Personality questionnaires - do they really help you to predict management effectiveness and leadership potential?
10 Jun 2007
Personality questionnaires and profiles have been used extensively by H.R. Professionals and recruiting managers, especially in the last 10 years to help with the selection and development processes for the managers and leaders of the future. Clearly they add an additional dimension and more data to these processes - but how much decision value, as opposed to complication, do they add to that available from C.Vs., interviews, existing performance or appraisal data?
Personality profile data about a person's preferences, leadership style and likely behaviours and core traits and characteristics is going to be more helpful to predict the effectiveness and success of candidates for a people orientated, influencing role than for a stand alone technical or specialist role where the inter-action with people is of less significance than the thinking element (in which can some basic intelligence and reasoning tests may be more appropriate).
It will also depend on the type of personality profile chosen for the selection task and how well the key competencies, characteristics and leadership style have been described to allow for differentiation between the candidates.
There are a large number of Personality profiles written in English and other languages available in the marketplace. Some are excellent and highly predictive of future behaviours and others are less so. Some that look valid at face value are not very robust at the more detailed level. Others where the questions used seem to be very indirect and opaque on the surface are actually highly valid and predictive. You can the best advice from a trained and accredited BPS (British Psychological Society) Level B Tester.
Sometimes personality profiles produce results which do not tally with your everyday experience of the candidate. When in doubt like this then I recommend that you go by your real experience of the person as past behaviour is often the best predictor of future behaviour.
However when you are assessing external candidates applying for selection for a people oriented vacancy then personality profiles can add as much as 40% to the prediction of success in the job.
They can also help individuals to understand much more about themselves - both their strengths and to guide their future personal development.
For more information about such questionnaires then please contact us.
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