Hiring · Instrument guide

The personality tests employers use for hiring, compared on evidence

A personality test for hiring is a short questionnaire that describes how a candidate tends to work, so an employer can compare applicants on the same footing. Nine instruments cover nearly all of the market. They are not ranked here, because they do different jobs.

Validity figures from the 2022 re-analysis Prices read from vendors' own pages We sell one of the nine, and say where

What it predicts
Six criteria
Side by side
The instruments
Is it legal?
How to choose
FAQ

The evidence first

What a hiring personality test can predict. And what it cannot.

Personality predicts job performance modestly and consistently. In the 2022 re-analysis of the selection research by Sackett, Zhang, Berry and Lievens, conscientiousness measured with work-worded items reached an operational validity of .25. Asked in general terms, the same trait reached .19.

.25

Conscientiousness, asked about work

Almost no spread between studies.

.19

Conscientiousness, asked in general

The same trait with everyday wording.

.42

Structured interview

The strongest single method.

.47

Sensible combinations of methods

Down from .51 under the older estimates.

What it adds

Those figures are lower than the ones on many vendor pages, which come from a 1998 table the field corrected downward in 2022. They are also real. Conscientiousness predicts performance in almost every occupation studied (Barrick and Mount, 1991), and the link gets stronger when the traits you measure are matched to what the job demands (Tett, Jackson and Rothstein, 1991).

It also carries almost no group gap: a Black-White difference of about −.07, against .79 for cognitive ability tests.

What it does not do

It does not measure ability or skill, and it does not predict well enough to reject anyone on a score alone. Applicants also present themselves favourably: across 33 studies they scored about half a standard deviation higher than non-applicants on conscientiousness (Birkeland and colleagues, 2006).

The defensible use is as one input beside a structured interview, which is the strongest single method at .42. Personality is one of eight types of pre-employment assessment, and the guide sets them side by side.

Before you compare

Six things to check on any personality test for hiring

Every entry below answers the same six questions. Brand recognition is not one of them.

Predictive evidence

Is there a peer-reviewed or independently audited study linking scores to later performance, or only a vendor summary?

Job relevance

Can the result be tied to the behaviours this role needs, rather than to a generic picture of a good employee?

Scoring model

Normative scores compare people with each other. Forced-choice and type scores compare a person with themselves, a weak basis for choosing between candidates.

Legal footing

Does the publisher permit selection use, is the content non-clinical, and can you get adverse-impact data for your applicant pool?

Candidate time

Six minutes and seventy-five minutes are both on this page. Longer is not more valid, and it costs you applicants.

Price and unit

Per report, per candidate, per seat or by company headcount. The unit usually matters more than the sticker.

Side by side

The nine instruments at a glance

Grouped by what they measure, alphabetical inside each group. The order is not a ranking, and the row that includes our own product is labelled.

Instrument	Framework	Evidence	Published price	Selection use?
Caliper Profile Talogy	A proprietary set of 22 traits, mapped to competency models for a role.	Vendor-held validation	Quote only. Talogy keeps its catalogue prices behind an account login.	Yes, through the vendor
Criteria EPP Employee Personality Profile, Criteria Corp	Twelve work traits, scored normatively and compared with benchmarks for job families.	Vendor-published validation	Quote only. The pricing page offers a trial and "request pricing".	Yes
Hogan Personality Inventory HPI, Hogan Assessments	Seven scales derived from the Big Five, written from the start for occupational use.	Independently reviewed	Reports are not priced publicly. The certification workshop to interpret them is $3,050.	Yes, through certified users
Wonderlic personality assessment Part of Wonderlic's combined assessment	A Big Five-based questionnaire, scored together with a cognitive test and a motivation measure.	Vendor-published validation	Quote only. The pricing URL returned a 404 on both dates we checked.	Yes
IPIP-NEO and BFI-2 based tools Including SMP Assess, which is ours	The five-factor model with facets: 30 facets on the IPIP-NEO, 15 on the BFI-2.	Peer-reviewed, public items	Varies by tool. Ours is $99 a month, or $948 a year, and building and sending an assessment is free.	Yes, mapped to the role
DISC-based tools Many publishers	Four styles from two axes: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness.	Publishers advise against selection	Per report through resellers. Prices vary by reseller and were not part of our read.	No
PI Behavioral Assessment The Predictive Index	Four drives: dominance, extraversion, patience and formality.	Vendor-held validation	From $10,000 a year, licensed by company headcount.	Yes, against a job target
The official 16-type instrument Sold through certified practitioners	Four preference pairs combined into one of sixteen four-letter types.	Publisher says not for selection	Per report through certified practitioners. Not part of our read.	No
TestGorilla personality tests Six of roughly 380 tests in the library	Several frameworks side by side: Big Five, DISC, 16 types and Enneagram, plus culture and motivation questionnaires.	Depends on the framework chosen	Free plan with 10 credits a month. Core is $1,704 a year.	Big Five option only

