
Understanding the Concept of Personality Interview Questions
Cultural fit is an important aspect when it comes to candidate hiring. This always poses a dilemma for a recruiter, making it a difficult decision to make. The recruiters must ensure that the new hires are not only enriched with skills but also aligned with the organizational culture. Imagine a scenario where the candidate’s resume is spotless, has relevant skills, and comes with good experience, there are chances where that person might not be the perfect fit for the role. This emphasizes the need for a personality interview, helping recruiters focus only on the character traits and personality of the candidates.
Personality interview questions are specifically curated to offer a holistic view of a candidate’s personality. The data collected from this interview provides a deep understanding of the candidate’s behavioral aspects. In the context of hiring, personality weighs the same as skills and qualifications. Combining these factors determines whether the candidate is a good fit for the role and the organization.
By leveraging a personality interview, the candidates are asked questions based on the roles and responsibilities they will be working for. By curating questions based on similar premises, the questions focus on bringing out their behavioral aspect in a given situation. The inferences acquired can be used to analyze the personality of the candidates. This is one great way to assess intangible qualities.
Why is it Important to Ask Personality Interview Questions?
Personality-based interview questions are an ideal way to understand how well a new hire can work with your team. Traditional hiring focuses only on the qualifications and skills needed to finish the work rather than on how the new hire fits the culture. An individual’s personality plays a key role in their ability to gel with the team and its values.
Moreover, any working professional will have ups and downs in their career, and how they deal with such circumstances is highly important to consider while hiring. The team must also have an idea about the individual’s working style, interest, and enthusiasm to learn, as well as their level of productivity, and check if their professional values align with the organization.
An ideal personality interview question can reveal the following aspects of a candidate –
- Openness to criticism
- Flexibility
- Team spirit
- Aspirations
- Work ethics
Using this hiring method, recruiters can assess candidates’ soft skills and their ability to interact with other team members and external parties such as suppliers, stakeholders, and customers. This process is also a practical way to provide an atmosphere for healthy bonding and conversations during the hiring process.
Key Soft Skills Evaluated Through Personality Interview Questions
Personality questions for job interviews are a comprehensive method for understanding candidates as individuals. Below are some core soft skills that can be evaluated using personality interview questions.
- Leadership – Leadership is an important quality to assess candidates on. This can be evaluated by putting across a question like, “How will you as a leader resolve a challenging situation for your team?”. This will give the recruiters insights into the candidate’s ability to lead a team.
- Discipline – Discipline is a crucial skill while working in an organization. This can be judged by looking at how well the candidate responds to questions like “How will you prioritize tasks while dealing with multiple deadlines?”. This type of question will reveal a candidate’s ability to manage time and work under an acceptable amount of pressure.
- Credibility—Credibility is associated with uncovering the candidate’s integrity and honesty. A question like “How would you handle a situation where you have to admit to making a mistake?” will reveal the candidate’s ability to be honest and how they manage such a situation.
- Psychological Resilience – Using the personality interview methods, a candidate’s psychological resilience can be evaluated by asking questions like “Can you describe a stressful event at work and how you handled it?”. This will bring out their ability to manage stress and seek support.
- Motivation – Motivation is an important parameter to look for in a new hire. This can be tested through questions like “What motivates you to do well in this job?” Knowing what motivates a candidate is good data for the organization. It helps to ensure that new hires remain motivated and contribute to organizational success.
- Creativity – Creative skills can be deciphered by asking them questions like “Can you share any creative solution that you have curated for work?”. This can be used to gauge the candidate’s ability to be creative, think outside of the box as well as meet deadlines faster.
- Critical Thinking – Critical thinking is an inevitable skill while hiring a candidate. Critical thinking includes problem-solving skills, which can be evaluated using questions like “Can you describe an instance where you had to analyze complex data and make a decision?”. This will give a picture of the problem-solving and decision-making skills of the candidates.
- Communication – Ultimately, these personality interview questions can be used for analyzing the communication. The candidates have to answer these questions verbally, enabling them to be vocal and showcase their communication capabilities.
What are Some of the Red Flag Behaviors to Look For?
Most of the candidates are a combination of multiple character traits. These traits might also include negative behaviors that are unwelcome in the workplace setup. Having some of these personality traits can tamper with work relationships, often interfering with work efficiency and performance. Hence, while hiring candidates, it is important to look for some of these traits and make the call. Let us look at some of these traits.
- Tardiness – Time management is crucial in managing and prioritizing work to meet deadlines. However, tardiness is overlooked, especially with creative roles where they end up working at a preferred schedule. Tardiness is a personality trait that must not be encouraged.
- Short Temper – A person who can be short-tempered can bring down the spirit of the team. This can be often seen in higher-level employees, especially in leadership positions. The person will remain unapproachable and can bring down the team’s motivation.
