How does this process work?
Here are four key steps to determine employee fit:
1.    Clarify your organizations personality and/or the personality of the relevant manager and team—it is not enough to assess the personality of incoming candidates.
You have to understand what you want and need. This does not mean hiring in the image of your leaders or to match members of a team, because as with other things in life diversity is important when considering the personality make up of your team.
Understanding the personality culture of a team can help you identify which candidates may be a better fit.
2.   Identify the personality characteristics that match for the role—technical qualifications and skills are important but do not tell the entire story of success.
The best job description incorporates not only qualifications but also the required characteristics of a role.
3.   Design recruitment materials that will attract the right candidate— you want to attract the attention of the best fitting candidate by reflecting the characteristics of the role, team and organization within the recruiting process.
On the down side, by presenting too much information publically you run the risk of candidates trying to mirror what you are looking for and not presenting their true selves.
4.   Evaluate the personality characteristics of candidates—once you know what you are looking for, it can be easier to spot.
You can design questions that help identify desired characteristics and/or you can ask candidates to complete screening assessments. (I use one called Typefocus.) No screening tool is without flaws but these tools can provide you with more objective data to add to your decision-making process.
No Guarantees
Candidate personality profiling does not guarantee there will be no future problems.
However, a bonus of this method is that the information you acquire can be used to gain insights into your employees and organization and used to contribute to effective employee management, training, communication and relationship building.
Does this seem like a lot of extra work?
It need not be and it need not be expensive. You do not need to be a large corporation to include more comprehensive screening and assessment processes. Small and mid-sized business can implement some of these steps for only a few hundred dollars.
Before eloping with that new hire take a step back and determine who you really want and need on your team and include those insights in the hiring process.
Related articles:
3 Considerations Before Hiring a New Employee