Pros and Cons of Business Personality Tests

Many organizations choose to take the business personality tests to make sure they choose the right person for the right job. How can a business personality test help you in deciding the right candidate? Read on to find out about the advantages of introducing a business personality test in your recruitment process.

Better Understanding of Candidate

Personality tests can be done at the time of recruitment to understand the candidate better. It helps the recruiter choose the best candidate for the job. How? Let’s assume you’re out looking for a candidate most suitable for a receptionist. Yes, you can go over their expertise for the job by looking at their experience and resume. However, you realize that you need hands-on, good communication skills to deal with clients and managers. Moreover, you want your receptionist to have a calm personality because of the chaos expected at the front desk.

Now, what do you do? You cannot expect someone to state all their personality attributes in their resume, and even if they do, how will they judge them? So, this is where a business personality test helps you. You take a business personality test before recruiting them for the job and evaluating them according to their personality attributes. Please note that there is no such thing as a right or wrong personality trait. You have to choose the ones you think are most suited for the job.

Faster Recruitment Process

The recruiters can either go through the resumes first, shortlist candidates for the business personality tests, or ask them to take the business personality tests even before they go through the resumes. It is entirely up to the recruiter.

The process of recruitment does not slow down when a business personality test is introduced. Yes, it may seem longer and may seem a hurdle in hiring the candidate, but the burden is less time-consuming and helps hire the right candidate for the job. Let’s assume you hire a person by looking at their resume and take their interview, and they seem right for the job. Two months on the job, and they start showing personality traits that are not desired by the job. What do you do then? Start looking for a new candidate? Why not take business personality tests in the beginning to eliminate any chance of undesirable personality that come forward in the future. Business personality tests help you choose the right candidate at a reasonably high speed and minimize any chances of hiring again and again for the same job.

Eliminates Bias

Many times recruiters develop a liking towards specific candidates because they are charming. Due to this, the recruiters often make the wrong decisions because they are falsely distracted by the charms of the candidates. These candidates may seem significant, but they might not be suitable for the job that they are to be hired for. Business personality tests ensure that the recruiters do not show any signs of bias when recruiting the candidates.

They can shortlist the candidates by looking at their scores. They do not have to look at their names or their profiles. The recruiters separate the candidates who have scored higher from the candidates who have scored lower to proceed with the recruitment process.

Disadvantages of Business Personality Tests

Many organizations chose not to use business personality tests as part of their recruitment process because they think these tests are unreliable until a good amount of money is spent on creating them. They believe that other recruitment processes like interviews and assessment centers are more reliable in their recruitment process.

Here are some disadvantages to help you decide whether you will have similar problems in your organization’s recruitment process!

Lack of Reliability

An ordinary business personality test will ask you to choose from the options given for a question in the form of MCQs. This means that the candidates have at least four options to choose from the list. Candidates know which job they’re applying for, and good candidates do their homework on the firm. This means that they know what the firm is looking for in a candidate. So, being a candidate applying for a job you want, what do you think you will do?

You will choose the option that you think will be most closely aligned with the personality attributes the recruiters are looking for in their ideal candidate. This means that the candidates will choose the option that depicts they are vigilant and hardworking if they think that the recruiter is looking for these attributes in their ideal candidate.

Suppose the business personality tests are so predictable that the candidates can see through them and can answer according to the recruiter’s preference. In that case, there is no point in such business personality testing because the whole point of testing a person’s personality and getting to know them without them faking anything goes totally down the drain.

Costly

Business personality tests can prove to be costly for the organization. Why? This is related to the point discussed above. There is no point for an organization to have a predictable test and can be cracked easily by the candidates to get their desired job. So, organizations have made sure that the test is not transparent and gets honest answers (not best) out of the candidates attempting it. To create such testing criteria and a good business personality test, organizations have to hire experts who help design the best possible personality test for the job.

This process becomes a little time-consuming for the firm and does not come cheap. So, many organizations use assessment centers instead of having personality tests to judge their candidates.

We hope the pros and cons mentioned here help you decide whether your organization is best suited to introduce them in your recruitment process or not!

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