- Unorganized – Employees being unorganized can affect the efficiency of the entire team. If the daily tasks are not completed, it can slow the potential of the entire team. This type of trait exhibited by some can often lead to misplacing important data or documents that might be crucial for work.
- Arrogance – Recruiters may come across candidates who think they know it all and might not be good listeners. Arrogance can be confused with confidence. This can instill an unapproachable atmosphere for the team members.
- Selfishness – This personality trait often tries to project their interest to be superior and inconsiderate. They might not be the right choice for roles that require empathy, collaboration, and teamwork.
- Manipulative – Manipulative traits might include using people and taking advantage of them. This will severely affect company values and strength. This is one of the hardest to recognize and often can be seen in roles with power.
Apart from these personality traits, some of the other behaviors to be flagged are as follows –
- Inappropriate Answers – Giving inappropriate answers is an unwelcome behavior in any interview. Rules of conduct specifically mention that the candidates must keep their answers professional and decent.
- Lack of Passion – People with a lack of passion or enthusiasm can bring down the team’s spirit. The candidate that you hire must have a bit of passion for the job that they are being hired for.
- Extremely Low or High Self-esteem – Self-esteem is an important aspect to look for in a candidate. Specifically for higher-level roles, they must be able to describe their professional successes. If they struggle to answer this question, either they are less qualified, experienced, or have very low self-esteem.
- Too Much Focus on Work – It is important to remember that hard work does not mean the best work. The behavior of being too dedicated to work must be flagged. Proper deadlines have to be set with every task and ensure that employees have their work-life balance.
- “Canned” Answers – These are instances where the candidates come prepared to answer these questions. If the candidates end up giving regular and generic answers and explaining how well they are the best fit, it means they lack this quality.
When to Include Personality Interview Questions in the Hiring Process?
Personality interview questions are a must in the hiring process. Experts recommend that these questions that help assess a candidate’s personality traits be included after the completion of the personality assessment, which can be conducted in an online format. This assessment test can be followed by a one-on-one session where personality interview questions can be asked based on candidates’ answers from the assessment test.
Recruiters can choose any personality assessment test such as the 16 Personality Type Test. Following this, the in-person interview questions can be asked that will offer the following benefits –
- A faster shortlisting of candidates
- Acquire discussion points for the interview
- Easy comparison for candidates with similar hard skills
Tips to Assess Candidates’ Answers to Personality Interview Questions
Personality interview questions aid the recruiters in identifying the right fit not only for the job role but also someone who is the right fit for the organization as well. Here are some ways to effectively use personality interview questions.
- Look for answers from candidates that are memorable and that stand out. This is apt for roles that interact with clients every day.
- Understand the difference between personality and personal interview questions. Recruiters must not in any way question the candidates on their age, gender, religion, or any other personal records. All the questions must only focus on the role, skills, and their behavioral aspects.
- Icebreaking questions like their interests and hobbies can lighten up the atmosphere and make it easy for the candidates. This session can be used to evaluate their communication skills and how they reason their interests.
- It is important to focus on behavior, however, creativity is an important aspect too. Look at how they put their creative mind into answering the questions. Focus on how their answers are different from the traditional ones.
- Keep an open mind and do not reject at any first sign of “not fit”. It is important to allow candidates to prove their talent and adaptability.
20 Core Personality Interview Questions
- Describe the time when you had to fill in for someone else. How were you able to manage the work?
What can be assessed? – The goal of this question is to assess the ability of the candidate to manage multiple tasks simultaneously. This brings out their ability to be adaptable and how reasonably accommodating they can be. Inferences on how well the candidates assess and consider the extra workload can be deciphered. This will tell a lot about the candidate in terms of teamwork and efficiency.
- Imagine a scenario where you fell behind a deadline. How will you react to this situation?
What can be assessed? – This question will bring out the candidate’s ability to work under pressure and how they can rectify it. Additionally, they can be assessed on how they learn from their mistakes and what steps they take to improve.
- Are you a team player or do you prefer working on your own? Which will make you more productive?
What can be assessed? – This question can be asked to understand the candidate’s preference to work in teams or be independent. This is a way to get insights into their working styles and how well they will fit in a team.
- Your manager was not satisfied with your performance. How will you handle this situation?
What can be assessed? – This is a great question to evaluate a candidate’s ability to accept feedback and work on it. They can also be asked how they will rectify the mistakes if given a chance.
- How well do you handle criticism?
What can be assessed? – This question helps the recruiters understand and measure how well the candidate can take criticism and use it to make their performance better. The candidate must be able to assess their performance to understand where it lacks and work on it.
- How will you handle a task that you initially thought was impossible?
