How to Choose Reliable Personality Assessment Models

Would you rather spend a Saturday evening curled up on the couch with a book, or enjoying a night out on the town with friends? When confronted with a tough challenge, do you tend to overthink things, or immediately make a decision?

Different people will react differently to these situations, depending on their personality. Our personalities affect everything we do, including how we perform in our jobs.

Personality testing offers insights into people’s behaviors, traits, and characteristics. It can be used in many different situations, including hiring. But not all personality tests are alike. Valid, reliable personality tests are predictive of job performance and lead to better business results. On the other hand, invalid personality assessments can lower candidates’ trust in the hiring process and deliver less-than-stellar outcomes.

What Are Personality Assessments?

Personality assessments are tests designed to measure and explore an individual’s personality traits. They have been used in hiring for years, as they give hiring managers a deeper understanding of a candidate’s characteristics and suitability for a certain job.

Here are some of the most popular types of personality assessments:

“Big Five” Model

Developed by psychologists through decades of research, the Big Five model identifies five key personality traits. These are:

Openness: People with high openness are creative and enjoy novelty, while those with low openness seek out comfort and routine.

Conscientiousness: People with a high level of conscientiousness are organized, disciplined, and self-motivated, while less conscientious people are disorganized and easily distracted.

Extraversion (Extroversion): “Extroversion” is the more common spelling of this trait, while “extraversion” is usually used in psychology literature—but both mean the same thing. People who are extraverted tend to be more sociable and talkative, while less extraverted people are shy and reserved.

Agreeableness: Agreeable people tend to get along well with others and show high levels of empathy. On the other hand, less agreeable people are difficult to get along with, and they may be egotistical, cruel, or manipulative.

Neuroticism: Highly neurotic people have difficulty tolerating stress, which may make them anxious or irritable. Less neurotic people are typically more emotionally stable and calm.

The Big Five model covers several important aspects of human personality. While this model is generally effective, it has a few limitations that make it a less-than-ideal solution for evaluating job candidates.

There is some controversy over the Big Five model’s applicability across different cultures, since it was originally developed in a Western context using factor analysis of English words. And there are additional traits which are crucial for job performance, such as honesty and humility, that the Big Five model doesn’t measure.

In addition, many Big Five hiring assessments include questions that aren’t job-related (for example, “Do you like going to art galleries?”) These questions may be interpreted as irrelevant, or even discriminatory.

Because Big Five assessments include so many questions, they typically take from 45 minutes to an hour to complete. This long testing time can be very frustrating for job candidates and hiring managers alike.

HEXACO Model

To address the limitations of the “Big Five” model, psychologists created the HEXACO model, a new and improved framework for measuring personality.

HEXACO includes some of the same traits as the Big Five model (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and openness). However, the “neuroticism” trait has been removed, and two new traits have been added:

Emotionality: Highly emotional individuals tend to be fearful of physical harm, very sensitive to life stressors, and feel close emotional attachment to others. On the other hand, less emotional individuals tend to be calm, undeterred by life stressors, and emotionally detached from others.

Honesty-Humility: In the HEXACO model, honesty and humility are combined to form one “compound” trait. People who score high on Honesty-Humility rarely break rules, have little interest in elevating themselves over other people, and are not manipulative. Those who score low on this trait are more likely to break rules for their own benefit, and may be arrogant or self-important.

Hutrics has developed a proprietary personality assessment based on the HEXACO framework. Our research shows that using this model to evaluate job candidates has a proven effect on key business outcomes, such as candidate performance and burnout.

Our assessments are valid, reliable, and have a proven track record of success in leadership hiring contexts (including from a cross-cultural perspective). They do not include irrelevant, non job-related, or potentially biased questions.

When compared to traditional “Big Five” assessments, Hutrics’ assessments take less than half the time to complete. We’ve streamlined our tests to include only the most targeted and relevant items, making them more effective at predicting job success. Using a shorter test will improve your hiring process, ensuring that both candidates and hiring managers can maximize the use of their time, while delivering better results.

According to our research, you can further increase the validity of the HEXACO assessment and lower the likelihood of candidate turnover by integrating it with a working memory assessment. Working memory is a type of short-term memory which is related to reasoning, decision-making, and behavior. It is highly predictive of job performance. Hutrics offers a fully integrated solution that includes both types of assessments.

For more information about Hutrics’ HEXACO assessments and how our hiring packages can help you achieve better business results, contact us today.