Can People Cheat Their Personality Test?

A common theme of questions from employers thinking about adding personality testing to their hiring process revolves around whether a job candidate or existing staff member can cheat the test by presenting themselves as somebody they are not.

With a potential job offer or promotion on the line, the temptation to try and swing their profile towards something closely aligned to the job will be too hard to resist.  Afterall, who’s going to find out?  Well, depending on the personality test you choose, you can get a strong indication of whether a test-taker responded openly and honestly, or whether they attempted to fake a perfect job candidate response, or whether they have worked hard to reveal little about themselves.

Tests that don’t measure cheating

Type-Indicator personality tests make no attempt to measure what psychometricians call Impression Management.

Alarmingly, type-indicators include many of the most popular personality tests in the market, including MBTI, DiSC, Predictive Index, Kolbe and Strengths Finder.

Some of these tests claim to measure inconsistencies in responses, but these are focused on whether a test-taker was rushed or distracted when they completed it, not whether they may have set out to complete the test in a way to make them look more suited to a job by being evasive or presenting themselves in an unrealistically positive light.

Tests that do measure cheating

The better personality tests out there are not type-indicators, but tests based on the Big-5/OCEAN model of personality.  These include our very own Accountants Personality Profile Questionnaire (APPQ), Hogan and 16PF.

These tests include measures including check whether a respondent is avoiding giving away information about themselves through non-committal responses and if they are presenting an unlikely polished and flawless impression of themselves.

What do I do with this information?

Whilst you cannot use concerning Impression Management scores to reject a candidate in isolation, you can use the information in interviews to check whether a candidate is attempting to stage-manage their interview by accentuating positives, denying negatives and evading difficult questions that probe occasions with negative outcomes.

The importance of having a skilled and experienced interviewer who can probe whether a person genuinely believes themselves to be that good and can back it up with examples, over someone who has attempted to present themselves as somebody they are not cannot be overstated in key hiring decision making, and a personality test that gives the interviewer the prompt to explore further adds further value to that hiring process.

Want to try APPQ in your firm?

If you haven't already added APPQ to your hiring and development toolkit, try one for free here.

Any questions on Impression Management or personality tests in general, do get in touch at steve@accountests.com

Happy hiring!

Steve Evans  |  Steve founded Accountests alongside a career using his expertise in candidate testing and assessment to support employers to attract, recruit, and develop talent. 

Accountests  |  Accountests deliver the world’s only online suite of annually updated and country-specific technical skills, ability and personality tests designed by and for accountants and bookkeepers.