Recruitment is a risky game. It’s difficult to assess someone’s skills, personality, and experience to predict how they’ll gel with an existing team using interviews alone. A bad fit can impact team morale, and productivity and lead to the loss of other employees affected by the poor hire. And with the total potential cost to hire a new employee three to four times the position’s salary, it is vital you get it right.
However, there are tools and techniques that hiring managers and HR teams can turn to in support of the candidate review process. We don’t just have to trust our gut in an interview and hope candidates are being truthful. Instead, we can use behavioral assessments.
Behavioral assessments are tests designed to gather objective information about a person’s character, thinking style, leadership capabilities, and more. This information tells you whether a candidate is a good fit for the role they’ve applied for. It’s objective and quantifiable, unlike an interview.
At Thomas International, we’re experts in behavioral assessments. We’ve developed our own customizable tool informed by William Moulton Marston’s DISC theory of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance. Hundreds of hiring managers have used this tool to find the right candidates for their organization.
In this guide, we’ll explain more about the different types of behavioral assessments, how they work and when they should be used, the benefits and drawbacks of this approach, and how to effectively implement behavioral assessments in your recruiting process.
Understanding Behavioral Assessments
What is a Behavioral Assessment?
Behavioral assessments are designed to observe, understand, explain, and predict a person’s behavior. They shed light on many different aspects of a person’s character including how they think, their willingness to learn, and what they would be like as a leader. These assessments, informed by psychological research into human behavior, help us understand a candidate’s interpersonal skills and predict how they might respond to new and different scenarios.
Unlike traditional hiring assessments that may test a candidate’s skills in relation to role and function, these assessments shine a light on soft skills, traits, and potential for growth. When used in conjunction with personality assessments and the results of similar tests on existing employees, we can start to see how well a team will work together and where any problems might arise.
There are a few different types of behavioral assessment available, all informed by years of psychological research. Many have become buzzwords, popping up across the corporate landscape - Myers-Brigg, Enneagram, Big Five - but at Thomas we favor the DISC assessment.
Psychologist William Moulton Marston first outlined the traits of DISC in his 1928 work “Emotions of Normal People”. In this book, Marston wrote that people’s behavior is influenced by four overriding personality traits that are influenced by their sense of self and the way in which they interact with those around them. These traits are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance - DISC. Walter Clarke, a psychologist in the 1950s, took this idea and created the first self-assessment DISC Personality assessment. It was further developed for the workplace by Dr Thomas Hendrickson, associating Dominance with power, Compliance with policy, Influence with people, and Steadiness with pace.
Behavioral Assessment Tools
Behavioral assessments can be undertaken manually, but there are tools available to refine the process and ensure objective results. Technology streamlines behavioral assessments, so they take less time for candidates to complete, and provide results and analysis more quickly to hiring managers than if they had to assess each answer themselves.
Our behavioral assessment test is available electronically or in a physical format. It’s not too daunting as it takes just 8 minutes and is made up of only 24 questions, each of which asks candidates to choose two trait adjectives out of a possible four. The answers to each are compared to the person being assessed rather than a wider group and are analyzed by our unique technology which provides an easy-to-read graph that shows strengths, areas for improvement, and team compatibility.
Types of Behavioral Assessments
At a high level, behavioral assessments rely on either self-reported information or on observations made by others about a person’s behavior. We call this indirect and direct behavioral assessment.
Direct vs. Indirect Behavioral Assessments
- Direct assessments rely on observing candidate behavior in real time. In many ways, traditional job interviews are a form of direct assessment as hiring managers can make observations about the way in which a candidate behaves when they’re face-to-face or on a video call. However, interviews are very specific scenarios - and 93% of people find them stressful - so this clouds any observations made.
- Indirect assessments are self-reported questionnaires and psychometric tests such as the test we offer at Thomas. They rely on a degree of honesty and self-awareness from candidates.
Common Types of Behavioral Assessments
Although we keep it simple and streamlined at Thomas, other behavioral assessment types are available and will be the right option for different use cases.