Prices were read from each vendor's own pricing page on 17 August 2026 and re-checked on 18 September 2026, as part of our read of 28 vendors' pricing pages. "Quote only" means the page gave no number. "Selection use" is the publisher's own position, not our opinion of it.

The instruments

Each instrument, described the same way

Trait inventories sold for selection

Commercial questionnaires with normative scores, validated by the vendor for hiring decisions.

Caliper Profile

Talogy

Framework: A proprietary set of 22 traits, mapped to competency models for a role.
What it measures: Work-related traits such as assertiveness, urgency and empathy, plus an abstract-reasoning section.
Evidence: Decades of vendor validation work, best known in sales selection. The studies are held by the vendor rather than published.
Published price: Quote only. Talogy keeps its catalogue prices behind an account login.
Best for: Senior and sales hires where a consultant debrief is part of what you are buying.
Watch out: About an hour for the candidate, and usually consultant-led, so it is slow to a result.

Criteria EPP

Employee Personality Profile, Criteria Corp

Framework: Twelve work traits, scored normatively and compared with benchmarks for job families.
What it measures: Traits such as achievement, conscientiousness, patience and stress tolerance, in about ten minutes.
Evidence: Criteria publishes validity summaries by job family. They are vendor studies, not independent ones.
Published price: Quote only. The pricing page offers a trial and "request pricing".
Best for: Volume hiring where personality sits beside an aptitude test on one platform.
Watch out: The personality scale is one module among several. Ask for the evidence on that scale, not on the aptitude test.

Hogan Personality Inventory

HPI, Hogan Assessments

Framework: Seven scales derived from the Big Five, written from the start for occupational use.
What it measures: Day-to-day work reputation: adjustment, ambition, sociability, prudence and three more. 206 true-or-false items, about 20 minutes.
Evidence: The deepest published validation archive of any commercial instrument here, including independent reviews.
Published price: Reports are not priced publicly. The certification workshop to interpret them is $3,050.
Best for: Leadership and high-stakes selection, often paired with the publisher's derailer and values inventories.
Watch out: Sold through certified practitioners, so interpretation is a cost and a dependency.

Wonderlic personality assessment

Part of Wonderlic's combined assessment

Framework: A Big Five-based questionnaire, scored together with a cognitive test and a motivation measure.
What it measures: Five-factor traits, reported as part of one combined candidate score.
Evidence: Wonderlic is best known for its cognitive test, which has a long research record. Ask separately for the personality scale.
Published price: Quote only. The pricing URL returned a 404 on both dates we checked.
Best for: Roles where reasoning speed matters and you want it and personality in one sitting.
Watch out: The combined score includes cognitive ability, which carries the widest group gap of any common method (.79). That is where a challenge would start.

Open Big Five inventories

Tools built on public-domain, peer-reviewed item sets (IPIP-NEO, BFI-2). The questions and scoring are published, so anyone can inspect them.

IPIP-NEO and BFI-2 based tools

Including SMP Assess, which is ours

Disclosure. SMP Assess is our product and belongs in this category. It is described against the same six questions as the others, and the watch-out is written by us about us.

Framework: The five-factor model with facets: 30 facets on the IPIP-NEO, 15 on the BFI-2.
What it measures: Openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness and emotional stability as percentiles, with the facets beneath each.
Evidence: The instruments themselves are peer reviewed (Johnson, 2014; Soto and John, 2017), and the workplace research is written in this model.
Published price: Varies by tool. Ours is $99 a month, or $948 a year, and building and sending an assessment is free.
Best for: Teams that want to see the items, set role targets themselves, and use the result to write interview questions.
Watch out: Norms are usually general-population rather than applicant norms, and no vendor study comes with it. Showing the traits are job-related is your work.

