The Emergence of the Concept of Personality

If we want a fuller answer to the question “What is a personality inventory, and what does it aim to do?”, looking at where the concept of personality itself came from is the right starting point. The “humoral pathology” theory — founded by the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle and developed by Hippocrates, known as the father of medicine — held that the human body’s balance was kept by four substances (bile, black bile, blood and phlegm), and that illness arose from too much or too little of those fluids. This theory was widely accepted in Europe until the end of the 17th century, and treatments were designed around it. Over the years Hippocrates linked these four substances with the organs of the human body. The classification was: “blood–heart, phlegm–brain, bile–liver, black bile–stomach.”

The Impact of Personality Inventories on Psychology

Galen of Pergamon, the physician, examined Hippocrates’ theory from a psychological angle and proposed that the amounts of these four substances in the body affected people’s personalities. From there, many researchers diversified the categories or brought new approaches to the theory, looking for a link between people’s physical features and their personality types/personality traits. Explaining individual differences in behaviour and classifying personality traits became the most popular field of study at the time; psychologists in particular began doing this work, and a number of different theories entered the literature. To give a few examples: Gordon Allport’s work suggested there were more than 4,000 personality traits, while psychologist Raymond Cattell, using a statistical technique known as factor analysis, reduced the list to 16 personality factors.

To this day, the concept of personality has been examined from many different angles, and many theories have been built around it. In that process, particular attention was paid to the introvert–extrovert personality type, and many theorists developed measurement techniques around these two factors. The reason each theorist kept working on different personality factors was that each one built their hypothesis on a different definition of personality (behavioural, social-stimulus, depth). To this day, a great many reliable and valid personality inventories have been designed on the back of those theories. Today, two theories that classify the concept of personality in a coherent, holistic way and turn it into a model — the Enneagram and the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) — are among the foundations that the Personality Item Test (PiT) is also built on.

The Relationship Between Personality and Personality Inventories

Personality is a structure that holds together all of the mental, emotional and physical traits a person is born with and acquires later. Put differently, personality can also be defined as consistent patterns of behaviour and intra-personal processes. Many factors — genetic, cultural, environmental and social — shape the formation and development of personality; it doesn’t form or develop on the back of one factor alone. For that reason, personality inventories are an assessment tool that is widely used to analyse, measure and evaluate this rich and complex structure accurately. From the results of personality-inventory tests, you can learn more about a person’s strengths and weaknesses, attitudes, potential competencies, talents, social traits and areas of interest. As a result, evaluators can quickly identify a person’s traits, personality type and motivations — and speed up their own processes.

A Person’s Fit With the Job and the Organisation

A fit between personality and the job produces the kinds of outcomes listed below:

  • When a person integrates with the other members of the organisation, their commitment to the organisation grows, and their behaviours share a common purpose with those of other members. So work can be done effectively in line with the organisation’s goals, and both the mental and physical sides of the person are put to use in the best way.
  • When a person can connect their personality with the social structure they are part of, they don’t struggle to accept group norms or to fit into them — and they build relationships with other members of the organisation that raise managerial effectiveness.
  • Building the desired link between a person’s expectations and the organisation’s goals matters for the organisation’s sustainability. To a large extent, that depends on employees’ personality structures.
  • People getting to know other people in their social structure whose personality traits match their own — and keeping those relationships within the patterns the organisation sets — helps support organisational effectiveness.
  • A person’s personality also plays a big role in the emergence of leadership behaviour. Whether a person can bring out leadership traits — that is, gain leadership status — depends on the features of the organisation they are in, but also on the leader themselves and on their personality traits.
  • The formation and growth of informal groups inside the organisation depend on the personality traits of the people forming those groups being compatible with each other. Mutual interaction inside organisations depends on positive relationships. The more people’s expectations from the organisation, attitudes towards it and value judgements resemble the group’s goals, the higher the strength of interaction. Otherwise, the person prefers to stay outside the organisation.