Let’s take a look at a few of these other types of behavioral assessment and how they work:
- Analog assessments include role-playing and simulations so we can observe how someone behaves in a given scenario.
- Idiographic assessments are tailored tests based on individual traits, searching for what makes someone unique.
- Contextual assessments rely on evaluating behavior in different real-world situations, which takes time.
Behavioral Assessment Examples
Some of the aforementioned approaches to behavioral assessment rely on scenario-based questions to reveal candidate traits. These questions are often formulated around if-based questions, such as:
- “If X were to happen, how would you react?”
- “What would you do if a colleague needed help with Y?”
The candidate may refer to real life examples in order to answer these, further illustrating the ways in which they behave and respond to different situations.
You can apply a similar way of thinking to other lines of questioning. Instead of presenting dummy scenarios, you can offer Situational Judgment Tests (SJTs) and work simulations, all of which will uncover how someone might behave in a given situation. Personality tests are an excellent accompaniment to behavioral assessments too as they represent the ways in which some of these behavioral tendencies outwardly manifest and will be perceived and responded to by others.
Why Use Behavioral Assessments in Hiring?
Behavioral assessments are an excellent tool for getting to know existing employees but they offer the most value when used during the hiring process.
The Importance of Behavioral Assessments In Hiring
Behavioral assessments can help hiring managers answer some of the toughest questions they need to evaluate in order to go ahead with a hiring decision: They can predict job performance and cultural fit by analyzing information that a candidate may otherwise find hard to articulate or would attempt to disguise.
They’re a really useful tool for reducing hiring bias and improving diversity too. Behavioral assessments - particularly indirect assessments collected and analyzed electronically - are objective. Computers look only at the information supplied and can’t be swayed by conscious and unconscious biases.
Behavioral assessments in recruitment are crucial for identifying candidates who share company values, leading to longer retention and higher commitment. This is particularly important with the rise of Gen Z in the workforce, who prioritize aligning with company goals.
Benefits of Behavioral Hiring Assessments
Conducting a behavioral assessment at the beginning of the recruitment process is hugely beneficial as it provides objective insight into candidate behavior and their long-term potential - it can even highlight if they have it within them to be a good leader.
As behavioral assessments demonstrate the potential fit of a candidate, they also reduce the chance of making the wrong hire and losing someone quickly or suffering the poor performance of an employee who’s not right for the role, leading to better long-term employee retention and job satisfaction.
Bad hiring decisions are often made as a result of subjectivity or a need to fill a role fast. Implementing behavioral assessments is a great way of tackling these problems as they provide a structured, data-driven approach to hiring that can be completed quickly (if a framework is already in place) and objectively.
Limitations and Considerations
However, for all of their benefits, there can be potential limitations of behavioral assessments.
For one, potential biases may be baked into the test design if a bad choice of tool or test is made. This is why we don’t recommend attempting to compile such assessments in-house or without expert psychological insight, such as we’ve had in the creation of our own assessments.
There’s also the need for proper interpretation of results. This may be asking a lot of hiring managers who, again, could benefit from additional training or expert advice to ensure they understand exactly what the data is showing them.
It is crucial to consider ethical factors and respect individual comfort levels for assessments. Candidate experience should also be improved with behavioral assessments to boost their confidence and trust in the organization. Making the assessments mandatory may not be appropriate.
Implementing Behavioral Assessments In Your Hiring Process
You must take a considered approach to embedding behavioral assessments into our hiring process or we won’t get real value out of them. Here are a few things to consider when getting started.
How To Choose An Effective Behavioral Assessment
You shouldn’t rely on the same behavioral assessment for every hire. It’s best to choose the assessment type that aligns with the key behaviors and competencies needed for the role, one that compliments your hiring goals. Analog assessments with role-playing scenarios are ideal for customer-facing roles so we can see how candidates behave when faced with tricky customers, but you wouldn’t want to put that same scenario in front of someone applying for a role in finance.
Whatever assessment we choose, you must design it for fairness and reliability. It should serve the needs of both the candidate and hiring manager and not trip anyone up before the process has even begun.