What can be assessed? – It is important to understand how a candidate will handle a difficult situation. The scenario of handling a complex task can provide insights into this parameter. Here you must expect a candidate to define the challenge that they faced and how they assess and take steps to learn and complete the task.
- Will your team agree if I say you are unapproachable?
What can be assessed? – This is a crucial parameter to look into. This question sheds light on how open-minded and collaboration-friendly the candidate is. This helps in identifying candidates that will promote a productive environment for the team. Moreover, it also gives insights into how the candidates assess themselves.
- How will you react in a very stressful situation?
What can be assessed? – This is one of the important ones in in-person interview questions. Work stress is common and inevitable, and can affect the efficiency of the work. It is crucial to remember that stress management capabilities vary from person to person. This helps companies identify the right person for the role.
- What are some notable qualities in you that help you with meeting strict deadlines?
What can be assessed? – This question is to evaluate how certain qualities in them have helped them meet strict deadlines. Multiple research has shown that multiple personality traits impact job performance and efficiency. Recruiters get an idea of what the candidates think their strengths are in completing tasks within the deadline.
- Imagine you are in a disagreement with your co-worker, how will you handle the situation?
What can be assessed? – Skills and traits such as listening, negotiation, mediation, and communication are essential while working in a team which will help resolve disagreements. It is important to understand how candidates behave during a disagreement and stop conflict development.
- How would you react if you got a negative remark from your manager?
What can be assessed? – Dealing with criticism is an important trait to look for. When given negative feedback, it is important to understand how the candidate deals with negative remarks and their rectification methods. This will reveal a lot about their attitude towards negative criticism.
- Name a skill that you would like to work on related to this profession.
What can be assessed? – This question is asked to assess whether the candidate knows the areas of improvement. Being self-aware of one’s strengths and weaknesses is a sign of emotional intelligence and personal growth.
- If you had to change one aspect of your personality, what would you change?
What can be assessed? – This is one of the most used interview personality questions that will say a lot about a candidate’s self-awareness. This question can be used to assess their ability to take feedback positively, their willingness to learn new things, and how they achieve them.
- Tell me about your hobbies.
What can be assessed? – This question is an opening to understand the candidate’s interest and passion outside of work. Asking this question will give an idea of how creative they are and what they like to engage. If a candidate has no hobbies it means they might be occupied with something that can be discussed.
- Do you think you will lose your temper at work and how will you resolve it?
What can be assessed? – This scenario-based question poses a difficult situation where a candidate’s emotional intelligence can be gauged. High levels of emotional intelligence often help in conflict resolution and producing a healthy working environment.
- You are given the credit for somebody else’s work. What would you do?
What can be assessed? – This is an ideal question to test the integrity of the candidate. Recruiters can evaluate honesty, judgment, and decision-making capabilities. The way they answer this question will also reflect on their attitude and how responsible they are.
- How would you describe yourself, an introvert or extrovert?
What can be assessed? – This is a simple question that will show how well the candidates know about themselves and whether they consider it as a strength or weakness. This also helps the hiring manager understand a candidate’s ability to be social, communicate, manage work, and ability to ask questions.
- Give three terms that will describe your work ethic.
What can be assessed? – Questions related to work/life balance are crucial in personality interviews. This will help the recruiter understand how candidates will manage their workload and work ethic. Asking questions about their work ethic will give insights into the candidate’s values, dedication, and how well they manage their time and work.
- When do you like to take off from work?
What can be assessed? – Knowing when the candidate would like to take days off is important as it gives an idea of the flexibility they expect from the company. It also gives insights into when they will require downtime and assign tasks accordingly.
- You are asked to work over the weekends. How will you respond?
What can be assessed? – Working overtime is a sensitive issue to discuss, hence, it is important to understand the candidate’s views as well. Hiring managers have to communicate work timings if the team works over the weekends.
Skillrobo For Personality Interview Questions
Skillrobo is a pre-employment assessment platform that is predominantly used for shortlisting and hiring candidates. Powered by the AI-assistant SEYARC, Skillrobo supports recruiters in creating assessment questions from scratch. The platform offers test and skills libraries, where roles across any industry can be evaluated. Using Skillrobo, recruiters can easily generate personality interview questions as well as conduct personality assessments from scratch or use pre-existing templates. On Skillrobo –
- Get fully customizable test templates
- Get a wide range of skills and tests
- Get enterprise integration
- Get detailed reports and analytics
Conclusion
Building the right team is a key strategy for enhancing performance. For this, focusing on the right skills is essential. Personality interview questions aid recruiters in focusing on the behavioral aspects of the candidates to assess whether they can culturally, morally, ethically, and professionally align with the organization’s work culture. Hence, a personality interview is an inevitable feat. Skillrobo is an AI-based platform that is specifically designed for skills assessment. Acquire meaningful insights on candidates Skillrobo’s personality interview questions. Sign up today to know more.