Personality Assessments for Hiring: The Key to Better Hiring Decisions

Let's face it: a resume is a highlight reel. It’s a polished, carefully curated document that shows what a candidate has done , not who they truly are. That's why smart companies are looking past the bullet points and using personality assessments for hiring to uncover the core traits that actually drive success on the job.

Why Resumes Don’t Tell The Whole Story

Think of hiring like casting a movie. A resume tells you if an actor has experience playing a hero, but it won't tell you if they have the on-screen chemistry to make the whole cast shine. Resumes are backward-looking by nature, listing past accomplishments without ever predicting future behavior, resilience, or how someone will collaborate under real pressure.

They just can't answer the questions that really matter:

• Will this person actually enjoy our fast-paced, all-hands-on-deck culture?

• How will they react to constructive feedback or a project that goes sideways?

• Are they a creative problem-solver or a meticulous planner who sweats the details?

These are the nuances that separate a decent hire from a game-changing one. Relying only on a resume is like buying a car after just reading the brochure—it looks fantastic on paper, but you have no clue how it actually drives.

The Shift Toward Deeper Insights

That gap between a resume's shine and a candidate's true potential is exactly why so many organizations have moved beyond it. In fact, a staggering 80% of Fortune 500 companies now use personality assessments to build a more complete picture of their applicants. They get it: you can teach someone a new software, but you can't easily teach them to be more resilient or conscientious.

Of course, a candidate's preparedness is also a key indicator. Understanding how to prepare for an interview reveals a lot about their diligence and interest, but even that only shows one piece of the puzzle.

Predicting Success and Building Better Teams

Using personality assessments isn't about finding a team of clones who all think and act the same. Far from it. It’s about building a balanced, dynamic team where different strengths cover for each other's weaknesses.

The goal is to predict on-the-job success, reduce costly turnover, and assemble teams that don't just work together but truly click. An assessment provides the data to move from hopeful guesswork to confident decision-making.

For example, you might assume an extrovert is a shoo-in for a sales role. But what if an assessment reveals that a more introverted candidate possesses off-the-charts grit and conscientiousness? Those are the traits that often lead to long-term success, and you’d never find them on a resume. It’s about finding people who will thrive, not just survive.

Hiring Before and After Personality Assessments

Here's a quick look at how personality assessments upgrade the traditional hiring process.

Ultimately, integrating assessments transforms hiring from an art based on intuition to a science backed by data. It's a fundamental shift that leads to stronger, more cohesive, and more successful teams.

Choosing Your Assessment Toolkit

Navigating the world of personality assessments for hiring can feel like you’ve been dropped into a massive library where every book claims to hold the secret to human behavior. It’s overwhelming. And here's the thing: not all of these tools are created equal. Choosing the wrong one is like trying to fix a car engine with a cookbook—you’ve got a tool, sure, but it's completely wrong for the job.

The key is to match the assessment to what you’re actually trying to accomplish.

It's no surprise that the personality assessment market is exploding. Projections show it’s on track to hit a staggering $24.31 billion by 2031 . Why the boom? Companies are desperate for better, data-driven ways to build teams, especially with the rise of remote work.

When you're building out your toolkit, it helps to look at various career assessments to get a complete picture. Let's break down three of the most popular models to help you find the perfect fit for your team.

The Big Five: A Performance Predictor

First up is the Big Five model, which you can easily remember with the acronym OCEAN . If you need a solid performance predictor , this is your go-to. It doesn't force people into tidy little boxes. Instead, it measures five core personality traits on a spectrum:

• Openness: • How curious and creative is someone? Are they excited by new ideas?

• Conscientiousness: • Are they organized, disciplined, and dependable? This trait is a powerhouse predictor of job performance across almost any role.

• Extraversion: • Where do they get their energy—from being around people or from quiet solitude?

• Agreeableness: • How cooperative and compassionate are they?

• Neuroticism: • How do they handle stress? This is all about emotional stability.

