Ready to Get Started?
Join our community of job seekers and get benefits from our Resume Builder today.
Sign Up NowWith new roles being introduced almost every day, it’s essential to understand yourself before making any big career choices.
Whether you’ve already started your professional life or are still figuring out your direction, personality tests can be useful for everyone from beginners to experienced professionals.
If you’re still unsure about which career path to follow, a reliable personality test can serve as a helpful guide.
Depending on how detailed the test is, it can point out your strengths, weaknesses, and personal values. Knowing these helps you find satisfaction and stay motivated in a job over the long run.
Some tests, like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (often known as the 16 Personalities Test), even suggest careers that might suit your personality type.
And if you’re already progressing in your field, don’t dismiss these tests. They can highlight areas for growth and help you move forward faster in your career.
Also, if you’re looking for a new opportunity, understanding your personality and what you offer can help you pick an employer whose values match your own. Remember, a job feels right when your principles align with those of the company.
Employers, HR professionals, and recruiters also use personality tests — not only to hire new people but to improve teamwork and cooperation among employees.
In this article, we will:
The short answer: yes, if you approach them sincerely.
The longer answer: the reliability of personality tests depends on different elements, such as how carefully they were developed, their accuracy, and how consistently you respond.
When it comes to in-person professional tests that measure behavior, brain activity, or even hormone levels, the person administering the test plays a key role in ensuring credible results.
But since such tests can be expensive and hard to access, we’ll focus on free online personality assessments instead.
While taking an online test, try to ensure a quiet, calm environment. Being distracted or annoyed can influence how you respond and change your results.
Your emotional state also matters. High stress or extreme happiness can affect how you answer questions, leading to less objective outcomes.
In fact, your results might vary at different times in your life.
That’s why it’s wise to think about your general behavior from the last six months when answering questions.
For instance, you may normally enjoy socializing but feel tired or withdrawn this week. If a question asks about meeting new people, answer based on your usual behavior, not your current mood.
Otherwise, you might end up getting different results each time you take the test, which lowers its accuracy, even if the test was well-designed.
When using these tests to support a job search, try to set aside your short-term emotions. This helps you find a role that genuinely matches who you are, rather than how you feel at the moment.
As mentioned earlier, personality tests can be helpful for both job seekers and hiring teams. So, it makes sense to see what insights they can provide.
Below are some popular free personality assessments that can guide your career choices.
Let’s begin with a straightforward one — the DISC test.
This assessment focuses on your professional personality and classifies people into four styles: Drive, Influence, Support, and Clarity.
The Big Five test evaluates personality based on five dimensions: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.
Each of these traits is measured separately, not as opposites of one another.
For example, you might score high in agreeableness but low in conscientiousness.
The Big Five test also helps you understand how you and others might respond to different workplace situations, making it a great way to identify your strengths and choose a fitting career path.
If you’re searching for a single test that blends different personality frameworks into one, you’ve found it.
The 16 personalities test follows a trait-based approach inspired by the Myers-Briggs model, but instead of four scales, it uses five main categories. These include:
Mind: How we engage with the world around us
Energy: How we gather and process information
Nature: How we handle feelings and make choices
Tactics: How we organize work and deal with plans
Identity: How confident we feel about ourselves
These five areas are further divided into ten traits arranged in pairs:
Based on your answers, you’ll get a five-letter personality code.
For instance, if you’re extraverted, observant, feeling, judging, and assertive, your type would be ESFJ-A.
After completing the test, you’ll get a breakdown of your main strengths and weaknesses, possible career choices, and your preferred work habits.
This can help you understand which jobs and workplace settings suit you best.
For example, according to the 16 personalities guide, ESFJ-A individuals often do well in careers like social work or accounting.
But how exactly do hiring managers use these personality tests?
Pre-employment testing has become a regular part of recruitment for many companies.
These assessments may include skill checks, language tests, knowledge tests, and personality evaluations.
Their main goal is simple to help employers decide whether an applicant fits the position and the company culture.
The definition of a “good fit” varies from one organization to another, which makes such tests difficult to manipulate.
Now, let’s look at how employers actually make use of personality assessments.
Personality often influences work performance more than we realize.
Studies show that traits such as conscientiousness, agreeableness, and openness can have a positive effect on efficiency and teamwork.
Meanwhile, high levels of neuroticism can sometimes hinder job performance.
However, not being overly agreeable or being straightforward isn’t necessarily a bad thing some companies value honesty and direct communication.
When developed properly by experts, personality tests can give both employers and applicants a clearer view of compatibility, saving time for both sides.
Interviews, on the other hand, can be stressful and may not always show someone’s real abilities. A personality test can reveal other positive qualities even if the person doesn’t perform perfectly under pressure.
In such cases, recruiters can decide what matters most for the role.
If the job rarely requires handling extreme stress, they might prioritize other traits over that one.
Another benefit of using personality tests is identifying potential. This is especially useful for candidates early in their careers, but it also applies to experienced professionals.
It helps employers see future possibilities while giving job seekers a sense of their strengths and areas to develop.
Lastly, personality assessments also support diversity.
Companies that focus on inclusion often use such tools to ensure fair and equal hiring decisions.
Organizations relying on pre-employment tests often find it easier to build a culture of equality and mutual respect among applicants and employees.
Even though personality tests are widely used, they do have their critics. Many say that these tests don’t measure soft skills effectively.
Instead, they focus on fixed personality traits that are difficult to change without long-term effort.
At the same time, people naturally evolve. Our surroundings and experiences can shape our behavior over time.
We face challenges, adapt, and learn to be more understanding and flexible.
Moreover, personality test results always involve interpretation.
For example, one recruiter might believe that being extraverted is essential for sales since it requires talking to people and cold-calling.
Another recruiter, however, might argue that introverts excel in sales because they’re good listeners and pay attention to details.
This means personal judgment still plays a role.
As a result, personality tests alone can’t completely eliminate bias or personal preference.
So, should such an important decision depend only on a personality test?
Probably not. The best approach is to use them wisely and think critically about their results.
If you’re a job seeker, don’t base your decisions solely on a few test outcomes.
And if you’re a recruiter, don’t rely completely on them when assessing candidates.
They can help you learn more about personality traits, but they shouldn’t define someone entirely.
In short, people can’t be categorized into neat boxes. It’s better to look at the whole picture skills, values, attitude, and experience rather than just a test score.
Overall, personality tests can still play a valuable role in the hiring process. There’s no need to discard them completely.
They can highlight a person’s strengths and weaknesses and offer helpful insights into what kind of job might fit best.
For employers, they can also point out which qualities make a candidate likely to succeed.
Still, they’re not absolute measures of ability or success.
Use them as helpful guides, not final judgments.
Remember, personality tests are designed to identify general tendencies, not to define people with total accuracy.
For better results, it’s always wise to seek professional guidance. You can schedule a session with one of our career coaches to get help with:
Join our community of job seekers and get benefits from our Resume Builder today.
Sign Up Now
