Defining Your Personality Assessment Criteria

Episode 14

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Hiring the right person isn't just about skills and experience, it's about understanding how someone naturally functions, what fills their bucket, and whether their intrinsic patterns align with the demands of the role. In this episode, Brandon Seigel walks through how to define and use personality assessment criteria as a strategic tool in your hiring and team development process.

Brandon opens by distinguishing between two forces that shape how people work: nature (what comes naturally to them) and nurture (what they've learned or been pushed to develop). Personality assessments are primarily measuring nature, the enduring patterns of behavior, thought, and emotion that show up regardless of context. Just because someone is skilled at something doesn't mean it fills them up. And exhausted, depleted employees, however talented, don't perform at their best.

The purpose of a personality assessment isn't to label or limit candidates, it's to gather data. Structured assessments ask the same underlying questions in multiple different ways to reduce self-reporting bias and surface authentic patterns. The goal is to understand how someone naturally communicates, makes decisions, responds to pressure, and relates to others, not whether they can check the boxes on a job description.

Brandon recommends defining your assessment criteria before you look at any results. What traits are non-negotiable for the role? What behavioral patterns would be a red flag? For a front desk role, emotional stability and warmth may be paramount. For a clinical leadership role, the ability to hold accountability without people-pleasing may matter most. When you know what you're looking for, assessments become diagnostic rather than descriptive.

He also cautions against over-reliance on any single assessment tool. Myers-Briggs, the Big Five, DISC, each measures something useful, but none measures everything. Brandon recommends combining personality assessments with structured interviews and practical skills evaluations to build a complete picture of the candidate. The assessment opens the conversation; it doesn't close the decision.

Finally, Brandon emphasizes that personality assessments aren't just for hiring, they're powerful tools for team development, conflict resolution, and career pathing. Understanding how each team member naturally operates allows you to communicate more effectively, assign roles more strategically, and build a team where different styles complement rather than clash.

Key Takeaways

• Define the traits you're looking for before reviewing any assessment results
• Personality assessments measure natural tendencies, not skills, and not ceiling potential
• Good assessments ask the same question multiple ways to surface authentic behavioral patterns
• Combine assessments with structured interviews and skills tests for a complete candidate picture
• Use assessments for team development and career pathing, not just initial hiring

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."  , Aristotle