Because the Big Five focuses on stable, scientifically validated traits directly linked to job success, it’s a true workhorse in the hiring world. It’s perfect for screening candidates where specific traits are non-negotiable, like high conscientiousness for an accountant or low neuroticism for an ER nurse.

This infographic nails why this matters. Relying on a resume alone is like seeing in black and white.

Adding an assessment flips the switch to full color, giving you the depth you need to make a truly informed decision.

MBTI: A Communication Style Guide

Next, we have the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). Now, this one comes with a big caveat. It’s not the best tool for pre-hire screening because it doesn't really predict performance. Where it absolutely shines, though, is as a communication style guide .

The MBTI sorts people into one of 16 personality types based on four pairs of preferences, like Introversion (I) vs. Extraversion (E).

Think of the MBTI as a tool for after the hire. It’s fantastic for team-building because it gives everyone a shared language to understand their differences. It helps explain why one person loves a spontaneous brainstorm while another needs to think things through and send a detailed email.

It helps your team answer questions like:

• How do we prefer to take in information and make decisions?

• What are our natural communication blind spots?

• How can we work better together by respecting our different styles?

Just be careful using it for hiring—people’s types can change over time. But for getting an existing team to click? It’s a brilliant icebreaker.

The Enneagram: A Motivational Map

Finally, there’s my personal favorite: the Enneagram. I call this one the motivational map . While other tests describe what people do, the Enneagram gets to the heart of why they do it. It outlines nine core personality types, each driven by a deep, underlying fear and desire.

For instance, a Type Three ("The Achiever") is motivated by a fear of being worthless, which drives their ambition to be seen as valuable and successful. A Type Six ("The Loyalist") is motivated by a need for security, which makes them incredible at spotting potential risks.

This is what makes the Enneagram so powerful for hiring. It gives you a peek into a candidate’s core drivers, which is invaluable for predicting culture fit and long-term happiness in a role. Will a candidate thrive in your hands-off environment, or do they secretly crave more structure to feel safe? The Enneagram gives you those clues.

To get a much deeper understanding, check out our full team personality assessment guide .

Take the Test with Your Team and discover its power!

Which Personality Assessment Is Right For You

Still not sure which tool to grab from the toolbox? Let's lay it all out. Each model offers a different lens through which to view personality, and the "best" one really depends on your specific goal.

Ultimately, the goal isn't just to pick one assessment and call it a day. The smartest approach is to understand what each tool brings to the table and use them strategically to build a well-rounded, high-performing, and genuinely happy team.

How to Use Personality Tests Without Scaring Away Great Candidates

Let's be honest. Dropping a personality test on a candidate can feel like hitting them with a pop quiz in the middle of a first date. It's a delicate moment. Handled poorly, it makes a fantastic applicant feel like just another number to be crunched. But if you get it right? It becomes a fantastic tool for seeing if the fit is truly there for both of you.

Mess this up, and you risk watching top talent walk away before you've even had a real conversation. So, here’s how to integrate these tools without giving everyone a headache.

Get Your Timing and Messaging Right

The absolute worst time to spring an assessment on someone is right on the initial application. Think about it. At that stage, it just feels like an automated gatekeeper—another impersonal hurdle designed to weed people out. Don't do it.

Instead, the assessment should feel like a natural next step in the conversation. A great time to introduce it is after a successful first interview. This sends a much better message: "Hey, we really liked you, we're serious about this, and now we want to dig a little deeper to see how you might click with our team."

The "why" is just as crucial as the "when." Frame it as a tool for mutual benefit, not a pass/fail exam.

Explain that the assessment isn't a test they can fail. It’s a conversation starter that helps you understand their work style, build a better onboarding experience for them, and make sure you’re placing them in a team where they can actually shine.

This simple shift in framing changes the entire vibe from an interrogation to a joint effort to find the perfect match.

Make the Experience Genuinely Positive

The way a candidate experiences your assessment process says a lot about your company culture. A clunky, confusing, or ridiculously long test is a massive red flag. Your mission is to make the whole thing feel seamless, respectful, and maybe even a little enlightening for them.

