Moving Beyond Generic Interviews: The Power of Personality-Driven Questions

24 Apr

The hiring landscape is feeling a bit of strain at the moment. There’s pressure to move quickly and find people with really specific or layered skill sets… AND there’s also a great emphasis on soft skills and finding the right “fit”. But the interview process hasn’t quite caught up, and it’s not always great at spotting the right candidates.

We've all heard (and possibly asked) the same stale questions: “What’s your greatest weakness?” or “Where do you see yourself in five years?”

These generic interview questions often return polished, rehearsed answers and fail to reveal the candidate's true potential - or frankly, much about who they are at all.

In fact, a study from the Harvard Business Review found that unstructured interviews — typically filled with generic questions — are poor predictors of future job performance, explaining only 14% of an employee’s success on the job.

As workplaces evolve, our hiring practices needs to as well.

Enter personality-driven interviewing - one of the most impactful ways to improve the hiring process. When done right, personality-driven interviews can uncover deeper insights about candidates, foster more authentic conversations, and help organisations make smarter, more human-centered hiring decisions — all while reducing common biases.

The Problem with Generic Interview Questions

Generic interview questions are comfortable and familiar, but they’re also limited and, often, ineffective. Why? Well for a few reasons…

Surface-level answers: Candidates often prepare for these questions in advance with practiced answers that don’t reveal their true nature; they might sound confident answering them, but they don’t really reveal anything outside of a polished response… which doesn’t show us how they’d actually respond in real life.

Lack of differentiation: How many times have you asked someone about their “biggest weakness” that’s secretly a strength (“I’m a perfectionist!”). If you kept a record of people’s responses to questions like this, you’d very quickly start seeing patterns, making it difficult to distinguish candidates.

Misalignment with role or culture: The standard interview questions are typically not linked closely enough to the role, the team or the culture. And with these questions rarely addressing the nuances of the job or the interpersonal dynamics of the team., the answers will also not help you understand if a person will actually “fit” and complement your team

Worse still, generic questions can perpetuate unconscious bias. If every candidate is asked the same uninspired prompts, the interviewer may rely more heavily on gut instinct — which is where bias tends to creep in.

Why Personality Matters in Hiring

At its core, hiring is about people. A resumé can tell you what someone has done. A skills test can show you what they can do. But neither tells you who they are, how they’ll behave in a team, how they respond to challenges, or how they’re likely to grow. And according to LinkedIn’s Global Talent Trends Report, 63% of hiring managers say traditional interviews fail to assess soft skills, which are often the deciding factor in long-term performance.

Personality, grounded in behavioural science and accurate measurement, can offer critical insight into:

Communication style
How does a person communicate and make decisions?
Workplace motivation
Why does a person turn up every day and what drives them?
Stress and conflict response
How will they handle stress, ambiguity, and change?

Team compatibility
How will they collaborate and handle feedback?

Leadership potential
What is their potential leadership style?

Understanding personality allows interviewers to tailor questions that explore these dynamics in a meaningful, role-relevant way.

From One-Size-Fits-All to Tailored Conversations

Let’s take two hypothetical candidates applying for the same role. One is highly analytical and introverted; the other is energetic and thrives in brainstorming sessions. While both may be a great fit, they bring different strengths and might respond best to different types of questions.

By tailoring questions to a candidate’s personality profile — ideally gathered through a pre-interview personality profile like TALY — interviewers can dig into what actually matters:

How does this person think?

How do they prefer to collaborate?

What environments help them succeed?
And so much more

For example:

Instead of “How do you handle conflict?”, you may ask a naturally reserved candidate, “Tell me about a time when you had to assert your opinion in a high-stakes meeting — how did you prepare and how did it go?”

For a high-energy extrovert you may ask them to, “Describe a time when you had to tone down your enthusiasm to keep a project on track — how did you navigate that?”

These questions are not only more aligned to the person, but they also lead to richer, more nuanced responses.

At TALY, we make it easy to integrate these insights into your daily work - especially during the recruitment process. Personality profiling is the key to unlocking stronger, more harmonious teams.

Curious to learn more? Let’s chat about how TALY’s tools can help you navigate the complexities of workplace conflict.

Get in touch or book a demo today.

Balancing Personalisation with Bias Reduction

It’s very normal to worry that tailoring questions to personality might increase bias. After all, doesn’t adapting the interview for each person make things less fair?

Not necessarily — if done intentionally. In fact, personality-driven interviewing can reduce bias by shifting the focus from arbitrary, subjective impressions (like whether someone is "likable") to structured insights about how someone might fit the role and team.

Here’s how to do it well:

1. Use objective personality frameworks

Look into personality profiling tools that provide structured, research-backed profiles that go beyond stereotypes- and use only the one tool with all candidates to ensure there is a consistent benchmark. They give interviewers a common language and framework to guide conversations.

2. Design a question bank aligned with traits

Rather than improvising, prepare a library of behaviour-based questions tied to specific personality traits. This keeps interviews consistent while allowing for customisation. You might have different questions for candidates who score high on openness versus those who don’t.

3. Train interviewers on structured interviewing

Help hiring managers understand how to use personality data ethically and how to probe in ways that reveal substance, not style. Structure reduces the risk of “gut feel” dominating the conversation.

4. Focus on job-relevant behaviours

All questions, personalised or not, should tie back to what success looks like in the role. You’re not hiring someone because they’re agreeable or emotional — you’re hiring them because their behaviours align with what the team or role needs.

5. Understand the personalities of the team you’re hiring into
If you're hiring, understanding the team's existing personality dynamics is just as important as assessing the candidate's traits. After interviews, include a step to compare candidates’ profiles against the team's profile to find the best personality fit.

And of course, TALY’s AI-powered interview questions, tailored to each team, role and candidate, can do all this for you!

The Results? More Insight, Better Hires

Companies that take a more personalised, human-centered approach to interviewing report:

Higher-quality hires: When interviewers understand how a candidate works best, they’re more likely to hire someone who thrives in the role and culture.

Greater candidate engagement: Candidates often say personality-driven interviews feel more conversational and authentic, and they are 38% more likely to accept a job offer if they are satisfied with the application process.

Reduced bias and turnover: Structured personalisation leads to more equitable hiring and better long-term outcomes.

A New Era of Hiring

Time and time again we hear (and know) that the workplace is evolving- people want more from their workplaces — they want to be seen, understood, and supported. Interviewing is your first opportunity to show that your organisation gets it.

By moving beyond the overused script of generic questions and embracing a more personalised, personality-informed approach, you can create a hiring process that’s not only more effective, but more human.

It’s not about throwing structure out the window. It’s about creating smarter structure — one that recognises that behind every resumé is a real person, with unique strengths, challenges, and potential.

And if we can build hiring processes that honour the “human” everyone wins.

Chamari Sawade