Do bad hires haunt you at night?
You're not alone. Even rockstar CEOs like Tony Hsieh have admitted to losing over $100 million on hiring the wrong employee personalities.
Bad hires happen. But they don't have to.
Choosing the Right Personality Test
When choosing the personality test that’s right for your recruiting process, start with these four considerations:
- What kind of personality assessment results are you hoping for? For example, do you like charts and graphs or wordy paragraphs?
- Do you prefer fast results or more accurate results? Some tests can take weeks to generate - will this work for your hiring process in order to find the right candidate?
- How much candidate and team time will you devote to the assessment testing? Certain assessments require not only time of the candidate etc complete, but also time from your team to compare results
- How much stock do you put into the history of the test? Will your employer be more comfortable with a Myers Briggs type test that’s been proven for decades, or would they prefer a more modern approach?
Here are 11 personality assessment tools to help you find the right candidate every time. From the complex and customized to the science-backed and incredibly fast, there's a tool here for every type of hiring pro.
1. AcuMax Index
Why do some of us thrive better in one work environment more than another?
According to the AcuMax Index, this is due to good old-fashioned hard wiring. This may sound slightly deterministic, but this short 5-minute assessment can help uncover how our innate wiring influences how we communicate, engage and process information. The AcuMax Index helps employers select candidates that are more likely to be a fit, both for the unique demands of the job profile and the overarching work culture.
Best personality test for hiring for: Employers who want an assessment tool that drills deeper than character traits and situational responses. Perfect for companies that want to build high-performance teams and improve employee engagement.
Intellect and charisma may get you far, but without sound judgment you're less likely to stay at the top. That's according to the researchers behind the Athena Assessment. Instead of just focusing on personality strengths and weaknesses to predict job performance, the Athena Quotient seeks to evaluate how strong our judgment is. And if track record is anything to go by, this tool does its job. The test has been used across all types of industries including healthcare, retail, construction, legal, banking, education, criminal, military, and technology.
Best for: Human resources pros who need insights about a candidate's ability to make the right call.
Each job is different and finding the right candidate can be a complex act of balancing many different variables. The Berke Assessment offers a mix and match approach that measures both personality and problem-solving traits. This tool is a favorite among Fortune 500s but it's straightforward enough to be used by businesses of any size.
Best for: Employers who are hip to the idea of human complexity and want an assessment method that can be tailored to their business needs.
Whether you’re looking for a top-notch SDR, or a customer service whizz, Criteria Corp offers employers a range of pre-employment or new hire personality tests to choose from. Designed by Harvard psychologists, the tests help you assess candidates for a variety of skills and attributes.
Best for: Start-ups, companies with less than 500 employees and busy employers who want a fast, insight-packed assessment.
Created by an in-house team of psychologists, Traitify offers a distinctive set of fun visual assessments to help you uncover personality types and traits. Each assessment consists of a selection of images that require you to simply answer ‘me’ or ‘not me’. Scientifically backed and user-focused, the personality profile assessments take just 2 minutes to complete. The results are instant, so no waiting for long reports. And if you need help figuring out how to apply the data, Tratify offers some nifty analytics tools.
Best for: Any hiring pro who wants easy, instant insights on a job candidate's true personality as part of their pre-employment testing.
6. HR Avatar
If you're tired of ticking boxes and would like some real-world insight, HR Avatar is the one for you. Their animated tests create a simulated workplace where candidates are assessed on how they deal with a range of real-life situations. The test measures cognitive ability, job knowledge, personality, work history and emotional intelligence. Each HR Avatar test is designed for a specific job, e.g., pilot, cashier or chief executive.
Best for: Hiring pros who want to be 100% sure a candidate will perform in a real-life job scenario.
7. Saberr
So you’ve found the perfect candidate. But will they fit in? Using predictive analytics, Saberr can help you assess whether a person is not only a good match for the team, but also a cultural fit for the rest of the organization. By gathering information about personality and values, Saberr creates team profiles that can be cross-referenced against new potential candidates.
Best for: Recruiters who want to find out what personality traits make a person an amazing fit, and who are determined to make a hiring decision that will fit the entire team’s personality style.
8. SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire (OPQ)
Owned by CEB (now Gartner), this established workplace HR personality test is over 30 years old and is one of the most popular tools worldwide. Based on the idea that our behaviors impact our performance, the questionnaire aims to identify the suitability of a candidate against these factors. The assessment can be used at all levels from graduate, to management and all the way up to leadership.
Best for: Skeptical hiring pros who want to find talent using an established assessment technique.
9. Staff Geek
What would happen if you applied the principles of online dating to professional staffing? Just ask Staff Greek. The company uses what they call DNA model (Distinct Native Attributes) to find out how your company ticks. Then, by creating an ideal candidate profile, they match real people to the working cultures that suit them the best. Boasting 30 years industry experience, Staff Geek offers a surprisingly fresh-feeling approach to predicting job fit.
Best for: Employers looking for a longer-term approach to recruitment who want to start with a better understanding of their own needs and working culture.
Offering an array of inspiring testimonials from companies like Subway and AutoNation, the Predictive Index uses behavioral science to assess workplace behaviors and on-the-job performance. The test takes only 10 minutes to complete, so isn’t too onerous for recruiters suffering from assessment fatigue.
Best for: Hiring managers who want fast insights into a candidate’s natural motivations and drivers.
If you're still thinking of Indeed as a mere job board, think again. In addition to their amazing job search and growing library of company reviews, Indeed now offers a powerful new screening tool. Indeed Assessments include over 50 out-of-the-box tests to help hiring teams screen for their highest priority on-the-job skills and execute fast, accurate screening with candidates in less than 5 minutes. With Indeed Assessments, you can get the skills-heavy stuff out of the way fast so you can get back to focusing on the deeper, personality-based aspects that make a perfect fit.
Best for: Honestly, we think Indeed makes some of the best assessments on the market, and they fit well into most employer hiring processes. It’s why we made sure Breezy integrates with Indeed Assessments, to help our customers ensure they can find candidates with the right skills for the job, easily & seamlessly.
And there you have it! 11 personality tests for hiring employees that aim to help improve your hiring process and retention.
