Recruiting a new employee is never an easy task. There are several aspects that recruiters need to take into account when conducting a recruitment process to welcome a new person into the company, like looking for the right set of skills and knowledge and checking for cultural fit. These are, usually, the two most important features that recruiters look for when screening and interviewing candidates, and you could see why.
Looking for the right technical skills is, by instinct, the first thing that a recruiter will look do, as the person he hires needs to be able to perform the tasks he or she will be assigned. As for the cultural fit, it has become an important factor that recruiters take into consideration when hiring a new employee. Recruiting someone who fits in with the company’s values and mission will decrease the chance of turnover and guarantee good adaptation to the team and company environment.
Besides these two factors, there is one that is still very overlooked by employees: personality assessments.
Candidates can often be misleading in their CV's, trying to impress recruiters and hiding the personality traits they perceive as being inadequate for the role they are applying. Even during an interview, the opinion that a recruiter will form of the candidate will always be subjective and biased, as they will have no scientific background to sustain it.
How Can a Personality Test Prevent This?
Personality assessments are a scientific-based method that can accurately predict job performance and company fit. Things like teamwork, honesty, integrity and commitment to work can be assessed using these tests. However, in order for them to be really useful, recruiters need to make sure that they are using scientifically-proven and job-oriented tests so that they can be used to predict a candidates performance in a work environment.
For instance, at skeeled, we use the PCI (Personality Characteristics Inventory), a test provided by Wonderlic. This test consists of a 150 questions inventory, all of them strategically made to assess the Big Five dimensions of personality in a work behavioural context: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Stability.
After the candidate takes the test, the results are summarised in a report that gives recruiters insights on personality characteristics and behaviours, showing what are the characteristics that will contribute to good job performance and the ones that will interfere with good job performance.
Taking this into consideration, we can see that personality tests are great allies in recruitment processes, to guarantee the best job fit possible and to make sure that recruiters are making the right decisions, based on accurate data.
Should You Base Your Opinion Only on Personality Tests?
Even though personality tests can accurately predict how an employee will perform in its daily work, recruiters should not rely only on these tests results. For example, an AI-based Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is also a great way to remove bias from a recruitment process. An ATS will automatically match the best candidates to the role they applied for and screen out the ones who don't fit the job requirements.
By using these two methods combined, recruiters are making sure that their opinions and choices are based on insightful and concrete data, as well as saving time during the entire recruitment process to reach top talent faster.
Skeeled offers you the perfect opportunity to bring innovation and digitalisation to your hiring. Check our website or our LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook pages for further information.
Thanks for reading and see you next time!
Your team here at skeeled