Here are three things that are absolutely non-negotiable:

• No Surprises: • Be upfront about how long the assessment will take and what it’s for. Reassure them there are no "right" answers and that honesty is what you're looking for.

• Make it Easy: • The test • must • work flawlessly on any device, especially a phone. Technical glitches and a clunky interface are frustrating, and frustration is not the feeling you want associated with your company.

• Give Something Back: • If you can, offer candidates a summary of their results. It’s a small gesture that shows you respect the time they invested and reinforces that you're a company that cares about people's growth.

A positive experience is a big deal, especially as these tools become more common. While North America still leads the pack with advanced AI-driven assessments, the Asia-Pacific region is the fastest-growing market. You can learn more about the global personality assessment solutions market and see how these trends are shaping hiring everywhere.

Use the Results to Start Deeper Conversations

The biggest rookie mistake is treating an assessment report like a final verdict stamped on a candidate's forehead. It's not a crystal ball. Its real power is as a guide for asking better, more insightful questions during the next interview.

For example, say an Enneagram assessment suggests a candidate is a Type Six, "The Loyalist." This type is known for being security-oriented and a great troubleshooter, but they can also struggle with self-doubt. Instead of just noting it, you can use it.

You could ask, "Can you tell me about a time you had to push a project forward even when you felt uncertain about the outcome?" Suddenly, you’re getting to the core of how they operate. Understanding how the Enneagram works at work gives you a brilliant framework for these kinds of discussions.

When you weave the results into the conversation like this, you're showing the candidate you’ve done your homework and are genuinely curious about who they are. The assessment transforms from a hurdle to clear into a bridge to a much more meaningful connection.

Common Mistakes Most Companies Make

Personality assessments are fantastic tools, but let's be clear: they aren't magic wands that conjure up a perfect team. When used carelessly, they can do more harm than good. Think of it like a high-performance power tool. In the right hands, it can build something amazing. In the wrong hands, it's just a fast way to make a mess, creating bias, scaring away top talent, and maybe even landing you in legal trouble.

So many companies stumble right out of the gate, falling into the same old traps that sink the whole process. Avoiding these blunders is the difference between gaining real insight and just creating a very complicated, data-heavy echo chamber. Let's pull back the curtain on the biggest mistakes so you can sidestep them completely.

Relying Solely on a Test Score

This is it. The cardinal sin of using personality tests. A test score is just one piece of a much larger puzzle. Making a hiring decision based only on a report is like picking a life partner based on their zodiac sign—it might be an interesting data point, but it's nowhere near the whole story.

Sure, a candidate might have the "perfect" profile for a sales role on paper, but what if they have zero genuine passion for your product? The assessment can't measure that. A great candidate's true potential shines at the intersection of their skills, experience, how they handle the interview, and their personality traits.

Key Takeaway: An assessment report should never be a "yes/no" button. It's a conversation starter. It’s a guide for asking smarter interview questions and adding a layer of objectivity to your evaluation—not replacing it.

Using Unscientific or 'Pop' Quizzes

The internet is swimming with five-minute quizzes that promise to reveal your spirit animal or which Game of Thrones character you are. Those are great for a laugh, but they have absolutely no place in a professional hiring process. Using an unvalidated, "pop-psychology" test for a serious decision like hiring isn't just a bad idea; it's professionally irresponsible.

These quizzes completely lack the scientific rigor to prove they are reliable (meaning they give consistent results over time) and valid (meaning they actually measure what they claim to measure). Using them can lead to wildly inaccurate conclusions and open the door to all sorts of bias.

To protect your company and make fair, smart decisions, always stick to tools that are:

• Scientifically Validated: • The provider should be able to hand you documentation proving the test's reliability and validity, specifically for workplace use.

• Job-Relevant: • The assessment absolutely must measure traits that are directly tied to what it takes to succeed in the role you're hiring for.

• Legally Defensible: • Your tools have to comply with guidelines from bodies like the • Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) • to ensure they don’t discriminate against protected groups.