Personality and Choice of Job

The drives, desires and needs that personality brings differ in degree from person to person. Some avoid taking on responsibility and find reaching a certain rank enough. Others are not satisfied with promotion: they want to keep rising, take on more responsibility and get the best socio-economic outcomes. That is one sign that people with different personality traits can produce different outcomes even from the same situation.

For that reason, placing people in jobs that match their personality factors directly affects how productively the job is done — and the success of the job itself. For instance, when people who enjoy working with others, who are extroverted and have strong social relationships are placed in PR and HR departments, their productivity rises and their fit with the job happens quickly. Different jobs call for different behaviour from people. When the people whose personality structure matches those expected behaviours take responsibility for the job, accept it and own it, success follows.

People who take on a job that does not match their personality often show discomfort and stress early on, and later experience overwhelm and even emotional burnout. Without doubt, that also feeds straight into the working environment. Personality and job choice — fit with the job — have been studied for many years, and many researchers have developed theories around them. As a result of that work, a direct relationship between job and personality has been observed. Because each person’s personality structure is different, they need to choose their job in line with the differences in their inclinations, wishes, goals, attitudes and skills, and to be able to analyse the professions they are naturally suited to. When the job done and the personality fit together, people experience higher job satisfaction.

Employee Selection and the Personality Inventory

Given how important quality and speed are, using human resources productively in the production and service sectors — and choosing the right employees for open positions — is critical. Each position requires a different set of qualifications, skills, knowledge and personality traits. To ensure a fit between employee and job, the person’s skills and their personality structure both have to match the job they will do. People’s success on the job depends to a large extent on their personality traits. For that reason, many organisations today run personality inventories on their candidates to compare the features of the job with those of the person, gather clues about the job’s fit with the person and the person’s fit with the job, and then run their processes accordingly.

What Are Personality Inventories Used For, and Where?

– Helping people get to know themselves and design a career path / choose a profession that fits their personality:

Personality inventories are used by career counsellors and career-development specialists to help people learn their personality type. By providing information on people’s strengths and weaknesses, potential competencies, motivations and attitudes, personality inventories play an important role in helping people be successful, happy and satisfied along their career path. Choosing a career, or evaluating a job offer, in light of the detailed information people learn about themselves helps them make a healthier and more accurate decision.

– Helping companies get to know candidates better in interviews:

Every organisation builds strategies to acquire and develop the ability to manage human resources effectively. Given that employee productivity affects the organisation’s success and image directly, comprehensive and accurate operations have to be carried out when it comes to hiring the right person. Personality inventories, used to hire the right person for the right job, are a widely used assessment tool that provides HR professionals with detailed information. Through the inventory, you can also gather information about whether candidates will be able to fit into the job.

– Structuring the interview around the inventory results:

Personality inventories provide advance information about candidates’ personality traits and potential competencies. With the advance picture this offers, HR professionals can run competency-based interviews with more accurate questions, and can make decisions in the first elimination round using the right data.

– Identifying training and development needs:

Thanks to personality inventories that produce training and development needs-analysis reports, organisations can map their people’s development path in order to lift both employee and organisational performance to the next level.

– Evaluating people inside talent management

Organisations that run personality inventories on their employees and design their career and development plans accordingly carry both their human resources and their organisations into the future. Personality inventories can be called the fastest and most accurate tool for developing employees’ potential competencies and bringing their potential to the surface.

In this context, personality inventory tests make it possible to carry out the right hiring, to evaluate employees in a systematic and objective way, to plan HR processes, to design training plans for success-oriented employees that will lift company performance to the top, and to retain them by creating an environment that fits. Today, personality inventories and aptitude tests can be called two of the most widely used methods in hiring.

What Can Personality Inventories Measure?

The tools for measuring personality and the adjectives used have differed depending on the approach of the researcher. Given that personality can be measured through observation/interview or through personality-inventory tests, the use of inventories — to make HR processes more objective and trustworthy — is widespread.

