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Making Employment Decisions Using Personality Profiles
Getting answers to the specific questions you have for a position you’re hiring for is one of the challenges of using personality profiles. Maybe “I need them to work independently” or “I want to know they will embrace AI and technology” or “I want someone who can change and pivot easily”.
Good personality profiles have a wealth of information. But often for those with limited training it’s hard to tease out answers to the specific questions you have as an employer.
We’ve developed a quick table to help. Based on the Big 5 traits we use in our Accountants Personality Profile Questionnaire this is a quick way to dive in to the parts of a personality report you want to focus on.
Business Issue Employers Care About |
Big Five / APPQ Trait to Examine |
Risk if Too Low |
Risk if Too High |
| 1. Business Development / Sales Drive | Extraversion → Social Boldness / Assertiveness | Struggles to initiate contact, avoids tough conversations, easily overshadowed in client-facing roles. | Can come across as domineering, pushy, or dismissive of others’ input. |
| 2. Ambition & Drive | Conscientiousness → Self-Discipline |
Disorganized, procrastinates, misses deadlines, lacks follow-through. |
Overly rigid, perfectionistic, struggles to adapt when plans change. |
| 3. Resilience / Stress Tolerance | Stress Tolerance → Emotional Stability / Calmness | Easily stressed, flustered under pressure, takes criticism personally, prone to burnout. | Too laid back, underestimates risks, may ignore early warning signs of stress. |
| 4. Client Service Orientation | Agreeableness → Warmth / Affiliation / Trusting | Detached, poor at building rapport, resistant to teamwork, overly suspicious. | Over-accommodating, gullible, avoids necessary tough calls with clients. |
| 5. Team Fit & Collaboration | Agreeableness → Affiliation / Trusting | Reluctant to delegate, works in silos, creates friction in teams. | Too consensus-driven, struggles to make unpopular but necessary decisions. |
| 6. Leadership Potential | Extraversion & Conscientiousness → Assertiveness / Self-Confidence | Avoids conflict, fails to inspire or influence others, hesitant in decision-making. | Overbearing, dismisses others’ contributions, risks arrogance or micromanagement. |
| 7. Adaptability & Change Tolerance | Openness → Change-Focused / Creativity & Vision | Resistant to change, clings to old methods, struggles with innovation. | Pursues change for its own sake, destabilizes processes, distracts from core tasks. |
| 8. Attention to Detail / Accuracy | Conscientiousness → Conscientiousness / Self-Discipline | Careless mistakes, inconsistent quality, missed deadlines. | Overly perfectionistic, slow to deliver, micromanages others’ work. |
| 9. Work Ethic & Reliability | Conscientiousness → Conscientiousness / Self-Discipline | Unreliable, needs supervision, avoids accountability. | Rigid rule-following, inflexible, struggles in ambiguous or fast-changing environments. |
| 10. Cultural Alignment / Values Match | Agreeableness & Extraversion → Warmth / Communication Style | Poor interpersonal fit, creates client/colleague tension, perceived as “not one of us.” | Over-adapts, loses authenticity, risks being seen as insincere. |
| 11. Suitability to Remote Working – Manager | Conscientiousness & Self-Discipline + Extraversion (Communication) + Agreeableness (Trusting) | Poor communication, team feels unsupported, avoids performance management, weak team cohesion. | Over-communicates (Zoom fatigue), trusts too easily without checks, dominates calls, micromanages remotely. |
| 12. Suitability to Remote Working – Graduate/New Starter | Conscientiousness & Self-Discipline + Openness (Intellectual Confidence) + Agreeableness (Affiliation) | Distracted, isolated, hesitant to ask for help, invisible to managers. | Over-shares, clings to colleagues for reassurance, risks burnout from trying too hard, misses in-person cultural learning. |
| 13. Ability to Embrace AI | Openness → Change-Focused / Intellectual Confidence | Resistant to technology, fears automation, clings to old methods, avoids learning. | Over-enthusiastic adopter, chases shiny tools without evaluating risks, disrupts workflow by over-implementing tech. |
Find the issue you’re interested in, see the traits involved and the issues which might arise depending on the candidate rating. Use the specific commentary in the report to help frame your interview questions or guide an on-boarding plan.
Giles Pearson | After 18 years as a partner with a large public accounting firm, Giles founded Accountests to help those recruiting accountants make better hiring decisions
