professional will help identify these scenarios so HR doesn’t overlook or miss out on great talent.

There are countless different personal assessment tools available on the market, and they vary significantly in what aspects of personality they measure and how they measure them. But none of these tools measures every human dimension necessary to reflect a complete picture of the individual. The reality is that it is simply not possible in a single tool, because humans are too complex. When using personality profiles, the goal is often to “measure” the individual as a whole. This includes expected behaviors, innate talents, cognitive abilities, decision-making biases, emotional intelligence, motivational drivers, and character. We also need the results to be accurate and reliable. That’s a lot to ask from a single tool and a computer-generated report. The only way to get “how” a person behaves, as well as what drives those behaviors and why they are the drivers, is to use more than one tool. The US Department of Labor also recommends a “whole person” approach in which companies never rely on a single instrument to make hiring or development decisions.

Personality profiles can be categorized into three separate categories: 1. Analysis of behavioral styles. Marston’s DISC and Myers-Briggs are two of the most popular behavior assessment tools on the market. The DISC test quantifies more than the Myers-Briggs test and has gained popularity in recent years. The DISC test creates a profile of how an individual behaves by reporting quantified behavioral attributes across the four DISC dimensions. This tool will be especially powerful for investigating internal conflicts within teams. Hiring managers will use these results to judge cultural fit, but determining cultural fit isn’t as simple as that. Too often, this tool is used in the recruitment process as the only profile for candidate evaluation, which is not an ideal approach. It is much more important to measure cognitive abilities, talents, and motivations than just behaviors. The other challenge is that the candidate can bias the results of the behavioral tools by giving “expected” answers during the evaluation process.

2. Analysis of cognitive abilities and talents. This is one of the most important aspects of candidate evaluation and is also powerful for employee development. These tools serve to measure talent and potential. The best tools will measure how well people assess their environment, the clarity of their judgment, and the focus on decision making. The result is a strong profile of the person’s communication skills, interpersonal skills, emotional intelligence, work ethic, levels of commitment, and leadership potential. These tools are useful for candidate evaluation, but even more powerful for talent management and succession planning.

3. Analysis of values ​​and motivational drivers These tools are invaluable for pre-employment. Some of the best tools are based on the work of Spranger-Allport and identify and quantify an individual’s levels of motivation across seven motivational dimensions. They provide clarity on where the drive and passion are in an individual, thus helping to determine how well someone is a fit for her role and career direction. This is one of the most important assessments to use when trying to determine the likelihood of success for any individual in a given role. It is also useful in the middle of the talent management life cycle to ensure that the person is on the right career path within your organization.

Respectively, these can be called the how, what, and why of employee performance. By measuring each of these domains, a very clear and accurate representation of an individual’s behavioral style can be obtained, as well as a reliable predictor of their suitability for a job and how well they will perform. Best of all, when used in a development/coaching context, these profiles create a strong self-awareness for the employee that facilitates growth and development. But it is very important to keep in mind that it is quite possible that there are two people with very different evaluation profiles who are capable of succeeding in the same role. Your assessment professional will have the expertise and experience to identify them and ensure great hiring decisions.