The Rise of Personality Testing in Hiring
An estimated 80% of Fortune 500 companies use some form of personality assessment in their hiring process. The market for workplace personality testing exceeds $2 billion annually and is growing rapidly. Whether you like it or not, there is a good chance your next job application will include a personality component.
Understanding why companies use these tests, what they are actually measuring, and how to approach them as a candidate gives you a significant advantage in the hiring process.
Why Companies Use Personality Tests
Predicting Job Performance
Decades of meta-analytic research show that personality traits — particularly Conscientiousness — predict job performance across virtually all occupations. The correlation is not huge (around 0.22-0.27), but it is consistent and meaningful, especially when combined with other selection methods like interviews and work samples.
For specific roles, other traits become important: Extraversion predicts sales and management success, Agreeableness predicts performance in cooperative teams, and Emotional Stability predicts performance in high-stress environments. Companies use personality tests to match candidates to roles where their traits predict success.
Reducing Turnover
Hiring mistakes are expensive — estimates range from 50-200% of the employee's annual salary for each bad hire. Personality-job mismatches are a leading cause of early turnover. An introvert hired for a heavily client-facing role, or a creative thinker placed in a rigid process environment, will likely leave within a year. Pre-hire personality assessment reduces these costly mismatches.
Team Composition
Some companies use personality data not to screen out candidates but to build balanced teams. They are looking for the candidate whose personality complements the existing team — adding an analytical thinker to a creative team, or a detail-oriented member to a vision-driven group.
What Tests Measure (And What They Do Not)
Most hiring personality tests measure one or more of: Big Five traits, DISC behavioral style, cognitive ability, or role-specific competencies. They do not (and legally should not) measure mental health diagnoses, protected characteristics, or medical conditions.
Important: no personality test can tell an employer whether you are a "good" or "bad" person. They measure fit between your traits and the role's demands. A result that disqualifies you from one role might be exactly what another role requires.
How to Approach Hiring Personality Tests
Be Honest
This is the most counterintuitive advice, but it is the most important. Faking personality tests (answering how you think the employer wants) is risky for two reasons: good tests detect faking through validity scales, and even if you fool the test, you end up in a role misaligned with your actual personality. Getting hired is not the goal — getting hired into a role where you will thrive is.
Know Your Baseline
Take free personality assessments before your hiring process begins. When you already know your Big Five profile and DISC style, hiring assessments are less anxiety-inducing because you know roughly what to expect. Self-knowledge also helps you articulate your results positively in subsequent interviews.
Understand Context
If you are applying for a sales role, the employer likely values Extraversion and Dominance. If it is a research role, they likely value Conscientiousness and Openness. This is not about faking — it is about understanding whether you genuinely fit the role before investing in the application process.
Ask About the Test
You have every right to ask what personality test a company uses, what it measures, and how results factor into hiring decisions. Companies that use tests ethically will be transparent about this. Companies that refuse to share this information may be using tests inappropriately.
Red Flags in Hiring Personality Tests
- Tests used as the sole hiring criterion (should be one factor among many)
- Tests with no published validity data for the specific role
- Results shared with unrelated parties within the organization
- Tests that ask about medical conditions, religious beliefs, or other protected categories
- No opportunity to discuss or contextualize your results
Prepare by Knowing Yourself
The best preparation for any hiring personality test is genuine self-knowledge. Take these free assessments to understand your profile before encountering them in a hiring context:
- Big Five Personality Test — the framework most commonly used in hiring research
- DISC Assessment — widely used in corporate hiring contexts
- MBTI Assessment — understand your cognitive preferences