Today's talent landscape is more complex than ever. With global competition, the need for innovation, and shorter organizational lags between new product launches, companies are struggling to find ways to quickly assess their employee's performance and align their hiring processes with the company strategy.

To help organizations respond to these unique challenges, we've seen a rise in "new school" HR solutions, including pre-hire assessments and personality assessments (also known as "organizational culture" or "self-assessment" tests).

These types of pre-hire assessments have grown in popularity because they are fairly easy to administer, can be taken remotely, and can help to identify prime candidates when facing a mountain of resumes. 

Many of these assessments have been validated by academic researchers as valuable tools for understanding individual differences in behavior and ensuring the alignment of organizational talent with the roles that they are best suited to perform. They measure personality dimensions such as work ethic, emotional intelligence, and basic aptitude.

This blog post will explore how you can integrate personality assessments into your recruiting process and help your organization become an even more amazing place to work.

What is a Personality Assessment?

Before we dive in, let's first answer the question, "what is a personality assessment?"

Simply put, a personality assessment is a tool that measures the characteristics that make up one's personality. These tests can be paper-and-pencil or computerized programs that provide a detailed analysis of your personality traits, strengths, and weaknesses and offer insights into your behavioral traits and conduct.

This information can help a management team determine if an individual is a good fit for their current role and has the right combination of strengths and weaknesses to grow successfully within the organization.

There are many different types of personality assessments. Some of the most common include:

Personality Self-Report Inventories

These shorter self-report assessments provide an individual with a snapshot of their personality and leadership traits. 

Personality Rating Scales

These provide you with a list of personality traits and ask you to rank them based on how much you exhibit each.

Why You Should Use Pre-Hire Personality Assessments in Recruiting

Traditional hiring methods often fail to identify candidates best suited to succeed in specific roles. This can lead to high rates of turnover and low employee engagement. Or worse – the cost of a bad hire has been estimated to cost the company upwards of 30%-50% of the employee's annual salary.

According to Psychology Today, even when interview questions are well thought out, the traditional interview process is a poor predictor of future performance and tells the interviewer very little about the candidates overall behavior.

So what can you do?

Well designed, multi-measure pre-hire assessments are a good tool that can be used in the hiring process in addition to the interview, background checks, and reference checks.

Pre-hire personality assessments can be used to help companies identify the motivational drivers and work styles of potential candidates. If you're not using personality assessments as part of your overall recruiting strategy, you are missing out on a powerful opportunity to find the most suitable candidates for your organization.

The information obtained from these assessments can help companies select the right candidates for the right job and increase their hiring accuracy by upwards of 50%. In addition to improving your hiring accuracy, personality assessments are an excellent tool for understanding the current state of your organizational culture.

This information can help you identify areas where your company culture could be improved or where your organizational culture is already aligned with your company strategy and vision.

How to Use Pre-Hire Personality Assessments in Recruiting

A well-designed personality assessment can give you a detailed insight into a candidate's Innate behaviors and help guide you in your decision process. However, when using a pre-hire assessment in your hiring process there are some recommended guidelines to follow:

• Pre-hire assessments should only account for up to 25% of the hiring decision. Remember, these assessments are just one tool to be used in your overall hiring process, and other important factors such as the interview, reference checks, the candidate's background and experience, as well as cultural fit to the organization should also be carefully considered in your making your decision.
• Not all assessments are equal. Make sure to use an assessment that has been validated as an effective tool for hiring certain positions within your organization. Pre-hire assessments like Talexes' TalassureMX are based on validated, proven predictors of performance across industries and reliable scientific data.

Defining the Ideal Candidate Through Job Assessments

Job assessments help define potential candidates' motivational drivers and work styles. This information can help companies select the right candidates for the right job.

These assessments can be used to help companies identify which candidates are best suited to perform specific jobs. Job assessments can be administered to current employees or to potential candidates during the interview process.

This can allow for a more targeted interview process that allows companies to focus on the strengths and needs of the candidate.

Drawbacks of Using Personality Assessments in Recruiting

A well-designed personality assessment can provide you with a detailed analysis of each candidate's strengths and weaknesses. That said, if not properly integrated into a larger hiring process, organization's can face some drawbacks when using personality assessments in their recruiting process.

These include:

• Pre-Hire Assessments Don't Provide Insight into a Candidate's Learned Behaviors: Innate behaviors are the inherent behaviors a person is born with – it's a person's natural style. While learned behavior is acquired through experience. Learned behavior shows a candidate's ability to grow and stretch - but these behaviors can only be identified to through the interview process. Too much reliance on assessments can blind you from seeing a candidate's full potential. 
• Pre-Hire Assessments Can Screen Out Qualified Candidates: Although these assessments can be extremely useful during the recruiting process, they should only be seen as one component in the total screening process. The results of these assessments rely on subjective interpretation, and too much reliance on assessment results can end up filtering out candidates that might otherwise be a great fit for your role.
• Candidates May Not Answer Pre-Hire Assessment Questions Honestly: In an attempt to present themselves with the character traits they believe the employer is looking for, candidates may not answer truthfully when taking these assessments. People may give false responses to appear more socially desirable or to appear in line with what is deemed politically correct.

Other Benefits of Personality Assessments in Your Organization

Defining a Company Culture Through Organizational Assessments

Organizational culture assessments are useful in defining the current state of your organizational culture and can help you to identify areas of your organizational culture that may be aligned with the company strategy and vision.

These assessments can also be used to identify areas of your organizational culture that may be misaligned with the company strategy and vision. Organizational culture assessments are most useful when administered to employees across all levels of the organization. This allows you to gain a deeper understanding of the needs of employees at all levels of the organization.

Aligning Your Talent Pool Using Footprint Assessment

Footprint assessments can be used to help you to define the current state of your organizational culture and identify areas where your culture may be misaligned with the company strategy and vision.

This information can be used to help you to identify areas where your organizational culture could be improved. In addition to helping you to understand the current state of your organizational culture, footprint assessments are a great tool for identifying potential candidates who are best suited to work in your organizational culture.

This information can help you to align your talent pool with your organizational culture and the company strategy.

Conclusion

Today's recruiting landscape is rapidly changing and demanding more from employers. It's no longer enough to post job openings, screen applicants, and extend offers. In order to remain competitive, companies must offer a variety of different services and resources that set them apart from the rest.

While there are some potential drawbacks that should be considered, reputable personality assessments are one of the most beneficial ways to understand individual differences in a candidate's behavior and ensure alignment of individuals with roles that they are best suited to perform.

Whether you're hiring staff members or contractors, these tests will give you a detailed analysis of each candidate's strengths and weaknesses.

Organizational culture assessments, job assessments, and footprint assessments are useful tools for helping organizations to understand the current state of their organizational culture, identify the needs of employees at all levels of the organization, and select the right candidates for the right job.

These types of assessments can also help to align your talent pool with your organizational culture and the company strategy.