8 Ways to Find Out the Dimensions of Your Personality

Personality tests are usually used to give you an insight into who you are and what motivates you. From an employer’s perspective, comprehending the employees’ personalities can help the company figure out their work style and how they can best fit into the work culture in that workplace.

What is a Personality Test?

Personality tests originated from psychology and have since been used to better recognize character traits and how they vary in different settings such as the workspace. In addition, personality tests can also be quite useful for psychological diagnoses that mental health practitioners may carry out. Since the inception of personality dimensions, various tests have come into being.

In this article, we go over 8 of the most popular personality tests you can take to find out the dimension of your personality.

1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator

This test is also referred to as the MBTI. Companies widely use the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator worldwide to inform their hiring process. It utilizes questions that are geared towards establishing whether the potential employee falls within four groupings: Judging vs. perceiving, extraversion vs. introversion, thinking vs. feeling, and lastly, Intuition vs. sensing. This assessment is relatively long as it uses 93 questions to group the individuals into any one of 16 personality types.

2. Caliper Profile

The Caliper Profile is used to determine how the personality traits of a job applicant or an employee translate into their performance when they are in the work environment. This personality test is famously used in employment screenings. When undertaking this test, you will be required to answer various questions in various formats.

The most common format will need you to choose statements that you think best align with your beliefs out of a predetermined set of statements. Other formats may include multiple choice, true or false, and a scale determining the degree of agreement. This test aims to identify a job candidate’s potential positive and negative qualities.

3. 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire

This test is quite helpful in measuring behaviors in different individuals. The questionnaire has many uses, including employee progression and career development. The 16 Personality Factor Questionnaire can measure personality traits such as self-reliance, rule-consciousness, dominance, and perfectionism, among others.

4. SHL Occupational Personality Questionnaire

This test is also referred to as OPQ32 and can be used to shed light on how an individual’s personality traits may influence their performance at work. The test features 104 questions that are used to measure 32 key characteristics. Every question comes with many statements, and the taker is expected to pick one that describes them the most and another that they relate to the least. The results are then drawn from a customized report describing their strengths and weaknesses.

5. HEXACO Personality Inventory-Revised

This test is intended to access the several dimensions of any individual’s personality and how the individual applies their unique theoretical interpretations in various situations. The test measures six key personality dimensions: honesty, agreeableness, extraversion, openness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness. The test also has a revised version which allows you to choose from three assessment length options.

6. Revised NEO Personality Inventory

This latest version of the NEO Personality Inventory was completed in 2005. This personality inventory tests and measures the five major traits defined in the five-factor personality model but each of the five traits are broken down further into subcategories. For example, the trait of neuroticism is broken down to include anxiety, depression, and self-consciousness, among others.

7. Eysenck Personality Inventory

This test assesses an individual’s personality based on two key dimensions, namely neuroticism vs. stability and extroversion vs. introversion. The results then have three main scores rated as ‘E’ for extroversion level, ‘N’ for neuroticism level, and finally ‘lie,’ which gives a measure of honesty in the assessment that may be based on the intention to get better scores. The full assessment features 100 questions, but a shorter version features 57 yes/no questions that are also available.

8. DISC Personality Test

This personality test is based on the categories of Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Compliance (DISC). The DISC assessment tests are used to achieve various goals such as team building, specialized hiring, employee disputes, and hiring managers. The disc plus test has 28 statements, each having four options for the candidate to rate how they relate to the statement.

Conclusion

Understanding your character traits can be an invaluable tool to help you make informed decisions as you decide your career path. In addition, the self-awareness you get from taking any of these tests will give you an edge when potential employers assess you.