If you are familiar with social media, chances are that you have seen or participated in the popular Buzzfeed personality quizzes. You might have discovered which Avenger you are, which Friends character you connect with the most, or which Hogwarts house you belong to. Aside from the pop culture references, all of these tests share one basic commonality: they are all personality assessments.
On a larger scale beyond social media, personality and behavioral tests in the workplace are increasingly popular among business professionals who want to build a cohesive team and determine how their employees react in various situations.
Scientifically, personality tests assess parts of the brain that determine the personality or emotional construct of human beings. They can measure surface-level attributes like how social a person is, but other tests have the ability to find deeper understandings about humans, like what triggers a fight-or-flight response. This data contributes to decision-making or even just a better understanding of how to interact with a team.Here are a few behavioral tests that companies utilize to learn about their employees:
1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) 2. Caliper Profile 3. Hogan Personality Inventory 4. Birkman Method 5. DiSC Behavior Inventory
This evaluation focuses on understanding the employee’s personality in four areas:
Introversion vs. Extroversion
Intuition vs. Sensing
Judging vs. Perceiving
Thinking vs. Feeling
Based on answers to more than 90 questions, the MBTI sorts people into sixteen different personality types that are meant to show how that person perceives and understands a situation. This is a popular personality test for jobs, as it offers prospective employers a glimpse into how the applicant may respond to his or her co-workers.
Specifically designed to assess employee productivity, this career personality test that is used to measure the projected productivity level of potential employees. This test is slightly different from the MBTI in that the Caliper Profile shows how the person’s personality interacts with his/her job functions.
Derived from aspects of the Five-Factor Model, this job personality test also measures how a potential employee’s personality corresponds with the job position he/she is applying for. Over 200 true and false questions gauge how the person may react to any demands associated with the workplace.
The Birkman Method, through a series of 298 questions, collects and presents data about an individual’s usual behavior, interests, stressors, and needs across different environments and industries. The multi-dimensional report provides qualities that leaders and members of an organization may not have been aware of. Three primary pieces of data are reported and communicated with four colors and four shapes:
Underlying needs from your surroundings
Personality and perceptions in a social context
Behavioral and occupational data
As the oldest-known personality test in existence, the DiSC behavior assessment stands for the four main aspects that the test measures:
Dominant Influential Steady Compliant
DiSC differs from the other behavioral tests because it focuses on temperaments rather than personality characteristics. Even so, this work personality test is still popular because it helps managers understand their employees and how they function as part of a team.
Swyft Filings partnered with Birkman and the Wolff Center for Entrepreneurship (WCE), the undergraduate entrepreneurship program at the University of Houston, to provide perspective on the impact that behavioral assessments have on organizations. According to Melissa Muñoz and Amanda Moya, program managers of WCE and