Assessing Character in Interviews

Skills can be learned. Experience can be gained. Education can be attained. But Character?

Character is what truly defines the value someone brings to a team.

When hiring, we often prioritize qualifications like degrees, certifications, and years of experience. While these are all important, they don’t tell the full story.

A candidate’s character— traits like integrity, resilience, empathy, accountability and acceptance of critique—can be just as vital, if not more so, to their success in a role and their ability to contribute to a healthy workplace culture.

Here’s why character matters:

Integrity drives trust. Teams thrive when members are reliable and honest.

Resilience ensures growth. In challenging times, it’s character that fuels perseverance.

Empathy builds connections. Understanding and collaboration are vital to build culture.

Accountability strengthens results. Owning success and failure set a foundation for progress.

When you evaluate character alongside skills and experience, then you’re not just filling positions, you're building teams that innovate, adapt, and support one another. After all, the right skills will get the job done, but building teams with the right character will propel an organization to do great and amazing things.

Below are some of the better known and validated character and personality assessment tools. A few are appropriate and helpful for guiding hiring decisions; others are intended for character discovery and bringing awareness to personality, valuable tools for building cohesiveness.

We love both learning new ideas and sharing our knowledge and experience in this area. If you're considering some changes to your interview process, I'd love to hear from you.

1. Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI)

• Focuses on work-relevant personality traits, assessing strengths, potential derailers, and leadership qualities.
• Popular for leadership development, cultural fit, and predicting job performance.
• Excellent tool for comparing a short list of finalists, especially applicable for higher impact leadership roles and assisting with analytic vs. emotional decision making. At Agile Search Inc. we will utilize Hogan Assessments when appropriate for certain leadership roles and to reinforce or solidify decision making for our clients, enabling more analytic match selection among a group of strong prospects.

2. Gallup Strengths Finder (Clifton Strengths)

• Identifies a person’s top strengths across 34 themes like adaptability, communication, and responsibility.
• Used to align roles with individuals' natural talents and foster team collaboration.
• Great tool for personality insights and for finding your purpose.

3. Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) This is an assessment tool we've utilized and developed over many years at Agile Search Inc. and includes non-intrusive methods for uncovering a person's character with respect to ethics, decision making, humility and perseverance.

• Present candidates with hypothetical workplace scenarios to assess how they respond.
• Measure practical traits like decision-making, ethics, and interpersonal skills.
• Benchmark results for comparison within your candidate pool.
• An economical and efficient method to do yourself, but it requires FBI interview skills knack.

4. The VIA Character Strengths Survey https://www.viacharacter.org/

• Identifies a person's core character strengths (e.g., kindness, fairness, leadership).
• Great for understanding intrinsic motivators and how candidates align with organizational values.

5. Predictive Index https://www.predictiveindex.com/ Behavioral Assessment

• Measures factors like dominance, extraversion, patience, and formality to predict workplace behavior.
• Helps identify cultural fit and potential for success in a given role.
• A very strong predictor of behavior that's quick and easy and relatively inexpensive

6. The Big Five Personality Traits (OCEAN)

• Measures five key personality traits: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism.
• Widely used in hiring for understanding how personality aligns with job roles and team dynamics.
• Insightful tool for personality insight and team building; not the best for assessing character or making Go/No Go hiring decisions

7. DISC Personality Assessment

• Measures four behavioral styles: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.
• Helps teams understand communication preferences, conflict resolution styles, and work habits.
• Amazing for team building and appreciating differences in work styles and behaviors and breaking through road blocks amongst team members.

8. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) https://www.mbtionline.com/

• Categorizes individuals into 16 personality types based on preferences in energy, information processing, decision-making, and lifestyle.
• Common for team-building and understanding interpersonal dynamics.

9. Emotional Intelligence (EQ-i 2.0) https://www.eitrainingcompany.com/eq-i/

• Assesses emotional intelligence in areas like self-awareness, self-regulation, and empathy.
• Often used in leadership hiring or roles requiring high emotional engagement.

10. Kolbe Index https://www.kolbe.com/

• Measures a person’s instinctive way of taking action (cognitive strengths) rather than personality or intelligence.
• Useful for matching candidates to roles based on how they approach problem-solving.

In Summary:

Integrating just one or two of these tools into your hiring process can provide deeper insights into candidates' personalities, ethics, and work styles, ensuring a holistic approach to building strong, cohesive teams.

If you would like to learn more about how Agile Search Inc. helps companies build unstoppable teams or about our INDUSTRY LEADING 1-Year PLACEMENT PERFORMANCE GUARANTEE, reach out to schedule a meeting with John Compton , President, Agile Search.

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