How to Use Behavioral Assessments in Hiring
Various types of behavioral assessments can be utilized at different stages of the hiring process. Digital psychometric assessments are useful for initially narrowing down the candidate pool, while more direct methods can be employed during later interview stages after analyzing the data gathered.
Combining behavioral assessments like this serves to create a more complete sense of how a candidate will fit into company culture and perform in their role.
How Does a Behavioral Assessment Test Work?
The step-by-step implementation of behavioral assessments into a typical hiring process might look like this:
- Receive resumes. Hiring managers and associated team members screen these and narrow down a candidate pool invited to a first interview.
- First interview - face-to-face, video call or over the phone. Some candidates may be ruled out as unsuitable at this point but any who remain can be invited to partake in a behavioral assessment.
- Short, digital behavioral assessment to be completed by a given deadline.
- Analysis of these results may result in some candidates becoming the leading options.
- Second interview - in-person, with the opportunity for further behavioral assessment such as situational judgment questions or role-play.
- Analysis of the data gathered from this second round of behavioral assessment set against the results of the first test.
- Combine all of this behavior data with the information gleaned during the interview process to find your top candidate.
- If this candidate accepts an offer, you can begin onboarding them into the team with further assessments of personality and communication style so you can incorporate them into the team effectively.
These steps should be communicated clearly, with explanations as to why these assessments are being used, to ensure a positive candidate experience and honest commitment to the process.
Behavioral Assessment Tools & Candidate Evaluation Techniques
With so many tools to choose from, how can you be sure you’ve chosen the right one? Here’s what we recommend:
Key Features to Look for in an Assessment Tool
- Customization and flexibility - you want to adapt our assessments to suit our business needs and the requirements of the roles you’re hiring for, so customization is essential.
- AI-driven analytics and reporting - the best behavioral assessment tools available right now make effective use of AI to deliver meaningful insights and analysis on candidate behavior, saving hiring managers valuable time.
- Integration with HR platforms - you’ve all got enough platforms to keep track of as it is, so any tool that seamlessly integrates with tools you’re already familiar with is a yes from us.
Why Choose Thomas International for Behavioral Assessments?
Our tools at Thomas International do everything listed in our recommendations. We’ve supported hundreds of hiring managers in our 40 years in industries as wide-ranging as cloud software and logistics.
We’re experts in people science and take a robust approach to developing our assessments, which have all been registered with the Psychological Testing Centre (PTC) and the British Psychological Society. We’ve spent decades translating psychological research into carefully designed tools that provide accurate results so the companies we work with can hire with confidence.
Unlocking Hiring Success with Behavioral Assessment
Behavioral assessments, when used strategically and refined to fit role and company culture, create confidence in hiring decisions. They reduce hiring bias and support us in choosing the right fit for our company culture so our hires are more likely to stay with us for longer and perform at a higher level. There are many different types of behavioral assessment that can be used at different points within the hiring process, so it’s important that you implement the best approach at each touchpoint to get the most accurate results.
Ready to start incorporating behavioral assessments into your hiring strategy? Get in touch with our experts to find the best behavioral assessment solution for your hiring needs.
FAQs About Behavioral Assessments
What is the most common behavioral assessment?
The most commonly used behavioral assessment is the Situational Judgment Test (SJT), typically presented in the form of scenario-based questions at interview. More indirect assessments such as DISC and Myers-Brigg are becoming more common, however, and are often paired with SJTs.
What is the primary goal of behavioral assessments?
The primary goal of behavioral assessments is to evaluate any given person’s most likely behavioral response to various situations and stresses and what that tells us about their strengths, weaknesses, and potential. This information helps hiring managers understand how well candidates will fit into a role and company culture.
What do behavioral assessments measure?
Behavioral assessments in the workplace measure things such as strengths, potential limitations and how to address them, what leadership style someone will respond to, their willingness to learn, and the potential for conflict.
How do they compare to cognitive and skill-based tests?
Cognitive and skill-based tests measure competency and demonstrate whether someone is capable of performing in a particular role. Behavioral assessments sit alongside these to evaluate potential fit and growth opportunities by uncovering how someone may react in different scenarios that may come up within that role.
