4 Insider Strategies to Get the Most from any Personality Assessment Test Part 1

You might have heard Personality Assessment Test called many terms:

• aptitude test 
• assessment test
• candidate assessment
• employment test
• personality test
• and many more

Whatever the term, a personality assessment test is fundamentally a set of questions that help describe people in terms of

• executive leadership
• traits
• archetypes
• motivators
• emotional intelligence
• conflict, etc.

You know how it goes: An employee takes an online assessment test. Then, the employer (and possibly the employee) reviews the results, which get filed away. And life goes on. But the most experienced personality testing professionals, like elite executive and performance coaches, understand that this is only the beginning. These insiders create big value using these strategies.

Let’s say that we have three people being considered for a supervisory hospitality role: Sally, Rick, and Joan. They have all taken an assessment that describes their Friendliness, Manageability, and Responsiveness on a scale of 1-100 (low to high).

• Sally
• Friendliness: 80
• Manageability: 35
• Responsiveness: 81
• Rick
• Friendliness: 72
• Manageability: 30
• Responsiveness: 55
• Joan
• Friendliness: 76
• Manageability: 82
• Responsiveness: 37

Start with a People Data Table

Pros start by looking at multiple data points at the same time. An easy way to do this is to make a simple table like this:

Since we’re considering these people for a senior hospitality role, Friendliness, Manageability, and Responsiveness are important traits to consider. Unfortunately, (but realistically) no one person scores high on all three traits, so we have to make some choices - but which choices? And why? Let’s break it down…

Paint by Numbers

Color-coding makes it easier for us to recognize patterns, which is what we need to get our arms around people data. So, let’s color-code the scores between 65-100 as green, the scores between 45-65 as yellow, and the 1-45 score as red:

Already, the data table is more human-friendly when we add color. It’s easier to intuit and make connections. Adding color also makes it easier to have conversations with colleagues or clients to bring them into the decision. Pro tip: clients LOVE being able to interact with the data along with you.

Scan Across

Let’s start by scanning across the rows: Sally, Rick, and Joan. Simple wisdom says that since green represents the highest score, we want to see more of it in our candidate. Right away, we see that Sally has two green scores, Rick has one green, and Joan has two greens. Based on this data alone, both Sally and Joan rise to the top of the stack. Notice that Sally and Joan also have one red score each plus the two greens each, which means they are even with each other in the individual color count.

Scan Down

Next, let’s scan down the columns, Friendliness, Manageability, and Responsiveness. Looks like everyone scores green in Friendliness, which is what we like to see in our top hospitality candidates. However, since Joan is the only one with a green in Manageability, she clearly stands out from Sally and Rick in that characteristic. Now, looking at Responsiveness, each of our candidates has a different score with Sally coming out on top this time with the only green score. Since each of our candidates have greens in Friendliness, we can disregard that characteristic for now. It now comes down to Sally with her green in Responsiveness and Joan with her green in Manageability.

Bringing it Together

When we scanned across, Sally and Joan came out ahead of Rick, but they were tied with each other. When we scanned down, Rick was edged out, but Sally brought high Responsiveness and Joan brought high Manageability. So, now that Rick is out of consideration, it’s come down to Sally’s high Responsiveness and Joan’s high Manageability.

If we’re hiring for a supervisory hospitality position, we have to ask: all things being equal, do we need someone stronger in Manageability or someone stronger in Responsiveness? Since Sally is more responsive than manageable, she probably solves problems quickly and efficiently but perhaps doesn’t mind breaking a few rules to get it done. Joan, on the other hand, is more manageable than responsive and will likely follow the policies and procedures at the cost of taking longer to get it done.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, but if it were mine, I’d prefer to have my supervisors be more manageable and my non-supervisory client-facing people to be more responsive. In other words: Joan, when can you start? (Sally and Rick, keep fighting the good fight).

And if you’ve read this far, you’ve just performed an actual talent analysis. Do this a few times and it becomes second-nature. Do this a few times with clients and decision-makers and you become indispensable.

In Part Two, we Do the Math and start to understand teams…