Personality assessments

Personality questionnaires are used to assess your workplace behavioural style and preferences, i.e. how you typically like to act. They are designed to measure those particular aspects of personality that determine, or are predictive of, successful performance at work; how you handle relationships at work, your thinking style and how you manage tasks, and your feelings and motivations.

Assessing personality has been proven to be an effective predictor of performance at work. This is because we tend to focus more on the kind of tasks we prefer engaging with, and as a consequence we become much more skilled in these areas. Conversely, when operating outside of our preferred way of behaving, we may feel more challenged and be less inclined to persevere to develop high levels of competence.

You may have been asked to complete this as part of a multi-method assessment process, or as a stand-alone assessment called Dimensions. 

How does it work?

The questionnaire is completed online via our assessment system, and includes a series of statements about behavior at work. Your task is to rate each statement, indicating how true the statement is about your behavior at work, or in other relevant situations.

The statements are grouped into blocks of four. In each block, you are asked to rate each statement on a scale indicating whether the statement is 'completely untrue' to 'very true' of your behavior. You can respond to the statements within a block in any order, and change a rating by clicking on another option.

In each group of statements, you should avoid giving the same rating to more than one statement. If you do give the same rating to several statements you are then asked to put these in rank order.

Once you have moved on to a new block, you are not able to return to a previous one. There is no time limit for the questionnaire but you are encouraged to give your immediate responses.

The personality assessment normally takes approximately 25 minutes to complete.

Feedback

Following the completion of a personality assessment, you should receive feedback from the recruiter, hiring organization or your employer. Even if it isn't initially offered, don't be afraid to ask for feedback as this will enable you to discuss what the questionnaire measures, your responses and how it all applies to your day-to-day work.