When a personality inventory is being studied and prepared, the personality traits that the team decides to measure — emotionality, responsibility, sociability, proactivity, decisiveness, and so on — are defined. An expert team then prepares the questions that will measure those traits. Reliability and validity work is completed. A solid norm group is obtained, the inventory is run, and reliability analyses check whether the inventory produces consistent results.

For that reason, the approach of the expert team working on the personality inventory determines the factors the inventory will measure. Among the reliable and valid personality tests already in use in the sector, some measure factors like extroversion, flexibility and intuitiveness, while others measure factors such as warmth, innovativeness, dominance and rule-following.

Personality Inventory Questions

Personality inventory questions don’t have a difficulty level. People respond to statements like “I get disappointed easily, I enjoy meeting new people, I like fixing things” with answers such as “strongly agree, agree, undecided, disagree, strongly disagree” (the answer scale can vary depending on the inventory’s methodology). For that reason, candidates are advised to complete the inventory honestly, without help.

How Should Personality Inventories Be Used?

When a company runs a personality inventory, it does so according to the qualifications open positions require. For instance, for an employee to be placed in a marketing role, it is first decided which competencies or qualities should be strong in that person. If the decision is that the candidate should be competitive, entrepreneurial, innovative and not introverted, then the personality inventory is run and candidates can be evaluated against those personality factors. For that reason, before running personality-inventory tests, organisations should define their open positions and identify which qualifications are more critical in those roles. That way, the right people can be placed into open positions, hiring costs can be reduced, the time spent on filling roles can be minimised, and processes can be made more productive.

Tips for Answering a Personality Inventory

In almost every personality-inventory test, the questions come in an order set by the inventory’s methodology. While taking a personality-inventory test, it is very important not to try to manipulate the inventory, and not to try to present yourself as something you are not. Candidates are advised to complete inventories honestly, without trying to show their “ideal” version. Otherwise, because the person has positioned themselves differently to begin with, they will also struggle to fit into the job and will not achieve job satisfaction. At this point, candidates who want to learn more about personality inventories and experience example inventories can read HR books written on the topic and try the free personality-inventory tests available online.

How Are Personality Inventory Results Used?

With the information from personality-inventory tests, it is possible to design a person’s career path, to speed up hiring processes, to place the right people in open positions and to contribute to employee development. In doing so, interpreting the personality inventory correctly is critical.

For example, it can be said that detail-oriented, analytical, planning-strong and introverted people are well-placed in finance and accounting roles; extroverted, proactive people with strong communication and persuasion skills are well-placed in sales; and introverted people who like working alone, have weaker communication skills, are open to new things and good at problem-solving can be successful and happy in IT roles.

Personality types aren’t always at extremes or dominant in just one area. Different personality factors can be present in people to varying degrees. People with a generally balanced personality structure who are proactive and have strong communication and leadership skills are likely to be successful in management roles.

It is also very important to consider not only people’s strengths but also the personality traits they are weaker in, and to help them notice those sides. With the awareness this creates, people have the chance to manage and develop those personality traits. On top of that, knowing the strengths and weaknesses of everyone on a team creates an environment in which the team can work more harmoniously together.

For instance, if an employee knowing what is expected of them and having the scope of their responsibilities laid out clearly creates a confident, comfortable working environment for them, then their manager providing that comfort zone will raise the employee’s motivation and productivity. The personality inventory gives people both self-awareness and the ability to understand those around them. Through these tests — which build empathy — people see that everyone has a different personality structure, that they have strengths and weaknesses, and that differences showing up in their relationships is normal, and can take a more understanding and conciliatory point of view.

HR has a strategic role inside the organisation. In line with that role, HR units treat human resources as an investment vehicle and carry out their activities on that basis. Using all of HR’s functions productively starts with long-term planning, with goals that are set clearly, with the right strategies, and with the ability to see the big picture. For that reason, from hiring to talent management, from designing the right career path for people to training needs analysis, personality inventories — which produce data that supports professionals’ decisions across all HR processes — are an assessment tool that helps both HR departments take the right action and helps build or protect company culture.