Drives and styles

Shorter instruments that describe behavioural style. They do not map cleanly onto the five-factor research.

DISC-based tools

Many publishers

Framework: Four styles from two axes: Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, Conscientiousness.
What it measures: Preferred pace and communication style, usually by forced choice, in 10 to 20 minutes.
Evidence: Reliable and easy to remember. Forced-choice scores rank traits inside one person, so two candidates cannot fairly be compared on them (Brown and Maydeu-Olivares, 2011).
Published price: Per report through resellers. Prices vary by reseller and were not part of our read.
Best for: Onboarding, communication workshops and team development after the hire.
Watch out: The largest publisher says its version is not recommended for pre-employment screening.

PI Behavioral Assessment

The Predictive Index

Framework: Four drives: dominance, extraversion, patience and formality.
What it measures: A free-choice adjective checklist, untimed, about six minutes. Compared with a job target set by the hiring team.
Evidence: The vendor reports several hundred criterion studies run for clients. They are not peer reviewed, and the model is its own, so outside research does not transfer.
Published price: From $10,000 a year, licensed by company headcount.
Best for: Companies adopting one behavioural language across hiring, management and team design.
Watch out: An annual company-wide licence. Expensive if you hire a handful of people a year.

Type indicators

Instruments that sort a person into a category, not onto a scale.

The best-known type indicator is the official Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment. It is not the same thing as the free 16-type quizzes online, including ours, and none of them is designed for selection. Its publisher's ethical guidelines say it should not be used to hire, which is why it appears here as context rather than as an option.

The official 16-type instrument

Sold through certified practitioners

Framework: Four preference pairs combined into one of sixteen four-letter types.
What it measures: Preferences for energy, information, decisions and structure. 93 items, about 20 minutes.
Evidence: Widely used for self-awareness. A substantial share of people receive a different type on retest (Pittenger, 2005), and types are not scored against a norm group.
Published price: Per report through certified practitioners. Not part of our read.
Best for: Team conversations and coaching, with a trained facilitator.
Watch out: The publisher states it should not be used to hire or select. Treat that as settled.

Test libraries

Skills platforms that include personality questionnaires among hundreds of tests.

TestGorilla personality tests

Six of roughly 380 tests in the library

Framework: Several frameworks side by side: Big Five, DISC, 16 types and Enneagram, plus culture and motivation questionnaires.
What it measures: Whichever framework you pick, added as one section of a longer skills assessment.
Evidence: The platform publishes reliability figures for many tests. Of the four personality frameworks offered, only the Big Five has a selection evidence base.
Published price: Free plan with 10 credits a month. Core is $1,704 a year.
Best for: Teams already buying the platform for skills tests who want a personality section at no extra cost.
Watch out: Choose the Big Five test. The type and Enneagram options share the limits described above.

The law, briefly

Are personality tests legal for hiring?

Yes, in the United States and most other places, when the test is job-related, given to every candidate the same way, and not a medical examination.

EEOC Uniform Guidelines

Job-related, and watched for adverse impact

A personality test is a selection procedure under 29 CFR Part 1607. If one protected group passes at less than four-fifths the rate of another, you must be able to show the test is job-related. The Guidelines say a vendor's promotional material is not evidence of validity, so the burden is yours.

ADA

No medical examinations before an offer

A questionnaire designed to reveal a mental-health condition counts as a medical examination. In Karraker v. Rent-A-Center (7th Cir., 2005) a clinical inventory used for promotions failed that test. Normal-range work inventories such as the Big Five are not clinical instruments.

NYC Local Law 144

Automated tools need a bias audit

Since July 2023, an employer using an automated employment decision tool on New York City candidates needs an independent bias audit within the past year and must give candidates notice. A score that a person reads and weighs is treated differently from one that filters people automatically.

General information, not legal advice. For the UK position, including section 60 of the Equality Act, see the UK note on our assessment tools page. The compliance section of the hiring page covers day-to-day practice.

From comparison to choice

How to choose a personality test for hiring

Start from the situation, not from the brand.

