When we go through a selection process, the human resources specialist usually raises a series of questions that have a common goal: to evaluate the personality, by which he will determine whether or not we are fit for the proposed position.
These types of interviews not only apply in the workplace, but also apply in other areas, for example, in the doctor’s office, to make a diagnosis and determine if someone has a personality disorder, in the military or legal sphere to evaluate those involved. legal proceedings.
- Similarly.
- Interviews are just one of many methods that exist to evaluate personality.
- There are many others.
- Such as questionnaires or objective tests.
- So let’s delve into all of us.
To carry out a rigorous personality assessment it is necessary to have the appropriate theoretical training and supervised experience, in addition, the theoretical models that underpin these evaluations support professional evaluations, so that their knowledge is fundamental.
As for interpretation, evaluation tests give us a personality profile, but in no case is there a linear relationship between this profile and a specific behavior model, that is, not everyone who scores high in extraversion needs to do the same. The same profile may suggest different personality types, so it is essential to exercise caution.
Personality questionnaires present a series of questions or statements that subjects must answer, so through their answers they seek to extract the main personality and character traits of these individuals, that is, there are no correct or incorrect answers, they simply reflect what the candidate is like, what his behavior is, how he thinks or faces different situations.
Items in a questionnaire do not need to be sorted or annotated, but each item can be interpreted individually. There are two types:
Objective tests are the most used tools to evaluate personality, together with projective tests, they allow evaluating different aspects: knowledge, skills, attitudes, intelligence, etc. , generally they do not have a time limit for their performance and they ask questions or explain different situations so that the person can respond to what they would do, personally and sincerely. In this type of test there are no correct and incorrect answers either.
Objective tests are widely used for diagnostic evaluation and are frequently applied in schools. There are two types:
These tests avoid the tendency to respond (always respond to “B”) or social desponability (respond to what is considered socially acceptable). They are also resistant to counterfeiting.
This type of test should be supervised by the therapist, since it requires a lot of training and learning, they are usually applied to know how the interviewee sees, concentrates and manages reality, as the name suggests, it is these tests that allow the person to project personality traits, so they go according to what each person carries in them.
They are open, unstructured and highly reliable evaluation tests, which consist of giving the person brief and brief instructions, of which he must act freely, so, almost without being aware of it, shows his characteristics, his answers are manifestations of the structure and dynamics of his inner personality.
As we see, there are many ways to evaluate the personality with its different factors, characteristics and variables, the professional needs to know what is the most appropriate technique in each case and consider the individual differences of each subject.