Personality Questionnaires

A personality questionnaire is designed to assess your likely behaviour in work situations rather than your ability to do the work itself, and aims to gauge how you approach tasks, solve problems and how you relate to others. Questionnaires often vary in the number of personality characteristics that they look to measure - some will measure five, some sixteen and some thirty two. Typical characteristics that employers are looking to measure include:

• Perfectionism: the degree to which you value maintaining high standards over meeting deadlines.
• Risk Taking: your willingness to take risks as opposed to having a tendency towards caution and security.
• Time Management: your desire to work to a schedule in contrast to a more flexible approach to the use of time.
• Social Confidence: your tendency to seek attention in social or group situations, and your degree of comfort or discomfort when speaking in front of a group.

A typical questionnaire style involves presenting the candidate with a set of four statements, from which they are asked to select one item which is most like themselves and one which is least like themselves. For example, from the following four statements, pick the one that is MOST like you, pick the one LEAST like you, and then prioritise the remaining two, one of which is more like you than the other.

• Strong and determined
• Enthusiastic and friendly
• Caring and sharing
• Questioning and careful

When carrying out a personality test, remember that there is no 'right' or 'wrong' answer, only the one that accurately reflects your view. These tests are specifically designed to minimise transparency and 'fakeability'; the combination of question types often makes it extremely hard for candidates to give the answers that they think the assessors want to hear.

The results from your personality questionnaire will be compared to a large sample of people who have taken the assessment previously. This sample usually comprises of the type of people who have the skills that are required by the position you are applying for. This comparison will give the assessors an indication of how strong your characteristics are relative to that group and what this is likely to mean in terms of how you 'behave'.

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