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Personality Assessments in Hiring: What Works and What Fails · The Science of Leading

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  Welcome to the show.
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  I'm Claire Monroe with Edwin Carrington,
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  and Edwin, I want to start with a hiring mistake that feels painfully
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  common: the candidate had the resume,
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  had the answers, had the polish...
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  and then three months later the team realizes the real problem wasn't
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  skill.
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  It was behavior under PRESSURE.
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  Yes.
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  And that's why bad hires are so expensive.
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  Not usually because someone couldn't,
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  say, use the software or learn the process.
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  It's because nobody tested how they handle conflict,
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  ambiguity, repetition, setbacks.
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  Interviews are often very good at measuring prepared stories.
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  They are much weaker at showing you consistency on a tired Thursday
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  afternoon.
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  That
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  phrase -- "a tired Thursday afternoon" -- that's gonna stay with me,
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  because it is so specific.
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  So this is where personality assessments can help...
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  but not as some magical thumbs-up or thumbs-down?
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  Exactly.
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  Personality should be DECISION SUPPORT,
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  not a verdict.
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  It is one input.
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  A useful one, sometimes a very useful one,
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  but still one input.
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  The mistake organizations make is treating an assessment like a judge's
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  ruling, when really it should function more like a dashboard light.
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  It tells you where to look more carefully.
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  A dashboard light,
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  not a gavel.
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  That's clean.
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  Okay, so if we're talking science-backed personality,
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  we're really talking about the Big Five,
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  right?
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  We are.
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  The Big Five gives you five broad trait domains: conscientiousness,
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  emotional stability -- sometimes framed as the opposite of neuroticism
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  -- extraversion, agreeableness,
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  and openness to experience.
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  For hiring, conscientiousness matters a great deal in many roles because
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  it relates to reliability, follow-through,
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  organization.
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  Emotional stability matters because pressure changes behavior.
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  A person can sound composed in a 45-minute interview and still unravel
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  when priorities collide.
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  Wait -- conscientiousness and emotional stability.
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  Those two, specifically, seem to show up everywhere.
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  Is that because they get at the stuff interviews fake most easily?
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  In
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  part, yes.
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  Interviews can reveal communication,
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  maybe judgment if they're structured well.
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  But stress tolerance, day-to-day consistency,
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  teamwork under strain -- those are harder to see in conversation alone.
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  Traits don't tell you everything.
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  But they can reveal likely patterns.
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  That's the key word: likely.
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  Not destiny.
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  So if I'm a hiring manager listening right now,
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  what's the first practical move?
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  Not "buy a test." Something before that.
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  Good.
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  The first move is to define the ROLE OUTCOME before you choose any assessment.
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  Ask: are we trying to predict job fit,
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  team dynamics, or leadership risk?
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  Those are different questions.
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  If you don't know what decision you're trying to improve,
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  the assessment becomes theater.
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  Assessment theater.
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  I've seen that.
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  A team says they want "culture fit," and what they really mean is,
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  "I liked talking to this person."Yes -- and "culture fit" is one of the
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  slipperiest phrases in business.
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  It often disguises preference as evidence.
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  Better question: what behaviors does this role require?
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  Fast follow-up?
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  Calm customer interaction?
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  Careful analysis?
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  Coaching others?
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  Once you name the behavior, you can map relevant traits to the role.
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  And
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  that's where I get uneasy, because so many teams still lean on type systems.
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  MBTI, DISC...
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  they get used like hiring filters all the time.
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  They do.
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  And to be fair, MBTI and DISC can be useful for conversation,
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  self-reflection, team language.
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  I don't dismiss them entirely.
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  But they are weaker as hiring gates because types are tidy and people
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  are not.
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  Trait models are dimensional.
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  They let you say someone is higher or lower on a continuum,
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  which is much closer to reality than stamping them with a category.
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  The
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  category problem is huge.
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  Once someone gets labeled a "type," everybody starts telling a story
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  about them.
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  And suddenly the story feels more real than the evidence.
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  That's well
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  said.
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  A good assessment process should reduce storytelling,
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  not increase it.
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  That's one reason tools built for workplace decision support matter.
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  A platform like OAD.
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  ai, for example,
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  is useful when it's aligned to job-related questions and used as part
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  of a broader, defensible process -- not as a shortcut to certainty.
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  So
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  the takeaway from this first part is almost...
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  less romantic than people want.
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  No personality quiz as oracle.
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  No "culture fit" as vibe check.
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  Start with the outcome, use the Big Five where relevant,
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  and treat the result as a prompt for better questions.
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  Precisely.
