Personality or Skills? Which should your team assess?
In recent years, the appeal of assessments for recruitment and benchmarking employees has been growing. With technological advancements and rigorous scientific validation, it has become accessible and reliable to use assessments to make informed decisions, and Talent Board’s 2016 Survey revealed that 82% of companies are already using some type of assessment tool. Using assessments not only improves the candidate’s experience but is also beneficial to employers in many ways — it’s affordable, backed by research, time-efficient and paves the way to develop more effective hiring and succession strategies.
Most organizations use either personality or skill-based assessments. It is worth critically examining the benefits and limitations of these two types of assessments to understand their optimal use in organizations.
Personality-based assessments
Many companies and experts use personality assessments to identify the fitment of individuals in the organisation and whether individuals with different personalities will function well together. Personality assessments are a measure of one’s natural tendencies and innate motivations. Simply put, they measure what an individual will find the easiest and most natural to do. For example, an individual low in “openness” is likely to stick to a routine instead of trying new things while a person high on the same trait is strongly driven by curiosity and prefers novelty.
Skill-based assessments
On the other hand, skill-based assessments measure an individual’s proficiency in desirable workplace skills and behaviours such as communication, leadership, flexibility and agility. Rather than measuring innate tendencies, these skills reflect acquired abilities, mindsets, attitudes and personality traits. The emphasis on these behavioural skills has gained momentum at the workplace over the last few years. In fact, a LinkedIn survey pointed out that 80% of HR professionals believe that soft skills are the key to the candidate’s, and in-turn, the organisation’s success. Skill assessments are thus critical because they help organisations discover high potential talent and identify skill gaps in the organisation to make informed and evidence-based decisions.
Read more: Soft skills: The What? The Why? And the what next.
Skill-based assessments are more actionable and predictive.
When decisions are made based on personality and the success and failure of the organisation is attributed to the personality of the employees they implicitly foster a more stagnant mindset. Employees rely on their personality attributes to justify performance instead of being agile and acquiring new skills to improve performance. Personality tests used for hiring and promotion send employees the message that their ability to perform is static and that they cannot hone it over time- this is harmful to both the employer and the employees. While personality traits remain stable throughout with the exception of major life events, soft skills are becoming more valuable due to their highly transferable and learnable nature. They can be developed through training, experiences and the commitment to intentionally practice. Promoting skills assessments over personality assessments in organisations fosters a culture of growth mindset.
Furthermore, over-reliance on personality assessments overlooks the fact that individuals are also driven by situational motivations, and not just their innate tendencies. Situational demands are often strong enough to drive people to act in ways that may seem rather contradictory, given their personality traits. A huge reward such as a promotion or a punishment such as a bad appraisal score or even getting fired are strong situational factors to make a person act in ways that differ from their natural tendencies. When it comes to the role of personality and workplace success, psychology professor Art Markman claims that when an individual has the necessary skills to succeed or the situation is a strong determinant of behaviour then personality may not matter as much. In fact, psychologists estimate that personality accounts for only 20% of the difference in behaviour between people.
Let’s take an example. Many organisations believe that people high on extroversion (a personality trait characterised by enthusiasm, sociability and gregariousness) are better at sales because they are naturally outgoing. This idea is so ingrained that it is hardly ever questioned. Daniel Pink in his book ‘To Sell is Human: The Surprising Truth About Moving Others’ reveals that across thirty-five studies, the correlation between sales performance and extraversion was as low as 0.07. In fact, skills such as active listening, openness to change, resilience and the ability to work under pressure are much more important for sales success. A person’s natural preference to interact with people does not necessarily mean they are skilled at interacting with people. An introvert with good communication skills and emotional intelligence will be far better at sales than an extravert who is naturally inclined to approach people but lacks the skills to effectively do that.
This is not to say that personality assessments are not value additive at the workplace when used in the right context. Personality assessments can aid in self awareness and in understanding the people one works with. However, skills assessments are far more valuable when it comes to hiring the right person, making promotion decisions or devising a learning and development strategy. They are more objective and help build a culture of meritocracy. Once hiring or promotion decisions are made based on skills, personality inventories can complement and deepen our understanding of the natural inclinations of our employees.
