Work Personality Questionnaire Practice

A free practice run of the fourth kind of hiring test: the workplace personality questionnaire. Ability tests and games measure what you can do; a personality questionnaire asks how you usually behave at work. This one takes about eight minutes and uses the three formats you are most likely to meet: true / false statements, a five-point agree / disagree scale and a short "most like me / least like me" block. Every statement was written for GamePrep. GamePrep is independent and not affiliated with Hogan Assessments, SHL or any other test vendor; this is not their questionnaire, does not use their items and cannot predict your result on theirs.

The questionnaires employers use

Hogan. Hogan Assessments publishes three inventories that are often sent together. The Hogan Personality Inventory (HPI) has 206 true / false statements, takes 15 to 20 minutes and reports seven primary scales plus a validity scale; Hogan calls it the "bright side", how you come across at your best. The Hogan Development Survey (HDS) reports 11 scales of behaviour that can get in the way under strain, the "dark side". The Motives, Values, Preferences Inventory (MVPI) reports 10 scales of what drives you. Each takes 15 to 20 minutes, by Hogan's own figures.

SHL OPQ32. SHL's Occupational Personality Questionnaire describes 32 work characteristics. The current version, the OPQ32r, shows blocks of three statements and asks which is most and which least like you; candidates report 104 blocks and SHL quotes about 20 minutes.

Saville Wave. Wave Professional Styles takes about 35 minutes. You rate statements on a nine-point scale, then rank any you rated the same, so you cannot claim to be strong at everything.

Korn Ferry (Talent Q) Dimensions. An adaptive questionnaire that adjusts what it asks to your earlier answers and covers people, task and emotional styles; candidates report around 25 minutes.

What employers look for

There is no correct personality. Employers compare your profile with what a role needs: a sales job may want social energy and drive, an audit job diligence and composure, a research job curiosity. The same answers can fit one role well and another poorly. Most reports turn scale scores into interview questions rather than a pass or fail, though some employers do screen out profiles far from the role.

How faking is detected

Questionnaires are built so that an invented profile shows. Three common checks, all included in this practice:

• Consistency. The same idea is asked more than once, often reversed ("I stay calm when a deadline moves" against "A moved deadline leaves me flustered"). Answering both the flattering way contradicts yourself.
• Impression management. A few statements nobody can truthfully endorse ("I have kept every promise I have ever made"). Agreeing with several suggests you are describing an ideal, not yourself.
• Forced choice. Formats like the OPQ32r and Wave make you choose between statements that all sound good, so you cannot agree with everything.

A profile that is high on every scale is itself a warning sign: real people have strengths that cost them something elsewhere.

How to prepare honestly

• Answer as your work self, how you behave on an ordinary working day, not at home and not on your best day.
• Be consistent, not strategic. Read each statement, give your first honest answer and move on. Overthinking is how contradictions creep in.
• Do not chase an ideal profile. You do not know which profile the employer wants, and if faking worked you would be hired into a job that suits someone else.
• Read the job description so you can give examples in the interview for the traits the report raises.
• Use the extremes when you mean them. "Strongly agree" is fine; answering only in the middle produces a flat, uninformative profile.

How this practice differs from the real thing

It is shorter (72 answers in three parts against roughly 100 to 230), its seven dimensions are our own, modelled on the Five-Factor research employers draw on, and its trait scores are raw bands, not compared with a norm group. What you get at the end is your consistency index (how alike your answers were on the eight repeated-meaning pairs), your profile across seven dimensions with what a high or low score tends to mean at work, and whether you endorsed the "too good to be true" statements. The value is knowing the formats, seeing what the questions are after, and learning to answer steadily before the questionnaire that counts.