How to Choose Between Personality Tests and Sales Assessments

Finding good salespeople is one of the biggest challenges that sales VPs face today.

Most sales managers find themselves stuck in a never-ending quest to hire quality salespeople that will help grow the company to new levels.

And, as you gain more hiring experience, chances are you are learning that the standard resume review/interview routine just is not enough to truly determine the quality of your sales candidates.

While a potential hire may look great on paper, and seem promising in the interview, hiring on intuition alone is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in building your sales team.

Thus, many sales managers are turning to additional tools to help predict the success of their sales candidates, and are finding great success in doing so.

However, you must be careful in choosing the right tool to assess your candidates.

You want to ensure that you are not wasting your time and theirs, and that you are utilizing a tool that will guarantee the success of your potential hire.

What Is a Personality Test?

Most often, personality tests are questionnaires that collect information on things such as behavioral styles.

However, the way that personality tests are structured, and the way the questions are formatted keeps them from being accurate enough to use for hiring purposes.

Why a Basic Personality Test Is Not Enough When It Comes to Hiring

Personality tests have many shortcomings when it comes to professional use and, as a result, fail to be any more than merely a recreational activity. Here is why:

1. Personality tests are far too broad.

While some personality tests may be able to help you see if your candidate has certain general qualities, they are not able to determine specific characteristics and whether those qualities will translate to their work.

The correlation between tested personality traits and job performance has not been proven to be related, thus drawing into question the validity of personality tests.

2. Personality tests can easily be faked.

Because there has been so much written on the personality traits that sales VPs look for in their sales candidates, it is quite easy to feign having those traits in order to get hired.

According to a Seattle Times article and research, “people consistently score higher in positive attributes on personality tests when they think they’re applying for a job than when they’re simply instructed to act truthfully.”

In other words, people know what hiring managers want to hear, and adjust their personality test responses accordingly.

3. Personality tests are not backed by science.

If a test is not backed by science, then its results cannot (and should not) be used in any professional setting.

Most of the online personality tests are informal online quizzes, and are meant for fun, not for a scientific assessment of a person’s personality, and potential job success.

4. Personality tests are often subjective.

Though you know yourself better than anyone else, your ability to accurately and objectively describe your behavior may not be your strong suit.

In fact, it is very few peoples’ strong suit.

Candidates often choose answers in an overly-optimistic way of how they would like to be perceived, rather than how they actually behave, therefore skewing the test results.

5. Personality tests often have inconsistent results.

The consistency of personality tests, online ones in particular, wavers so regularly that the results of these tests cannot be held accountable for anything, let alone in a professional setting.

Reports have shown that personality tests such as the widely popular Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test, may show one day that you are an extrovert with a set of other personality qualities, and a few weeks later you may find it shows that you are an introvert with a vastly different set of personality qualities.

With such varying results, personality tests become unreliable in truly measuring applicants.

What Is a Sales Assessment?

If you are looking for a sure-fire way to determine whether your potential hire has the qualities of a salesperson sure to bring success, then you are going to need a sales assessment test.

Where a personality test is easily faked and far too broad, a sales assessment is designed specifically to identify long-term sales producers − not simply ones who can fake their way through a test.

A Sales Assessment is the Hiring Tool Your Company Is Missing

The most important part of this type of online test is that it cannot be faked − it tests inherent traits that either your candidate possesses, or they do not.

There is no gray area here.

And, if you are looking for the best sales assessment tool on the market for your company, look to The DriveTest®.

Why The DriveTest® is the Most Reliable Sales Assessment Test 

1. The DriveTest® is objective.

The DriveTest® uses a Forced-Choice format. This type of format provides test takers only with answers that are positive, removing the ability for someone to answer based solely on what they think is the obvious “right” one.

To put this idea into practice, here is a sample question you would find on The DriveTest®:

Choose which of these statements is most like you and which is least like you:

• I enjoy the thrill of competition.
• I focus on staying organized.
• I like meeting new people.

Because all of these options are positive in different ways, there is no clear right or wrong answer. The answers that the candidate chooses will be a guaranteed reflection of their true personality.

2. The DriveTest® assesses the #1 most important innate trait in a salesperson: Drive.

Drive is something that cannot be taught − a person either has it, or they do not.

Driven sales producers share these three non-teachable characteristics:

1. Need for Achievement – The desire to excel that seems as if it cannot be satiated.
2. Competitiveness – The need to compete with everyone at everything.
3. Optimism – The ability to handle rejection well, and not take it personally. It is also the ability to deal well with stress or pressure.

3. The DriveTest® is scientifically proven.

This assessment test is fully backed by scientific reasoning to provide accurate results about your potential sales hires.

While most personality tests are void of any scientific proof, The DriveTest® was developed by a psychologist, and is able to truly measure the Drive traits in your candidate to determine whether he/she will be a top sales producer.

4. The DriveTest® cannot be faked.

Our sales assessment uses a Consistency Scale, which analyzes the test-taker’s responses and detects any inconsistent responses. It will then alert you to any candidates who may have attempted to fake their way through the test.

So, while there may be some smooth talkers to fake their way through the phone interview, The DriveTest® prevents those who are actually unqualified from moving forward in the interview process.

In Closing

As you can see, online personality tests are far too broad to get the results you are looking for in determining whether your potential hire is a high-producing salesperson with the characteristics needed to succeed. This is something only a validated sales assessment can do.

With science backing our online sales assessment, The DriveTest®, you know you are making a sound and promising hiring decision for your company.

Interested in seeing how The DriveTest® works? Sign up today for a FREE trial to help you objectively and accurately evaluate your sales applicants and start hiring true sales producers!