Falling into the 'Fit' Trap

This is one of the sneakiest mistakes of all: using assessments to hire people who are just like everyone else on the team. Leaders often talk about wanting a good "culture fit," but this can quickly turn into a hunt for "people who think and act just like me." That’s a fast track to a homogenous team with massive blind spots.

Real strength comes from cognitive diversity —a mix of perspectives, problem-solving styles, and ways of seeing the world. If your assessment data always points you toward hiring outgoing, fast-paced thinkers, you’re going to miss out on the quiet, methodical planners who can spot risks a mile away.

Instead of screening for "fit," start screening for " culture add ." Ask yourself how a candidate's unique personality and strengths can complement and balance the team you already have. Use the data to build a resilient, well-rounded team, not a clone army. You’ll find this approach not only builds a more capable team but a more inclusive and dynamic workplace, too.

Turning Assessment Data Into A Superpower

Alright, let's talk about where most companies completely drop the ball. They treat personality assessments like a bouncer at a club—a quick check at the door, and once you're in, you're in. That rich, insightful data from the hiring process? It gets tossed into a digital filing cabinet, destined to collect dust for eternity.

This is like buying a state-of-the-art GPS for a road trip, using it to find the on-ramp to the highway, and then promptly chucking it out the window. The real magic isn't just in finding the right people; it's in keeping them, growing them, and creating an environment where they can absolutely crush it.

That assessment data is your playbook for long-term success. It’s time to start using it.

From Hiring Tool to Onboarding Compass

Think about a new hire's first few weeks. It's a make-or-break period that sets the tone for everything that follows. A generic, one-size-fits-all onboarding is a huge missed opportunity. With personality data, you can stop guessing and start creating a personalized, high-impact experience from day one.

Imagine knowing a new team member's core motivations and communication style before they even log in for their first meeting. Suddenly, managers can tailor their entire approach.

• Got a Detail-Oriented Planner? • Ditch the vague "get acquainted" schedule. Hand them a structured • 30-60-90 day plan • with crystal-clear milestones. They’ll feel secure and ready to contribute because you’re speaking their language of clarity.

• Hired a Big-Picture Innovator? • Get them plugged into the company’s vision and strategic goals immediately. Connect them with leaders from other departments to fuel their curiosity and show them where they can make a creative splash.

• Welcoming a People-Focused Collaborator? • Make introductions and coffee chats the top priority. Your goal is to get them connected and feeling like part of the community from the jump.

This isn't about coddling anyone. It's about being smart. It shows a new hire that you see them as an individual, not just another headcount, and you’re invested in their success right from the start.

Building a Team That Truly Clicks

Beyond onboarding a single person, the collective data from your team's assessments is pure gold. It gives you an incredible "team map," revealing the group's overall personality landscape. With this map, you can stop being a reactive firefighter and start acting like a proactive team architect.

The goal is to move from a collection of talented individuals to a cohesive unit that understands and respects its own internal dynamics. Assessment data provides the shared language to make that happen.

Picture plotting your entire team's personality types on a single chart. All at once, you can spot patterns that were totally invisible before. Maybe you realize your marketing team is jam-packed with creative idea-generators but is short on the highly conscientious folks needed to see those brilliant ideas through to the finish line.

Now that is a powerful insight. It tells you exactly what kind of personality you need to hire next to create a better balance. It also helps you manage the people you already have—like pairing that big-picture thinker with a detail-oriented partner to make sure projects are both groundbreaking and flawlessly executed. Good luck trying to achieve that level of strategic team building with just resumes and gut feelings.

Defusing Conflict Before It Even Starts

Let's be honest: personality clashes are one of the biggest killers of productivity and morale. Most workplace arguments aren't born from malice, but from simple misunderstanding. A direct communicator is seen as abrasive by a more sensitive colleague. A meticulous planner gets driven mad by a teammate who thrives on spontaneity.

Personality data is the decoder ring for these interactions.