You need to defend the decision

Pick a normatively scored trait inventory whose publisher permits selection, write down why each trait matters for the role, and keep the record.

You want to see the questions first

Use an open Big Five tool. The items and the scoring are public, which also makes the result easier to explain to a candidate.

You are hiring leaders

The Hogan inventory has the strongest published record for that use. Budget for a certified interpreter.

You want one language company-wide

The Predictive Index is built for that, and priced for it.

You want a team workshop

DISC or a 16-type session will serve you well. Run it after the offer, not before.

Whatever you pick

Pair it with a structured interview. It is the strongest single method, it costs nothing, and the trait report tells you what to ask.

Questions buyers ask

Personality tests for hiring: questions and answers

Q.01

Which personality assessment is worth buying for recruitment in 2026?

One that is scored normatively, permitted for selection by its own publisher, and priced on a unit that matches how you hire. In practice that means a Big Five-based inventory: the Hogan inventory if you hire leaders and can pay for interpretation, Criteria or Wonderlic if you want it bundled with aptitude testing, or an open Big Five tool if you want published items and a low entry price. No test on this page is worth buying as the only thing between a candidate and a rejection.

Q.02

What is the best pre-employment personality test?

There is no single best one, and a page that names a winner is usually selling it. The research supports a narrower statement: work-worded conscientiousness predicts performance across most jobs at about .25, and the effect is stable. Any well-built Big Five inventory measures it. After that the choice is practical: the time it asks of candidates, whether you can see the items, and what unit you are billed on.

Q.03

What are the most reliable personality tests for hiring?

Reliability means a person scores much the same on retest. Big Five inventories do well here: the BFI-2 and IPIP-NEO report domain reliabilities in the .80s, and the Hogan inventory is similar. Type indicators do worse because a small shift near the midpoint flips the letter, which is why a substantial share of people change type on retest. Reliable is not the same as valid, so ask for both.

Q.04

Which personality assessments have the strongest predictive validity?

At the level of traits, conscientiousness measured with work-worded items, at about .25 in the 2022 estimates by Sackett and colleagues, against .19 for general wording. At the level of products, only a few vendors publish criterion studies that outsiders can read, and Hogan has the largest archive. No personality test approaches a structured interview (.42), which is why the two are used together.

Q.05

Is there a Predictive Index alternative for a small company?

Yes. The Predictive Index starts at $10,000 a year because it is licensed by company headcount. If you hire a few people a year, a per-month or per-candidate tool costs far less. Criteria EPP and Bryq cover similar ground, and open Big Five tools, ours among them, start under $100 a month. What you give up is the company-wide language the Predictive Index is designed around.

Q.06

Is the Big Five better than the MBTI assessment for hiring?

For hiring, yes, and the publisher of the official Myers-Briggs Type Indicator assessment agrees on the second half: it says the instrument should not be used to select candidates. The Big Five places people on continuous scales against a norm group, which is what allows a score to be related to job performance. A four-letter type is useful for reflection and team conversation, and that is where it belongs.

Q.07

Can candidates fake a personality test?

They can shade it. Across 33 studies, applicants scored about half a standard deviation higher than non-applicants on conscientiousness and emotional stability. That barely changes the overall correlation with performance, but it does reshuffle the top of a ranked list. Two things help: work-worded items with response-quality checks, and a structured interview that asks for evidence of the traits the report claims.

Q.08

How much do personality tests for hiring cost?

Most vendors do not say. Of 28 assessment vendors whose pricing pages we read, eleven publish a number. Among the instruments here, the Predictive Index starts at $10,000 a year, TestGorilla Core is $1,704 a year with a free plan below it, and ours is $99 a month. Hogan, Criteria, Wonderlic and Talogy quote on request. The full table, with the billing unit for each, is on our recruitment assessment tools page.

Keep reading

Related guides

About this page

Michael Hodge, founder of SeeMyPersonality, holds a BSc in Psychology from the University of Wollongong and has run online personality measurement since 2003. More about the author.

Instrument details are as published by each vendor. We have not administered every instrument on this page, and nothing here is a product review. Validity figures are averages across many studies with real spread around them, so they describe methods in general and not the product you buy.

Written and reviewed by Michael Hodge Updated 18 September 2026 Disclosure we make one of the tools described on this page

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