The assessment
Workable's personality assessment is designed to help you understand how candidates approach challenges and interactions in the workplace. Candidates are asked to complete a short assessment, responding to workplace scenarios.
There are no right or wrong answers. Some personality traits may be more important for certain jobs - some traits less relevant for a job.
A team with diverse personalities that shares core values will have strong teamwork. A homogenous team may subscribe to a single way of thinking or tackling problems and have more difficulty working together.
The results
The categories of personality assessed are:
- Agreeableness
- Conscientiousness
- Extraversion
- Emotional Stability
- Openness To Experience
Important
One might think that a person who is agreeable is easier to work and someone who is disagreeable is hard to work with.
But consider work situations where you want an employee to be disagreeable.
- A salesperson negotiating a deal should be somewhat self-interested
- A support person working with a customer who demands a refund without a receipt should be suspicious
- A designer may need to be confrontational so they aren't bulldozed with design input from others
These traits may have appeared to be negative at first glance. Really, there is value in these traits that provides perspective and contrast compared to other team members or highlights an important skillset based on the job.
For example, the "chaos-tolerant" trait might be important for a growing small business where employees need to take on new responsibilities or projects suddenly.
Use the results not as a test to disqualify candidates, but as a way to understand how the candidate would fit the job and organization.
An overview of the results will appear on the candidate's timeline. Click More details to see an extended breakdown and definition for traits in each category.
The further the mark is to the left, the candidate exhibits less of that trait. The further the to the right, the candidate exhibits more of that trait.
Detailed sub-categories and results also appear on a scale, indicating which trait a person is more likely to exhibit.
Click the View Questions button on the candidate's profile to see suggested interview topics and questions based on the personality results. These questions are optional and are only a guide for interviewers. Candidates will not see them. They are designed to start more conversations around a candidate's most "extreme" personality points and are customized for each candidate. For example, if a candidate is extremely "trusting", a main question as well as follow up questions are suggested for discussion.
If a scorecard was created for the pipeline stage and if an event has been scheduled, but not taken place, then the questions can be added to the evaluation scorecard by clicking the button that appears when viewing the results.
All questions and follow up questions will be added to the evaluation form. When evaluating, add a rating for each main question along with any notes.
Profile quality alerts
While reviewing the personality assessment scores (under 'More details') you should keep in mind that the candidate may not be fully sincere or may believe they are better than they are in reality and this can influence the score quality. If we identify any issues or response patterns in the candidate replies you may see one or more of the below labels:
- Middle responses: The candidate chose the middle answer many times. This shows they may be unwilling to reveal details about themselves. They don't agree or disagree with most of the statements.
- Extreme responses: The candidate chose extreme answers (1 or 5) very often. They mainly strongly agree or strongly disagree with the statements. It's unlikely for someone to be so certain about their preferences and behaviors.
- Inconsistent responses: If you compare the candidate's answers to questions with similar meanings and high correlation, you see a lack of consistency. This suggests they may have chosen their answers at random.
- Overly positive: The candidate comes across as very extrovert, agreeable, conscientious, open to experience, and emotionally stable. Only a small minority of people have such high scores on all these scales. It's a good idea to verify these answers during an interview.
- Overly negative: The candidate comes across as very introverted, self-interested, not conscientious, not open to experience, and very emotionally unstable. Only a very small minority of people have such low scores on all these scales at the same time.
- Unbalanced profile: The candidate's profile appears unusually varied. This may be part of a strategic response.
- Highly consistent profile: The candidate's profile appears flat with little differentiation between personality scales. This may be an indication of a random response pattern.
If you see any of the above labels it would be a good idea to verify the candidate's answers and personality via an interview screening to proactively identify any inaccuracies you should take into account when evaluating the candidate during the next steps of the process.
