Hey there, we’re back with the second lesson in our series on the Personality Profile.

In the first lesson, we introduced you to the Personality Profile and the test-taking experience. Now, let's dig into some more detail.

In this lesson, we’re going to focus on the Summary Report, and share the foundational building blocks of what makes the Hire Success Personality Profile such a powerful tool to help you hire quality candidates the first time.

As mentioned, the Summary Report is a snapshot of the individual, designed to capture as much data as possible so the interviewer can see key information at a glance.

It also contains links to the in-depth information used in other reports. This means you can look at this one page, and have access to all the data in the profile. You’ll never have to jump back and forth between reports to get the details.

Use the Summary Report to grab a quick read on whether or not you’ve generally got the right candidate, and to explore nuanced aspects of someone’s personality.

The Summary Report is divided into two sections. The top section deals exclusively with the individual’s personality types, and the bottom section provides information on 40 different personality traits found on 20 different trait scales.

Let’s look at the top personality section first.

To get started, we are going to focus only on a couple of key aspects. First, you can see that we have called out the individual’s primary and secondary personality types.

Click the letter beside each type to read the classical descriptions. Think of these as the general starting point for understanding the individual.

Below these, the strength of each personality type is shown as a percentage. The higher the percentage, the stronger, or more dominant that personality shows up in day-to-day life. It is extremely rare for all four types to be equal (we call this the “X” personality.) Most people have a dominant or primary personality that influences the way they think and behaves at work.

Finally, the bar chart provides a fast, visual guide to the personality strengths. You can see how the four basic types compare against one another for this candidate.

Now, let’s take a look at the Trait Analysis section. Here’s a quick tour of what you’re looking at:

40 different traits paired off into 20 trait scales

Trait scales consists of two traits that represent opposites of each other

Click the name for a popup definition of the trait in a business setting

Trait Confidence factor (1 to 5 stars) appears to the right of each trait scale

Overall Trait Confidence factor displays either Very High, High, Fair, Low, or Below Average

We’ll explain more about high, low, and fair trait confidence scores in a moment.

The Personality Profile uses 20 different Trait Scales to identify the unique, business-related traits in someone’s personality. Each scale represents two mutually exclusive extremes, like Patient and Impatient, Tolerant and Intolerant, and so on. Based on the person’s answers from the assessment, the system calculates a score for each scale.

Note that a person’s score for each trait scale isn't determined by what is expected from a personality type.

Some other assessments strictly use personality type to determine all the expected behavior in an individual. But that would be like saying someone who is Type A Director is always in control, goal-oriented, and arrives at bottom line solutions, which is simply not true.

People are more complex than that.

At Hire Success, we use both personality type and trait analysis for the highest level of accuracy. We believe that each person is unique and capable of accurately deciding how each of the 100 adjectives apply or don't apply to them in a work environment.

Each trait scale has nine possible values: a 1 being the strongest or most extreme description of the trait on the left side of the scale, and a 9 being the most extreme opposite on the other side.

For example, on the Introverted-Extroverted scale, 1 is Extremely Introverted, the 9 is Extremely Extroverted.

In the middle sits a 5, which is both Not Extroverted and Not Introverted. At a 5, the person may draw some from each trait but will probably not show extreme tendencies of either.

Another helpful way to look at the trait scales is to divide the values into three groups:

A wide yellow bar across a range of scores means the person has tendencies at both ends of the scale. They will likely behave differently depending on what’s going on at the time.

We call this type of trait, situational. More on that in a moment.

If you think about the Introverted - Extroverted example, sometimes a position requires an outgoing personality, but too much might become a problem. An extremely extroverted person may appear too pushy. A desirable trait for some jobs becomes a liability for others.

When you have data like this going into an interview, you are in good shape to find out how someone’s extreme trait will affect the job you’re hiring for.

Unique to the Hire Success Personality Profile is the 5-star Trait Scale Confidence factor It’s a measure of how consistent a person is for a specific trait at work

As you scroll through the confidence factors for each scale, it’s not unusual for a few to show one or two stars, which is not a bad thing.

Low or Below Average doesn’t mean the individual was trying to be misleading on their test form. That is a possibility of course, but it is usually the exception rather than the rule.

If you took the Personality Profile yourself—and you know you answered the questions honestly—you’ll probably have at least a few lower confidence scores.

The 5-star trait confidence system makes reading and understanding the confidence level of each trait scale so much easier.

You can look at the number of stars and make some rapid and reasonable conclusions about how a person might show up at work for different traits. Then, you can use that knowledge to tease out surprising insights about the candidate in the interview.

Now, let's take a look at what makes for high confidence, low confidence, and fair confidence factor.

A high trait confidence factor of 4 or 5 stars means the person responded consistently to opposing adjectives on the Personality Profile test form.

They probably used 1s and 2s to describe themselves for one trait characteristic, and 4s and 5s for the opposite trait characteristic.

Because the values describing one trait balance with the values describing the opposite trait, we have higher confidence in our evaluation than if the values were contradictory or “out of balance”.

Another way to have a high confidence factor is if the person responded consistently to adjectives for opposing traits with 2s, 3s, and 4s. If this is the case, then the trait scale would have a mid-range value of 4-6, and a high confidence factor of 4 or 5.

What if the confidence factor is low, like 1 or 2 stars?

Let’s assume that someone applying for a sales role selected all 1s for the adjectives that characterize both Patient and Impatient.

Which one are they?

Fair question. They could be lying about one or more of their responses. Or more likely, they see themselves as showing up with either of those traits depending on the situation.

In other words, their traits are situational. They can be patient at times and impatient at other times.

This is totally normal, and can actually be a good thing because the person believes they are not rigidly one way all of the time.

But let's dig a bit deeper.

If this was a nursing position, you might say extreme patience is a great quality to have.

But if a salesperson is too patient, they may never ask for an order, or wait weeks or months to make follow-up calls.

What should you do? In this case, your interview questions could uncover that the extremely patient salesperson has learned not to be so patient when dealing with delinquent accounts or asking for invoices to be paid promptly.

Knowing this, you might conclude they'd still be good for the job.

Remember that low confidence doesn’t mean bad or incorrect. In most cases, a low confidence factor indicates the trait is situational.

When you see low confidence scores, take it as a golden opportunity to ask appropriate questions in the interview. Give the person ample time to fully explain how they’d react, behave, or handle different situations in which this trait may play a role.

The Personality Profile even provides those questions for you in the Sample Interview Questions Report -- you’ll learn more about that in another video.

The last confidence factor we’ll mention is Fair.

Fair confidence, or 3 stars, is the result of the person responding in such a way that isn’t completely contradictory.

Only you can determine if that is what you’re looking for in a candidate, but we consider 3 stars or fair as an acceptable level of confidence for a trait at work.

If reading all the trait scales feels overwhelming, don’t worry. In the next lesson, we’ll take care of that by diving into a report that does all the analysis for you.

To wrap up, the Summary Report is an information-rich snapshot of an individual.

Just using this report alone gives you insights into candidates that you probably didn't have before.

And...you can begin to understand how the person might respond at work in different situations.

Take some time to go through your own Summary Report. Don’t forget that most keywords and terms are clickable for more info.

Any questions, contact us or schedule a call.