When team members get a peek into their own operating systems—and those of their colleagues—empathy starts to replace friction. For example, knowing your teammate is an Enneagram Type 1 ("The Reformer") helps you understand that their constant feedback isn’t a personal attack. It comes from a deep-seated, almost compulsive, need to make things better.

This level of awareness is directly linked to a person’s ability to manage their own emotions and read others. To really dig into this skill, it’s worth exploring how to measure emotional intelligence as a perfect complement to personality frameworks.

Armed with this knowledge, you can run workshops where your team openly discusses its strengths and potential blind spots. This fosters psychological safety, where differences are viewed as assets, not liabilities. The conversation fundamentally shifts from, "Why are you always so difficult?" to, "Okay, I see you approach this differently. Let's figure out how our styles can work together."

That single shift is the secret sauce for turning a group of employees into a truly exceptional, unstoppable team.

Got Questions? We’ve Got Answers.

Jumping into the world of personality assessments for hiring can feel like you've just been handed a brand-new, slightly intimidating power tool. It’s exciting, but you’ve got questions. How do you use this thing correctly? Is it even fair? Let's clear the air and tackle some of the most common concerns.

Think of this as your personal cheat sheet. We're cutting through the noise to give you straightforward answers on the legal, practical, and ethical questions that every smart leader should be asking.

Are These Tests Even Legal to Use for Hiring?

Yes, absolutely—but with a huge caveat. To stay on the right side of the law, particularly guidelines from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), any test you use must be validated and job-related . That’s not just corporate-speak. It means you have to be able to prove that the traits your test is looking for are genuinely crucial for someone to succeed in that specific job.

This is exactly why you need to run—not walk—away from those free online quizzes or tests built for fun. They have zero legal standing in a hiring context.

The golden rule? Team up with a reputable provider that can show you the validation data. And most importantly, never use a test score as the single reason for a hiring decision. It’s just one piece of the puzzle in a bigger, fairer, and more complete picture.

Can't People Just Cheat on a Personality Test?

It’s the question on every hiring manager's mind: Can a savvy candidate just tell you what you want to hear? The short answer is, sure, they can try. But professionally designed assessments have some clever tricks up their sleeve to spot fakers.

Modern tests have built-in safeguards to encourage honesty:

• Validity Scales: • Think of these as hidden tripwires. They’re subtle questions designed to flag inconsistent or too-good-to-be-true answers. If someone claims they’ve • never • told a white lie and they • always • adore every single person they meet, the system raises a little red flag for what's called "social desirability bias."

• Forced-Choice Questions: • This format is especially tough to game. Instead of rating statements, candidates have to choose between two equally positive options, like "I am a creative problem-solver" versus "I am a disciplined project manager." There's no obvious "right" answer, which forces a more genuine response.

Honestly, your best defense is good old-fashioned communication. When you explain that the assessment is about finding a great mutual fit , you encourage people to be themselves. After all, nobody really wins when they land a job they're secretly miserable in.

How Do I Pick the Right Assessment Tool?

Choosing the right tool isn’t about finding the most popular one; it’s about answering one simple question: What are you actually trying to measure? Don't just grab the first shiny assessment you see. Start with the job itself.

First, get your team in a room and hammer out the non-negotiable skills and traits for the role. Are you looking for incredible resilience in a high-stakes sales job? Or is meticulous attention to detail the holy grail for your new accountant? Get specific. Once you have that list, your search gets a whole lot easier.

Next, start vetting vendors who offer scientifically validated, workplace-specific assessments. Don't be afraid to ask for the receipts. Request their validation studies, look at case studies from companies like yours, and check out their sample reports. A good report gives your hiring managers clear, actionable insights—not a wall of confusing psychological jargon.

And finally, always think about the candidate. Is the test easy to use? Does it work on a phone? Does it respect their time? Remember, the assessment is one of your first real touchpoints with top talent. Make it a good one.

Ready to uncover the deeper motivations that drive your team? The Enneagram Universe assessment provides the insights you need to build stronger, more self-aware teams. Discover your team's core drivers and unlock their full potential .