Why Do Companies Use Personality Tests?

Many companies use personality assessments such as DISC, Caliper, or Gallup as an additional evaluation for potential new hires. Even though resumes, job history, and past performance are powerful indicators of success in your new role, there are also intangible factors such as drive, people skills and personality. It’s easier to pinpoint those intangible qualities with personality assessments. These tools are very helpful to help managers, primarily because they can baseline the commonalities of their top performers—what characteristics or traits do their best people have? When they establish that, they can evaluate new hires and make a better decision with that input.

The best bet in a new hire will have a personality assessment result that’s similar to top performers already in an organization. Hiring managers can see very clearly that if they don’t have any apples that do well in that position because only oranges do well, then they don’t want to hire an apple. They want someone who looks like an orange. It’s a simplistic explanation of it, but the system does work very effectively and it’s recommended by many hiring experts. It’s by no means the only factor in good hiring decisions, but it does offer unique and helpful insight.

If you have to take a personality assessment for a job, stay calm and relaxed. Answer truthfully, because they will ask the same thing in different ways. You can’t work the system, so don’t try. Just do the best job you can. The assessment is important, and even though it might say you’re the wrong candidate, it might say you’re the right one. And then it will be a powerful tool in your favor.