The TALY Top 5: Tips for effective personality profiling
Your underlying personality is a driving force behind a lot of your behaviour – how you work, how you connect with others, how you deal with situations, how you lead and influence, and so much more.
Our mission at TALY is to unlock the insights from personality profiling so that more businesses – from start-ups through to large corporates – can get the information they need to make better people decisions.
Better for the individuals. Better for their leaders. Better for business.
We’ve conducted over 3000 profiles for recruitment and team development, and have worked with a wide range of Australian businesses.
Over the years, we’ve learnt a lot about what matters most when it comes to using profiling, and how doing so can have a HUGE impact on individuals, teams and business outcomes.
Today we’re sharing our Top 5 tips for getting the most out of personality profiling. Hope you find it useful!
1. Use a scientifically-backed profiling tool…
There are a lot of tools out there, some narrow in their purpose, some more general, some of dubious quality, some which are fantastic.
Find a solution that is based on independently-proven theories of personality and emotional intelligence. These may be proven through academic research, or through professional organisational psychology groups or other reputable bodies.
Why does this matter?
The results from personality profiling matter. Whether they are being used to assess candidates for a role or to help teams work better together, the outcomes really matter to the individuals included.
Valid profiling tools will be consistent over time, have strong internal validity and produce discreet traits when measured. Be careful to look for independent reviews of theories if the concepts have been developed by suppliers.
By using a valid tool, you can be sure that your decisions and actions are starting with the right information!
2. The Candidate Experience Matters
For the people completing the profiling – whether they are applying for a role, already in a team, or for some other purpose – the whole process is quite confronting. They are being vulnerable – sharing their personal point of view and an inside look at what’s going on under the hood.
So for the candidate, the process should be…
Quick and easy! There is really no need for long and arduous testing, no matter the role. The assessment should be quick and easy to complete.
Make it fun. Ensure the user experience for candidates is great, that the process is engaging and that they are clear on what’s involved. If they can relax and enjoy the process, you’ll get better, more accurate results.
Share the profile. We always recommend that the profiling results are shared with candidates. This is valuable and personal information that they may find helpful and interesting. The whole idea of profiling is about openly sharing anyway, right?
3. There is no right or wrong profile…
… it’s about aligning with your business/values, the needs of the role, and within the context of the market and available talent.
Each situation is different. Each individual, team, culture and business has its own unique set of characteristics and needs, so there really is no one size fits all.
Profiling is about building understanding, it is not a tick-the-box exercise.
When reviewing candidate results, you’ll also need to consider skills, attitude, background, learnt habits, connections and more – so it is really not simply a yes or no question. Often, it’s more about deciding what will work and what won’t, how to align a person and a role together, and what work needs to be done to bridge any gaps.
Profiling solutions should not be about putting people into boxes or benchmarking to ‘norms’ – no two businesses really are the same.
Using norms will often just embed bias and norms that ultimately lead to a lack of diversity.
4. Personality is not one way
Obviously, a big part of profiling is about understanding the candidate – who they are, how they behave, what they value, what perspective they’ll bring to a role.
But this personality does not exist in a vacuum – it will exist in an eco-system with all the other existing team members, leaders, customers, clients, the overall culture, and so much more.
It is not just about the candidate’s profile – it’s about how the candidate’s profile connects with other personalities. Where it aligns and where it is different.
So measuring existing team members, and especially leaders, can really help to give the full picture on likely team dynamics and can identify the best way to build an engaged, strong team.
5. This is valuable insight!
Profiling should not be a tick the box exercise or a one-day only event. If you do the above, and have useful, accurate insight on what makes you tick, why not tap into it more often…
Thinking about changing roles or a promotion? Pull out the profile and explore how you align to the new role, build your self-awareness.
Having trouble connecting with certain people? Have a look at your profile and have a think about theirs. Where are the differences? What might be some strategies to overcome differences in opinion?
Heading into a performance review? Have a think about your profile and how you align to your role, and think about what you might naturally do well, and where you might be struggling. Get on the front foot.
Or of course you can just tap into the TALY eco-system to get these questions and more answered for you.
Remember, we are all human and any personality profiling should be a fun and positive experience. It’s about building a shared understanding and a way of working together that leads to great outcomes.
If you want to find out more about leveraging the broad impacts that personality profiling can bring to your business, get in touch today and be sure to follow TALY Australia on LinkedIn.
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.