When is the right time to do a personality profile during recruitment?

As we open up the world of profiling to more businesses who haven’t used it before, one question we’re often faced with at TALY is “When is the right time during recruitment to do the profiling?”

There are a few different ways to think about this, and today we want to share some tips and thoughts to make sure your process lines up with what your business needs.

The great thing, regardless of when the profiling is done, is that doing profiling at any stage with a quality, valid profiling tool (like TALY of course!), will get you closer to making more informed hiring decisions and taking the bias out of the process.

The TALY Personality Profiling bring together…

• scientifically-backed personality profiling

• tailored to the needs of your business, culture and the role

• delivered through customised, locally-built AI tools to ensure accuracy

Get in touch to find out more about how you can use TALY profiling to give you interview super-powers! Or Book a Demo today to see how easy it is to start using TALY in your business.

Ok, so what are the options?

First up, let’s remember the role of personality profiling – being clear on what you’re looking for to gain from profiling can help you make the best decision on WHEN to do profiling.

We talk about the benefits of profiling a lot. Here’s a quick recap, profiling helps you and your business to…

• Build a detailed, clear, unbiased understanding of the candidate. How do they operate, what motivates them, how do they connect with others, how do they respond in different situations, and more.

• Understand fit to the role, where there might be strong alignment or gaps.

• Understand comparison to other candidates, and alignment to the hiring manager or team they are coming into.

• Identify the best way to connect with and engage the new team member (if you end up bringing them onboard).

Using profiling at different stages in the recruitment process can help you in different ways, depending on what your priorities are.

At an early stage, it may be more about understanding fit to role.

Later in the recruitment process, it may be more about understanding the detail of who they are as a person, how to engage them in the role, and how to bring them into the team the right way.

Essentially, there are four key moments in recruitment that you could bring personality profiling into the mix…

1. Early stage (screening) – used during the initial application process to guide the short list.

2. Short-list comparison – to review and compare the final candidates for a role, usually after the first interview stage.

3. Final stage – deep dive into understanding and red flag check to ensure everything lines up, and to start onboarding thoughts.

4. On selection – with a focus on onboarding, engagement and team connection to build empathy with the new team member.

Let’s have a look at each of these

Early stage (screening)

What is it?

Running candidates through personality profiling when they apply for a role. This is usually a short version of the personality profile, and is designed to measure how candidates align with key traits felt to be essential for the role.

We’ve seen this successfully applied in bulk recruitment for service or hospitality roles, graduate positions, and more.

Pros

• Ensures the right potential candidates are coming through without bias skewing the decision making

• Saves time by guiding decision making with high numbers of applications

• Can help to build engagement and personalise recruitment right from the start

Cons

• Adds time to the application process for all applicants.

• Cost implications – depending on how many are running through

• Can skew recruitment to a certain “type”. At this stage, you’ve normally identified key traits for the role – but are they right, and is this limiting diversity?

Short-list comparison

What is it?

The most common time for profiling (and our recommended time). Once candidates have made it through the first interview stage, and you have 3-4 candidates you’d like to continue through the process, and to understand more.

This is a great time for profiling for any role – to really understand each candidate, their strengths, what they’d bring to the role, how they would respond to change – essential insight for decision making.

Pros

• Pull apart the similarities and differences between the candidates without bias

• Build insight from the first interview

• Understand what to focus on in the next interview – and for the rest of the process

Cons

• Added time to the process can be a concern – though in reality this isn’t usually a problem

• Requirement for a time commitment from the candidate

• Without good communications, some candidates may view this as a test, rather than a way to build shared understanding

Final stage deep dive (decision time)

What is it?

Once the ideal candidate for a role has been identified, personality profiling can be a great last step to really understand the candidate, and to highlight any red flags that needs to be considered before making an offer.

This option can help to really get to know the candidate before that last step – and to make sure there aren’t any issues that will impact their performance in the role.

Pros

• Help to build a deeper understanding of the candidate and determining the best way to proceed with their integration into the team. Identify any red flags (personality aspects that don’t align with the role or company) – and build a strategy to manage these

• Start to build empathy and understanding to engage the candidate from Day 1

Cons

• You don’t know how some of the other short list candidates might have stacked up – and potentially what you’re missing.

• Similarly, if the profiling does highlight issues, what is the right next step?

On selection

What is it?

At this final stage, personality profiling can play a great role in starting to build empathy and understanding for your new team member. The process helps you identify the right way to connect and engage with them in the role, and how to connect them with the team they are coming into to give them a great first experience.

Consider this as an option if your focus is just on building understanding and alignment of the candidate and if you are certain who you are hiring is the right person for the role, or for internal moves.

Pros

• Great culture starter – a clear sign to the new employee that culture matters, and that they matter

• Opportunity to feed personality insights across this new team members time with you, making each moment more personalised

• Can help to build alignment across the broader team, and a shared sense of understanding

Cons

• By this stage, it’s too late if any major red flags show up. So be prepared to make the most of what you have

If you’re still unsure, just get started!

As noted earlier, use personality profiling, to guide your decision making can help to eliminate bias from the recruitment process – so getting started at any point if always better!

Remember, you don’t have to lock in a one-size-fits-all approach to personality profiling. For some roles, early stage screening might be great. For other roles, building understanding later in the process might make more sense.

Once your team starts getting a feel for personality profiling and the benefits if can bring to decision making, you’ll find a time and space that works best for you.

And don’t forget, we’re always hear to help!

The TALY approach to personality profiling brings together a unique mix of Five Factor and Emotional Intelligence profiling to help organisations, hiring managers and teams to make better decisions about recruitment and teams.

Get in touch to find out more… we love talking about this stuff! Or Book a Demo today to see how easy it is to start using TALY in your business.