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  Better questions, better comparisons,
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  better decisions.
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  That's the standard.
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  Okay, let's make this concrete.
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  If someone wants to use personality in hiring THIS week -- not six months
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  from now -- what does a sane rollout look like?
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  Start small.
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  Choose one role.
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  Choose one success metric.
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  Then pilot the assessment with current employees before you ever use
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  it on candidates.
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  That sequence matters.
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  If you're hiring customer service representatives,
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  for instance, maybe your success metric is retention,
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  customer satisfaction, or escalation rate.
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  Test the assessment against people already doing the work,
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  and see whether the patterns make sense.
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  I like that -- current employees
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  first.
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  Because if you can't explain the pattern in your own team,
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  you have no business using it on strangers.
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  And "one role, one metric" is memorable.
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  Not twelve roles, not vague "success."Right.
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  Then combine personality with other methods.
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  Structured interviews.
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  Work samples.
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  Cognitive ability, where appropriate and job-related.
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  No single measure carries the whole burden.
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  Together, they give you a fuller picture.
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  Let me try to explain that back.
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  Personality tells me probable tendencies.
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  Structured interviews test past behavior with the same questions for
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  every candidate.
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  Work samples show whether they can actually do the job.
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  And cognitive ability helps with learning speed or problem-solving --
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  depending on the role.
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  Is that basically it?
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  Almost.
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  I'd sharpen one thing: cognitive ability is powerful,
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  but it should be used thoughtfully and in context.
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  For a data analyst role, for example,
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  cognitive ability may matter quite a bit because the job demands pattern
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  recognition and reasoning.
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  But you would still want conscientiousness for accuracy and
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  follow-through,
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  plus a work sample that shows how the person handles messy data.
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  Messy
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  data is the whole game.
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  Nobody gets hired into the clean spreadsheet from a demo.
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  So give me the role map.
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  Customer service, data analyst,
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  people manager.
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  Customer service: look for emotional stability,
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  enough agreeableness to stay constructive with difficult people,
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  and conscientiousness for consistency.
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  Then verify with behavioral questions like,
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  "Tell me about a time you de-escalated an upset customer," and a short
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  simulation.
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  Data analyst: cognitive ability,
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  conscientiousness, and often lower need for constant social stimulation
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  may be perfectly fine.
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  Use a work sample with incomplete or contradictory information.
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  People manager: emotional stability again,
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  conscientiousness, agreeableness in the sense of coaching constructively,
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  and some extraversion can help -- though not every good manager is highly
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  extraverted.
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  Then test judgment through structured interview questions and manager-style
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  scenarios.
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  That distinction on managers is important.
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  "Not every good manager is highly extraverted." I think a lot of companies
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  still confuse visible energy with leadership strength.
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  They do.
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  That's why role-based trait mapping matters.
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  Map traits to the actual demands of the role,
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  not to the personality of the last person who held it.
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  Okay,
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  but here's the cynical listener question: what about people faking good
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  on assessments?
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  Because the internet is full of advice on how to look like the ideal
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  employee.
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  A fair concern.
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  You reduce fake-good responding with consistency checks,
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  behavioral follow-ups, and standardized administration.
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  If a profile suggests exceptional calm and discipline,
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  your interview should probe specific examples.
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  Ask for details.
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  Ask what happened under pressure.
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  Ask what they did when they missed a deadline.
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  And administer the process the same way to every candidate.
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  Consistency is not just cleaner science; it's better legal and ethical
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  defensibility.
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  Legal and ethical defensibility -- there's the part that
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  gets skipped in a lot of casual hiring systems.
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  If a tool isn't clearly job-related,
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  if it isn't applied consistently,
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  if you can't explain why you're using it...
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  you're in trouble.
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  Yes.
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  Hiring systems must be fair, relevant,
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  and explainable.
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  That's why validated workplace tools matter.
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  If listeners want to go deeper,
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  I'd point them toward the Big Five literature,
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  best practices in structured interviews,
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  the research on work samples, and workplace assessment platforms designed
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  for job-related decision support,
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  including OAD.
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  aiAnd if you're ready to stop hiring on vibes go to OAD.
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  ai
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  and try it for free.
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  Pilot it on one role, compare it with your interview data,
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  and build a science-backed workflow that's actually defensible.
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  Because
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  the real question is not whether someone interviews well.
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  It's whether they will work well when the work becomes real.
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  If you'd like help answering that with more rigor,
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  visit OAD.
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  ai for a free trial.
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  Thanks for listening and hear you next
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  time on the Science of Leading.
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  Goodbye everyone.